BASIC OPERATION
Calorie Expenditure Calculations
BASIC OPERATION
True treadmills use the calorie expenditure formula as described in Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription from the American College of Sports Medicine.
This is the most widely accepted formula for running and walking.
The ACSM guide says that running burns calories twice as fast as walking, e.g., a
while walking at 5 mph requires 274 per hour. See Appendix C for more details.
(Other respected researchers such as David Costill think the ACSM overstates the energy difference between running and walking. Costill believes running requires 60% more energy than walking, not 100% as calculated by the ACSM. Using the same example, Costill's calculations result in 496 cal/hour for running 5 mph, with 313 cal/hour
for walking 5 mph.)
One potential source of calorie estimate error is that the treadmill doesn't know if you are running or
walking, so it has to make some assumptions. It assumes you are walking at 3 mph and slower, and running at 5 mph and faster. Between those two speeds, the treadmill combines the walking and running formulas to make its best guess.
Variations in human exercise efficiency are another potential source of error, with differences of plus or minus 10% common in the population.
ANOTE ABOUT CALORIE EXPENDITURE CALCULATIONS
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5 5 0 Z T X T r e a d m i l l O w n e r ’ s G u i d e
