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550ZTX Treadmill Owner’s Guide
Calorie Expenditure Calculations
BASIC OPERATION
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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 150-pound person
jogging at 5 mph requires 548 calories per hour,
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.
A NOTE ABOUT
CALORIE
EXPENDITURE
CALCULATIONS