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August 25th, 2012

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WHY IS IT SO HARD TO COUNT CALORIES?

Image via WIRED

I’m not much of a calorie counter. Even though the idea is shoved into my brain ten times a day (the counter on the treadmill, the labels on the side of my Gatorade, my own belly flab), it just feels like a load of crap to me. And it turns out, I might be right.

When it comes to “wearable” fitness tracking devices, some personal trainers will swear by them. That heart rate monitor may help you push yourself to work harder, but it’s not going to give you the same calorie count as your Nike+ or your iPhone or your FitBit. Fitness trackers use everything from step counts to sweat rate to heart rate to calculate calorie loss. And unfortunately, each of their calculations may be off as many as 150 calories or more.

The only way to get a totally reliable reading? A calorimeter device. It uses a facemask or a mouthpiece to analyze oxygen consumption and costs a cool $40,000. I’ll just stick to my no-counting strategy for now.

Read more about fitness trackers at WIRED’s Playbook.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                -Adventure Capitalist