Does being unfit burn more calories

jontywontytong
jontywontytong Posts: 33 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Me and my brother recently went on a walk together.im 1 kilo heavier than he is but much fitter both about 172 cm.we both had a Fitbit charge hr on and on our 1 hour walk his heart rate was up at 160 Bon nearly the whole walk while mine barely went over 100 Bpm.so at the end of the walk his Fitbit had him using 480 calories while mine had me using 220.i thought muscle used more calories than fat so am a bit confused why he burned more calories than me as I'm much more muscular than he is.csn anyone shed some light on this for me please

Replies

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited May 2017
    He probably did not. Heart rate isn't a perfect measure for calorie burn, and can be off when you are very unfit. For things like walking or running where the basic calculations are pretty good if you know time and distance I'd use those. (Or for you, if you are fit, the HRM should be reasonable. When I wear mine it's pretty good, but wouldn't have been when I first started.)
  • inertiastrength
    inertiastrength Posts: 2,343 Member
    Lean mass is more expensive to "run" you are right. Heart rate isn't an accurate measure of calorie burn like a pp mentioned
  • cerise_noir
    cerise_noir Posts: 5,468 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    He probably did not. Heart rate isn't a perfect measure for calorie burn, and can be off when you are very unfit. For things like walking or running where the basic calculations are pretty good if you know time and distance I'd use those. (Or for you, if you are fit, the HRM should be reasonable. When I wear mine it's pretty good, but wouldn't have been when I first started.)

    Agreed.

    Also, I'm sure you both weren't walking in complete unison or have the same stride length. Perhaps your brother had more caffeine or was more pumped for the walk. Are you the same height as him? There are too many variables.....
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    "Does being unfit burn more calories"

    No not really - a fitter person actually has the capacity to burn more calories though higher intensity or longer duration. It will feel harder to an unfit person but feelings doesn't equal energy expenditure.

    If you and a heavier person do exactly the same exercise the heavier person will burn more calories but that's because they are moving more mass over the same distance, really nothing to do with how much of that mass is muscle or fat, nothing to do with fitness levels. A reasonable estimate for walking is:
    Net Walking calories Spent = (Body weight in pounds) x (0.30) x (Distance in miles)
    Better for you to use steps than HR.

    Heartrate isn't actually a great indicator of calories expended - even for a suitable exercise like steady state exercise of a decent intensity. I've been in an indoor cycle training session where three people are all producing the same power (200 watts) and therefore burning almost the same amount of calories but with wildly differing heart rates of 130, 150 and 180 for the three of us.
    There's enormous variation from person to person all the way from resting HR through moderate intensity exercise through to maximum HR.

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