General ? abt exercise and HRM

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popcorn7225
popcorn7225 Posts: 29 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm sorry if this has been asked previously. I'm new here.

I wear a HRM daily for workouts. I'm trying to get a true feel for what I'm actually burning.

I did a test of my resting HR and found that I burn approx 120 cal an hr just sitting at my desk working. My workout is typically 500 cal an hour. While I really don't eat back my exercise calories I like to know they are there.

My question is to get a truly accurate reading should I be entering 380 (500-120)per hour on my diary or should I log the full 500? I feel like if I'm burning 120 doing nothing I should not count that as part of the "workout"

Secondly during a workout my top heart rate is approx 156 and my average HR is 151 BUT I'm only exercising "in the zone" for approx 15 min each workout session. Does this sound right?

TIA for any assistance.

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  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
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    HRMs are only near accurate for steady state cardio activity. Trying to use it for calorie calculation sitting around all day simply does not work. 120 * 24 = 2880 .... a bit inflated.

    If you should subtract your resting metabolic rate (well, daily RMR divided by duration of activity) really depends on your HRM. Most report gross, not net from exercise, calories.

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