Nutrition Health Center

Finding the Best Exercise Calorie Counter

By Terry Dunkle*

An exercise calorie counter is a vital tool for people who are watching their weight. That’s because every minute you spend in exercise burns off calories that you can replace with eating.

The problem is that some exercise burns more calories than others. Walking may burn three calories a minute, for example, while swimming may burn four, basketball seven or eight.

This isn’t the only variable that a good exercise calorie counter must take into account. Here are five questions to ask when shopping for this important tool:

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Does your exercise calorie counter know a lot of exercises?

The best counters cover at least 500 forms of exercise, including not only running, walking, swimming, cycling, bowling, golf, tennis, and other sports, but also leisure activities such as gardening and hiking, hobbies such as playing musical instruments, and occupations such as bricklaying, carpentry, and public speaking.

Does it know your weight?

Steer clear of any exercise calorie counter that doesn’t ask your weight. Obviously, heavier people burn more calories performing an exercise than lighter people do, because they’re lifting and moving a greater mass. If you and your spouse or partner use the same counter, it shouldn’t calculate the same calorie burn for both of you unless you happen to weigh the same.

Based on 20 years of research by DietPower, Inc., this calculator is accurate to 5 percent for most users. (It's not for people who are pregnant or have metabolic disorders. Always see a doctor before starting a diet.)

Birth Date

Sex

Tobacco user?

Height

Weight

Goal Weight

Target Date

Email Address

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Close Goal Weight
Your Goal Weight is the weight you want to achieve. (If it's a lot different from your current weight, you might want to set a goal that represents only the first step. Even a 10-percent weight loss will significantly improve your health.)
Close Target Date
Plan on losing no more than a pound or two per week.  Otherwise, you may eat too little for good nutrition and your weight loss may be temporary.
Close Lactating?
If you are breastfeeding, check this box and the calculator will add calories for producing milk.
Close Tobacco User?
Nicotine speeds your metabolism, making you burn calories faster. (That's why people who quit smoking gain weight.) Check this box if you average more than one cigarette, one-half pipeful, one-quarter of a cigar, or one dip of snuff or chewing tobacco per day.
Close Email Address
Once a month, DietPower will send you the most important nutrition news of the past 30 days, selected by national award-winning editors covering hundreds of medical journals. You can cancel this free, no-obligation service anytime with a single click. We produce it only to promote our weight-loss software. It won't put you on other mailing lists—We're Not That Kind of Company™.

Does it know your speed?

The counter should also ask you how fast you went -- or alternatively, how far you went and how long it took. Faster activity burns more calories than slower.

It should factor the speed very intelligently, too. Going twice as fast may not necessarily burn twice as many calories. Bicycling, for example, burns three times as many calories at 20 miles per hour as it does at 10 miles per hour, because of the increased wind resistance at higher speed. The counter should understand and reflect such subtleties.

Does it know the temperature?

As far as I know, DietPower (advertised on this page) is the only exercise calorie counter that factors air temperature into the equation. Temperature affects not only your calorie burn, but also the amount of water lost in perspiration.

Does it know what you eat and drink?

If you’re counting calories that you burn in exercise, you probably also want to know how many calories you’ve eaten. Choose an exercise calorie counter that lets you log your foods, too. (One example is DietPower, advertised on this page.) In fact, most people find it easier to lose weight by limiting the calories they eat than by increasing the number they burn in exercise.

Founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of DietPower, Inc.