Treadmills are hugely popular aerobic exercise machines, and for those who find it difficult to make time for fitness, treadmill desks now exist too! These innovative machines can be effective for weight loss, if that’s your aim, and also aid with general fitness, all while you work at your desk.
If you’re interested in burning calories while answering work emails, a treadmill desk could be the solution for you. But just how many calories does a treadmill burn?
How to Calculate Your Calorie Burn
Learn how many calories you burnt on a stint on a treadmill by entering details into this tool. Knowing how many calories you’ve burnt is essential for knowing if your exercise method is effective.
What Influences Calorie Burn?
To improve your weight loss exercise, you’ll need to understand the factors that determine the number of calories you burn per kilometer. They include:
- Weight- Generally, people with more weight burn more calories per kilometer. This is because your muscles must burn calories to move mass across a kilometer.
- Stride- The length of your stride is important because if you have a shorter stride, you will move your feet more times per kilometer, therefore using more energy.
- Heart rate- When exercise intensity is highest, you are burning more calories. The intensity can be measured by the pulse, as it shows how the heart and lungs are working.
- Speed- Covering a distance in a shorter time means that you are burning more calories because the intensity is higher.
- Incline- Running uphill burns more calories than on a level surface or uphill.
- Efficiency- If you are well-trained and your motions are smoother, you will burn fewer calories over a given distance. You, therefore, need to use more speeds than the natural speed of walking or race-walking.
- Holding on to the handrails- You should not hold on the rails while running on the treadmill. Doing so will make the exercise less effective.
Many of the methods that people use to estimate their calorie figures may have accuracy problems. For instance, if the method doesn’t take into account tour heart rate reading, then the estimate may not be correct because it’s only estimating using the number of strides per minute and your weight. The heart rate reading is important because it factors exercise intensity into the estimate. Using this method will be more accurate than only using distance, weight, and speed.
The Bottom Line
Being able to track your fitness or weight loss progress is great to spur you on and keep you doing regular exercise. Before long, you could see real results just by using a treadmill as you work!
Written by Maxime
Last Updated: Aug 2nd 2020
