Calorie Counting Controversy | Health | Fox 61 WTIC-TV Connecticut

Calorie Counting Controversy

May 15, 2008, 10:23 AM EDT

You workout really hard. So how many calories are you burning?

Recently exercise physiologists from Stanford University, in a published report in the New York Times - said many of those numbers might not be accurate. Researchers say the problem is machines greatly vary in intensity from one to the next - both in how they're manufactured and calibrated - plus people themselves are so very different.

Brenda Swain, program manager at university hospitals heart vascular institute, said the machines are only meant to provide estimates of what a person your size may burn. "When you are on it and the piece of equipment asked you to enter your wt and height you'll get more accurate reading than if it doesn't ask you that because then its just using a standard man or woman as base line for information for you."

Ben Parks, a personal trainer at 1 to 1 fitness says to get a better idea of how many calories you are burning you must know how many calories you burn when your body is at rest.

It's called your resting metabolic rate. "It really ranges quite a bit you can have one person that's the same height and weight and even body composition and genetically they burn an additional 300 calories a day at rest than a person the same size - based on eating habits and how much they exercise."

So how do you know?

Parks said, "This is a med gem it's used to calculate your resting metabolic rate."

..." Here's how it works - we take this little machine hook up mouth piece takes 5 minutes to breathe into it and based on the amount of c02 that you breath - the machine can calculate your resting metabolic rate."

And once you know that, you can figure out how many calories you burn exercising.

But both Ben and Brenda say, even the best-calculated estimates are still just that.

...So if you want to lose weight, you still need to consume fewer calories -- no matter what the treadmill says.

..."I call it chocolate cake mentality - just because you had a good workout and burned some calories doesn't mean you can go eat whatever you want."