Cardiovascular activities are effective at burning calories. As you work out, your body must compensate for the increased demand for energy. The treadmill and the elliptical are two cardiovascular machines that allow you to exercise irrespective of the weather conditions. The number of calories you will burn, however, can vary significantly.
Factors
The number of calories you burn during your treadmill or elliptical workouts depends on a few things, including the intensity of your workout, the duration of your training session and your personal body weight. The more you weigh, the harder your body has to work and the more calories you’ll burn. Understandably, increasing the intensity and duration of your exercise session means more calories burned.
Treadmill
The calories burned during your treadmill workouts highly depends on your speed. According to a calorie calculator at the HealthStatus website, a 150-pound person will burn an estimated 189 calories walking for 60 minutes at 2 mph, but will burn about 783 calories in that time if they run at a speed of 7 mph. Running is a much more intense activity than walking and thus your body requires a greater amount of fuel. If your goal is to burn a large number of calories, but you’re unable to run for an entire session, consider incorporating short bouts of jogging into your walking workouts to increase your total calories burned.
Elliptical
A workout on an elliptical machine can lead to a high number of calories burned. HealthStatus calculates that a 150-pound person will burn about 774 calories in 60 minutes. This equates to nearly the same amount of calories as running at 7 mph. Therefore, according to the values provided by HealthStatus, an elliptical workout is more efficient at burning calories than any treadmill workout that is completed at a pace slower than 7 mph. However, HealthStatus fails to note the intensity of the elliptical workout.
Accurate Calories Burned
The online calorie calculators are often estimations. The most accurate way to calculate the number of calories you're burning during your workouts is to use an equation modified from on provided in the "Journal of Sports Sciences," which incorporates your heart rate, age and body weight. Women find their calories burned per minute using the formula: [(0.4472 x heart rate) + (0.074 x age) - (0.05741 x weight in kilograms) - 20.4022] x time / 4.184. Men calculate their calories burned with [(0.6309 x heart rate) + (0.2017 x age) - (0.09036 x weight in kilograms) - 55.0969] x time / 4.184.
Significance of Calories
Calories burned during exercise contribute to your overall daily calories burned total, which then supports a decrease or maintenance of body fat composition. To lose weight, you must burn a greater number of calories than you intake from food and drink. The more efficient your workout sessions, the more overall calories you will burn and the greater the caloric deficit you will create. According to MayoClinic.com, every 3,500 caloric deficit equates to 1 pound of body fat loss.
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