RIO Fitness Chicago® Exercise & Nutrition Blog

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

Calorie counters on cardio machines are inaccurate. So when you're doing 60+mins of cardio thinking you've burned like 800+cal, you really haven't, it's more like 300. Then you go & overindulge in food/alcohol adding to your body fat because you thought you burned so many calories with exercise. Get an inexpensive heart rate monitor so you always know exactly how many calories you're burning.

Reasons why they're inaccurate: 1) The stats you enter are age & weight. Men burn cal faster than women, so how does the machine know your gender? It doesn't. Age, gender, body fat % are all things that determine how fast you burn cal, and ...out of the three you only enter age. 2) The cardio machine is determining calories & heart rate from a predetermined math equation and by how fast it's going around (revolutions). 3) Once a machine is put into the gym it's NEVER recalibrated.

Polar is a quality brand. Their monitors range from $49-$149 depending on how sophisticated you want to get. http://www.polarusa.com/