Which exercise calories do you use

[Skyerules]

I used Map My Fitness on the stationary bike this morning in order to record the work-out.  MMF calculated my work-out to 426 calories burned, but the bike recorded 135.  Which one would you think is more accurate?  I mean I would love to use the 426 lol, but.......

[Mukluk4]

If given the choice, I always take the one that is least beneficial to me (that includes higher calories for food).  

[JohnRi]

I'm afraid neither one will be all that accurate. 

Let's start with the bike.  Unless you have a mega expensive bike that allows you to enter your weight, height, gender and age, the bike is going to give you a calories burned based on a AVERAGE person riding for X number of minutes at X difficulty.  If it has a heart monitor on the bike, it will be slightly more accurate.

I don't use Map My Fitness, I did use Map My Walk, so I'm guessing similar.  It's an app on your phone, and you have your phone in a pocket?  Ok, I'm guessing, but I would think it had you enter your height, weight, age, gender, into Map My Fitness.  It's going to use the number of "steps" to figure out calories burned.  Which means it's going to be more accurate as it takes all of that into consideration.  But without a heart rate monitor it's going to be wrong too.

The issue is the faster your heart rate is the harder you are working.  The harder you are working, the more calories you burn.  So two people who are the same height, weight, age, and gender, willl burn different amounts of calories based on their fat %.  Due to a poor diet, my wife's fat % is higher than expected.  Her BMI is only 26.  Which is the bottom of the overweight range.  However her fat% puts her into the obese range.  So someone with a BMI say 28 and fat % lower than my wife, could weigh the same amount of pounds.  But put both on the same bike, and ride the same distance and time, and both would burn different amount of calories.

So the answer is Map My Fitness is probably closer to correct.

[Ukase]

Um...what does your Fitbit say? If you have a wrist-fitbit, just put it in your pocket - it will pick up your legs moving. (or keep in on your wrist if it's a Charge HR) 

But - to answer your question, I'd use the Fitbit Dashboard to log the activity - Fitbit already has your height and weight, I presume. It should calculate a caloric burn based on the amount of time you put on the bike and distance covered. 

[emili]

in my experience the machines usually overestimate calorie burn, in your case, seems to be the opposite. I would use what you know to be true. And you know which one is more accurate. If you were pedaling as if the world was ending for an extended period of time, breathing hard, sweating and feeling proudly tired than use the 400 number. If no, then use the 100. I am assuming you have done cardio before and can gauge your effort.