Heart rate monitors/calorie burn
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sarahlucindac
Posts: 235 Member
What (if any) kind of heart rate monitors do you guys use for calorie burn estimation? I just read an article on MFP that points out the flaws in heart rate monitors - they can’t be very accurate because they don’t take into account your max heart rate and your oxygen uptake (VO2). I know some devices are more sophisticated and attempt to take everything into account (the items mentioned above as well as your gender, height, weight, etc). Any suggestions on models to look at?
I am 5’6” 190 lbs, down from 200 lbs 6 weeks ago. I keep my calories basically in check but I also hike pretty hard several times a week. Yesterday I did a 6.6 mile hike (took me 2 and a half hours) and MFP says I burned around 1400 calories. I ate about 1900 calories yesterday because I was famished after my hike but my daily calorie goal is 1200. Did I just ruin my diet by eating so much? I’m trying to listen to my body’s needs. It would be great if I had a device that could help me sort out how many calories I’m actually burning with these long hikes. Thanks in advance for the advice!
I am 5’6” 190 lbs, down from 200 lbs 6 weeks ago. I keep my calories basically in check but I also hike pretty hard several times a week. Yesterday I did a 6.6 mile hike (took me 2 and a half hours) and MFP says I burned around 1400 calories. I ate about 1900 calories yesterday because I was famished after my hike but my daily calorie goal is 1200. Did I just ruin my diet by eating so much? I’m trying to listen to my body’s needs. It would be great if I had a device that could help me sort out how many calories I’m actually burning with these long hikes. Thanks in advance for the advice!
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Replies
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sarahlucindac wrote: ». It would be great if I had a device that could help me sort out how many calories I’m actually burning with these long hikes. Thanks in advance for the advice!
That would be a GPS, not an HRM.
Garmin and Suunto are best for hiking activities.1 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »What (if any) kind of heart rate monitors do you guys use for calorie burn estimation? I just read an article on MFP that points out the flaws in heart rate monitors - they can’t be very accurate because they don’t take into account your max heart rate and your oxygen uptake (VO2). I know some devices are more sophisticated and attempt to take everything into account (the items mentioned above as well as your gender, height, weight, etc). Any suggestions on models to look at?
I am 5’6” 190 lbs, down from 200 lbs 6 weeks ago. I keep my calories basically in check but I also hike pretty hard several times a week. Yesterday I did a 6.6 mile hike (took me 2 and a half hours) and MFP says I burned around 1400 calories. I ate about 1900 calories yesterday because I was famished after my hike but my daily calorie goal is 1200. Did I just ruin my diet by eating so much? I’m trying to listen to my body’s needs. It would be great if I had a device that could help me sort out how many calories I’m actually burning with these long hikes. Thanks in advance for the advice!
Your goal is 1200 calories because that's the lowest MFP will allow.
My guess is you have too aggressive of a goal and you need to lower it.
What did you put as your rate of loss? 1lb/week? 2lb/week?2 -
It’s actually 1240, my goal is set to 1.5 lbs per week0
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I use a Fitbit to adjust my calories and I've been very happy with it. As long as you're paying attention to your real-life results and making adjustments based on that, I think you can use a variety of devices (or even no device at all!) and be successful. My specific model is the Charge HR 2.2
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sarahlucindac wrote: »It’s actually 1240, my goal is set to 1.5 lbs per week
I would set it to 1 lb/week as you are only 40 calories over the bare minimum you should be eating.
Make sure you are eating back your exercise calories.
You do not have to eat them all back.
Most people eat back 50-70%, but that's completely up to you.
We all want to lose as much as possible as fast as possible, but slow and steady wins this race
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I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?0
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And thank you for the advice!!0
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sarahlucindac wrote: »I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?
No, larger isn't always better. Your body can only burn a certain amount of fat per day so if you already have an aggressive deficit (which you do), making it larger will result in unnecessary muscle loss. You need to fuel your activity.
Plus, many people feel better and more energetic with a reasonable deficit.5 -
Pretty much everything associated with calorie counting is going to be trial and error, so consistency is key - pick a method that makes sense to you, stick with it for at least a month, and adjust based on your results. The current fitness trackers are all fairly accurate for steady-state cardio, less accurate for other types of activities. But it's all an estimate. If you're consistent, you'll be fine. Many people here start with MFP's burn numbers and then "eat back" a percentage to start off. I use an Apple Watch 3 (and before that a Fitbit Charge HR) and its numbers have worked well for me.
As for "ruining" your diet, it's time to stop thinking like that! The only way to ruin the weight loss process is to give up, and a great way to discourage yourself is to think in black and white terms. If you're set to lose a pound and a half a week, that means your daily deficit target is 750 calories (750 calories x 7 days = 5250 calories / 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat = 1.5 pounds lost). That means that, if MFP's numbers are accurate for you (again, it's all estimates and you may need to adjust), you can eat 750 calories more than your goal every single day PLUS all of your exercise calories before you gain any fat at all. You won't lose weight, but you won't gain either.
You're right at the beginning, so you're going to goof stuff up - don't worry about it! We were all there once. I started at 208 pounds in January 2016 and am down to 154 as of today. It took me about three months of struggling in the beginning to get my tracking to something that worked for me, but once it clicks, it will feel fantastic. Good luck - you can do this!5 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?
Not necessarily. Your body can run just fine on a moderate deficit, but you can only oxidize so much fat in a given time frame...after that, your body will slow down or cease all together "non-essential" functions to become more efficient and burn less calories, essentially lowering your BMR to compensate for a huge lack of energy coming in...that's what calories are...they are a unit of energy and your body needs a lot of energy just to keep you existing and functioning optimally.
These "non-essential" functions are things like growing hair and nails, maintaining nice skin, menstrual cycle, etc. You will also burn a higher ratio of muscle to fat than you otherwise would.2 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?
and to add to all the other great answers you've already received, it also allows you room for some of the foods/drinks you might not otherwise be able to fit into a lower calorie goal, which can lead you to feeling restricted, anti-social and make you want to quit and binge. If you want this to be a lifestyle change rather than a temporary measure, set yourself up for success by making it work it around life.2 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?
Not necessarily. Your body can run just fine on a moderate deficit, but you can only oxidize so much fat in a given time frame...after that, your body will slow down or cease all together "non-essential" functions to become more efficient and burn less calories, essentially lowering your BMR to compensate for a huge lack of energy coming in...that's what calories are...they are a unit of energy and your body needs a lot of energy just to keep you existing and functioning optimally.
These "non-essential" functions are things like growing hair and nails, maintaining nice skin, menstrual cycle, etc. You will also burn a higher ratio of muscle to fat than you otherwise would.
If maintaining your hair and nails isn't enough incentive, think about why you're losing weight. Do you want to be healthier? Look better with your clothes off? Do you want to maintain your loss long-term? If the answer to any of those is yes, it's in your best interest to lose at a moderate pace. I dislike the obsession with being "skinny fat", but it is true that if you lose weight too quickly and don't exercise (especially strength training) and keep your protein numbers up, you aren't likely to be happy with the way you look or feel at the end of the process. Not to mention that this assumes you make it to your goal in the first place - too many diets fail because people go too hard out of the gate and can't maintain that rate of loss for the amount of time necessary. Instead of just backing off, a lot of them give up. Which like I said above, is really the only way to fail.4 -
janejellyroll wrote: »As long as you're paying attention to your real-life results and making adjustments based on that, I think you can use a variety of devices (or even no device at all!) and be successful.
As usual, Jane puts out some really good advice here. I put in a bunch of research into buying a heart rate monitor a few years ago and settled on a Polar H7 (I think there's a newer model out now, H10, perhaps?). The TL;DR from below is that it wasn't nearly as accurate as I thought it to be but that's not to say there isn't value in having one and/or utilizing some form of activity tracking. I support the typical recommendation of starting with eating back 50% of exercise calories and adjusting appropriately based on observed weight change.
Long story, long: I was stoked when I got it and used it connected with the UA Record app, which syncs with MFP very readily since it's all under the Under Armour umbrella. In the winter of 2016 I had to take time away from working out due to a back injury, at the same time my wife was on crutches for a running injury so we basically hibernated from Thanksgiving until New Years' and it showed on the scale and in the mirror. I started 2017 on the warpath to really take my physique to the next level. Re-doing all my math, I'd used the 10x-bodyweight approximation for my base calories to lose 1lb/week (read it somewhere) and planned to eat that plus whatever my shiny, new, and highly accurate (allegedly) heart rate monitor gave me from my workouts, thinking I'd still be at my 500 calorie/ 1lb per week deficit. I started 2017 at 179.4 lbs and approximately 15% body fat; as a 6'1" male, this is a "healthy weight" so I wasn't expecting fat loss at a blistering pace. My heart rate monitor was giving me 600-800 calories per workout, 3-4 times per week. so I was eating around 1800 on non-workout days and 2400+ on lifting days. My lifting number were great and it was good to be back in the gym, but my weight was barely moving. I spun my wheels like this for months, come July 17th, I weighed in at 179.2lbs and I was finally fed up. I should've realized something was off and I needed to readjust far sooner. I found a spreadsheet on reddit that back calculates TDEE from daily calories and weight fluctuations; I now have 38 weeks of data and my TDEE averages out to right at 2400 calories/day. If you normalize the for the days a workout and compare to my calculated sedentary TDEE of 2200, my workouts only account for an extra 467 calories. Between that overestimation of workout expenditure and incomplete logging (upon review I was terrible about logging on weekends) I saw what I had to do was two-fold; reduce the amount of calories I was attributing to my workouts, and drastically improve the accuracy of my logging. I'm currently on a 275+ day logging streak and my obsessive use of our food scale will inevitably be the center of marital counseling at some point. I was down 10 lbs from late-July to mid-January, I've upped my calories some since then and have gained 3-4lbs intentionally to add back some more size before running another cut before summer begins, and I feel I have a much better idea of my actual TDEE now.2 -
I just bought. A Garmin Fenix for this purpose and I love it!0
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sarahlucindac wrote: »I’m new to this, so please excuse my dumb questions haha. Why should I eat back so many of my exercise calories? Isn’t it good to have a larger calorie deficit at the end of the day?
Because My Fitness Pal gave you a calorie goal before exercise.
Large deficits make it harder for you body to support existing lean muscle mass. If you want a lower body fat %, you want a moderate deficit.
Eating calories back is like fueling your workouts. But calorie burns are estimates (as you found out)....so coming up with the % to eat back takes time.2 -
Thanks a bunch, that makes sense.0
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janejellyroll wrote: »As long as you're paying attention to your real-life results and making adjustments based on that, I think you can use a variety of devices (or even no device at all!) and be successful.
As usual, Jane puts out some really good advice here. I put in a bunch of research into buying a heart rate monitor a few years ago and settled on a Polar H7 (I think there's a newer model out now, H10, perhaps?). The TL;DR from below is that it wasn't nearly as accurate as I thought it to be but that's not to say there isn't value in having one and/or utilizing some form of activity tracking. I support the typical recommendation of starting with eating back 50% of exercise calories and adjusting appropriately based on observed weight change.
Long story, long: I was stoked when I got it and used it connected with the UA Record app, which syncs with MFP very readily since it's all under the Under Armour umbrella. In the winter of 2016 I had to take time away from working out due to a back injury, at the same time my wife was on crutches for a running injury so we basically hibernated from Thanksgiving until New Years' and it showed on the scale and in the mirror. I started 2017 on the warpath to really take my physique to the next level. Re-doing all my math, I'd used the 10x-bodyweight approximation for my base calories to lose 1lb/week (read it somewhere) and planned to eat that plus whatever my shiny, new, and highly accurate (allegedly) heart rate monitor gave me from my workouts, thinking I'd still be at my 500 calorie/ 1lb per week deficit. I started 2017 at 179.4 lbs and approximately 15% body fat; as a 6'1" male, this is a "healthy weight" so I wasn't expecting fat loss at a blistering pace. My heart rate monitor was giving me 600-800 calories per workout, 3-4 times per week. so I was eating around 1800 on non-workout days and 2400+ on lifting days. My lifting number were great and it was good to be back in the gym, but my weight was barely moving. I spun my wheels like this for months, come July 17th, I weighed in at 179.2lbs and I was finally fed up. I should've realized something was off and I needed to readjust far sooner. I found a spreadsheet on reddit that back calculates TDEE from daily calories and weight fluctuations; I now have 38 weeks of data and my TDEE averages out to right at 2400 calories/day. If you normalize the for the days a workout and compare to my calculated sedentary TDEE of 2200, my workouts only account for an extra 467 calories. Between that overestimation of workout expenditure and incomplete logging (upon review I was terrible about logging on weekends) I saw what I had to do was two-fold; reduce the amount of calories I was attributing to my workouts, and drastically improve the accuracy of my logging. I'm currently on a 275+ day logging streak and my obsessive use of our food scale will inevitably be the center of marital counseling at some point. I was down 10 lbs from late-July to mid-January, I've upped my calories some since then and have gained 3-4lbs intentionally to add back some more size before running another cut before summer begins, and I feel I have a much better idea of my actual TDEE now.
It would appear that, via trial and error and data analysis, you have come up with a calorie burn for your lifting workouts that is in the ballpark with what I have read in research studies.
Unfortunately, HRMs are often worse than useless at tracking calorie burns for lifting. Lifting results in an exaggerated HR response that is unrelated to calorie burn. The HRM doesn’t know this, so it counts the elevated HR as though you were running.
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If you are actually moving for example walking or running then it is really your weight * distance that will determine your calorie burn and nothing to do with your heart rate. I couldn't find the link that someone posted for a calculator recently but this one has a formula of 0.3*body weight per mile so if 100 pounds you would have burned around 200 calories. Terrain and elevation will have a bearing as well though.
https://www.runnersworld.com/weight-loss/how-many-calories-are-you-really-burning0 -
HRM’s are best when you’re doing steady state cardio - which is exactly what you’re doing, so all good there.
As for what device, I can only go on my experience which is Garmin’s. The wrist based HRM I have now is of similar accuracy to their chest strap, albeit with the same issues anyone has with a wrist based HRM (ie your wrist moves). As for the device, I love it (Fenix), it’s easy to use and lasts forever on a charge. GPS is great and quick at starting up. Garmin Connect is continually improving and I’ve only had one issue with it syncing to MFP.0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »I use a Fitbit to adjust my calories and I've been very happy with it. As long as you're paying attention to your real-life results and making adjustments based on that, I think you can use a variety of devices (or even no device at all!) and be successful. My specific model is the Charge HR 2.
I have a Polar I used for awhile, but I don't like the band around me. I've been looking at Fitbits, but I think using something online to figure my mileage per hour walking, then the ball-park calories burned is close enough. I still would kind of like to know my numbers according to my own bod, but the fitbits I've seen online are pretty high-priced, 148.00 I think I saw on Amazon.
Anyway, it's good to know someone likes theirs, and you are so right about watching real-life results;) Denise0
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