New to using HRM

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luvmyboys525
luvmyboys525 Posts: 8 Member
in Getting Started
I used my Polar FT4 for the first time today. At the end of my walk/jog, the calories burned seemed very high. Is there any math involved, or is that the number I plug into MFP?

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  • Savyna
    Savyna Posts: 789 Member
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    If you gave the polar you height, age, weight and sex, it calculates calories burned by the heart rate it tracks through your exercise. Sometimes I'll have it on and I'll have a running app at the same time going. The app will say I burned about 100+ calories more than what the HRM says. I think the HRM gives as close to an accurate reading as it possibly can. But I think some people say theres still a margin of error. It's a smaller one though from something not reading your heart rate through the entire exercise. So I go with the HRM number and add it to my exercise section on here.
  • ConicalFern
    ConicalFern Posts: 121 Member
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    Can you define high? Are you sure you put in your personal details (weight, gender etc.) correctly?
  • luvmyboys525
    luvmyboys525 Posts: 8 Member
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    I put in all of my stats...it gave a burn of 541cal in 50minutes. All of the online calculators show much lower, so now I'm a little worried of eating too many calories back.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,851 Member
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    +1 to checking your settings. Another reality-check would be to put the info you have into a walking-calorie calculator (time/distance/bodyweight, etc.), and see if you get a loosely-similar number vs. dramatically different. None of these things are *perfect*, but I find my HRM & the calculators often estimate something of the same general magnitude.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
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    Savyna wrote: »
    I think the HRM gives as close to an accurate reading as it possibly can. But I think some people say theres still a margin of error. It's a smaller one though from something not reading your heart rate through the entire exercise. So I go with the HRM number and add it to my exercise section on here.

    If your body burned 100 calories per hour when your heart rate is 100 bpm and 120 calories per hour at 120 bpm, then it would be very easy to calculate, HRMs would be dead accurate, and all HRMs would agree with each other about how many calories you've burned. But that isn't how the human body works.

    For some things (like going for a run), having heart rate data makes it possible to come up with a more accurate estimate. For other things (like weight lifting) there just isn't enough correlation between your heart rate and energy use for it to help, you might as well roll dice. (And then, interestingly enough, the most accurate way to measure calories on a bike doesn't even involve heart rate. You just need to know torque and how quickly the torque is being applied.)

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