How many Calorie burn on elliptical?
A 160-pound person burns about 191 calories in 30 minutes on an elliptical at a moderate effort and 343 at a vigorous effort; an hour comes to 381 and 686. Our calculator works these out for your weight and time from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities.
Example: 175 lb, 30 min
208kcal burned
167 kcal from the activity itself, plus 41 kcal your body burns at rest in that time anyway.
Enter your own weight and minutes above to replace this example.
Above resting
167 kcal
What the activity adds
Per hour
417 kcal
6.9 kcal a minute at this pace
To burn off 250 kcal
45 min
Counting calories above resting
3 times a week
624 kcal
501 kcal above resting, in 1 h 30 min
| Activity | Time | Per hour | kcal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elliptical trainer, moderate effortModerate, 5.0 MET, Compendium 02048 | 30 min | 417 | 208 |
Calories = MET x 3.5 x body weight in kg / 200 x minutes, rounded for each activity. Above resting uses MET minus 1, because 1 MET is what you burn sitting still. METs from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. The Compendium counts 3.5 ml/kg/min of oxygen as the resting rate for every body. Real resting rates vary with age, sex, height, weight and body composition, so treat these figures as an estimate for a typical adult, not a measurement of your own burn.
Related calculators
What is The Elliptical Calorie Calculator and How Does It Work?
This calculator approximates the number of calories that someone burns on the elliptical machine. It also estimates calories burned per minute.
How does it do that?
Firstly, the calculator determines your metabolic rate or metabolism according to your weight.
What does that mean? Keep reading for a more detailed explanation.
If you take two people, one weighs 150 lbs and the other weighs 210 lbs, the person who weighs less will burn fewer calories during the same exact workout compared to the heavier individual.
Why is that?
A calorie is a unit of energy and a heavier person requires more energy to move their bodies or to perform activities.
Think of it like how a larger vehicle typically uses up more fuel than a smaller one. Weight affects fuel consumption (the amount of energy used).
But this also means that the heavier person expends more calories in a rested (non-exercising) state. This is also known as metabolic rate or metabolism.
The calculator uses a formula to approximate resting calories burned and then it factors in the duration and workout intensity to guesstimate calories burned.
How To Use The Elliptical Calories Burned Calculator
The elliptical calorie calculator isn’t quite as simple to use compared to a lot of our other health tools. However, it’s certainly not difficult to navigate if you keep things simple.
To ensure an easy experience for you, we’ve included step-by-step instructions in detail below.
Step 1: Enter your weight and choose lb or kg.
Step 2: Choose your effort, moderate or vigorous, and type in how many minutes you exercised.
Step 3: Press Calculate!
How Many Calories Can I Burn On The Elliptical?
The number of calories that you can burn during activity depends on a few different factors such as your weight, exercise intensity, and duration, or how long you perform the activity. Therefore, this can highly vary.
But that’s the point of this calculator. You punch in the necessary details and it’ll give you a close estimate of calories burned on the elliptical.
However, we’ve provided a few examples of how our calculator will estimate calories burned.
According to the elliptical calorie tool, a 125 lb person who exercises for 30 minutes at a moderate effort will burn 149 calories. That’s about 5.0 calories per minute.
The same person will expend 268 calories at a vigorous effort.
But let’s say a 185 lb person exercises on the elliptical for 30 minutes at a moderate effort. They will burn 220 calories. That’s estimated at 7.3 calories burned per minute.
They’d burn about 396 calories at a vigorous effort.
As you can see, how many calories you can burn on the elliptical or doing any activity for that matter, will depend on a few different factors.
There’s also been some research that’s found using the calorie counter on a lot of cardio machines overestimates calories burned by a significant amount.
When comparing the discrepancies between various cardio equipment (treadmill, stationary bike, stair climber), the elliptical was the most disappointing and by a long shot. The numbers on the monitor were overestimated by 42 percent.
This was determined from a study conducted by researchers at UC San Francisco’s Human Performance Center.
Then there was a study from 2018 that found the elliptical to overestimate by roughly 100 calories for 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise. (1)
Things like machine settings, elevation or incline, resistance level, form, machine design, quality, and machine age/wear and tear can affect the accuracy of measurement.
Our calculator is designed to provide a reasonable estimate of energy expenditure during elliptical activity.
Related: Elliptical Training Guide – Benefits, Drawbacks, Dos and Don’ts
Can The Elliptical Help Me To Lose A Lot of Weight?
The elliptical is a great low-impact cardio activity that can certainly contribute to the weight loss process.
But how much weight you lose really and truly depends on your overall habits and approach to your goals.
As long as you create a calorie deficit, and do it the healthy and proper way, you can lose weight. But many decide to go about it the wrong way. They’ll eat almost nothing and exercise for hours in an effort to shed fat pounds.
This is a good way to be unhealthy and do damage that will impede your body’s ability to make progress anyway (an unhealthy body won’t function to the best of its ability). So you might as well do it in a sustainable way.
You want to determine your maintenance calories, and then reduce your calorie intake, exercise more, or do a combination of the two.
Use our weight loss calculator to determine the number of calories you should be taking in to lose weight.
If you also weight train and want to maximize muscle gain and muscle maintenance as you knock off the body fat, our macronutrient calculator is a very useful tool.
It’ll recommend an ideal protein, carbohydrates, and fat intake for you.
Read also: The Top 20 Simple Weight Loss Tips
How Many Calories Does The Elliptical Burn Compared To Other Forms of Cardio?
As mentioned, there are many different variables that determine the number of calories burned between the different forms of cardio activity. Weight, intensity/pace, and duration are the biggest factors.
Although, as an example, there is a study from 2010 that compared calorie expenditure between the elliptical and treadmill, another very popular cardio machine. Researchers found similar calories burned when volunteers did both forms of exercise at the same perceived level of exertion (2).
Although, heart rate was higher during elliptical exercise.
But it’s important to note that this is just one study and again, variables determine calories burned.
If you’d like to compare estimates of calories burned during various activities, we offer a free calculator that includes a database of over 250 different exercises and activities.
Other calorie calculators
Also be sure to try out our other calorie-based calculators below.
- Body Mass Index (BMI) Calculator
- Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) Calculator
- Calories burned during over 250 activities
Get Your Cardio On!
Use the elliptical calorie calculator to estimate energy expenditure after your cardio training sessions.
Whether you’re looking to shed some pounds or improve your cardiovascular endurance and conditioning, the elliptical is here to stay.
