For those with activity trackers.....

sdavis484

What does your tracker say is your resting heart rate? Do you feel like it's accurate?

sdavis484

My resting heart rate is 57. I never measured that low with a polar chest strap but I did know I have quite a low hr.

Courtscan2

Mine is usually around 58-59 according to my Fitbit. It's generally around that when I've had it taken at the doctors as well, so seems accurate enough. It seems to lose the reading altogether sometimes when I get sweaty/overly active, and I've had runs where my heart was absolutely hammering, and it registered the top reading at 110. If I was overly interested, I'd probably get a chest strap for workouts, but I have only a very passing interest.

amusedmonkey

Mine doesn't have heart rate, but it's normal to not get a low reading with a chest strap unless you are actually using it at rest. The act of standing up and putting it on increases heart rate so you get an inflated number. If you want to test your resting heart rate with the strap wear it and forget it while resting, then check the reading later.

hookandy

I am sat at my desk, and have been for about half an hour
Fitbit says Heartrate about 60; Matches finger and clock, dont see why this would differ first thing in the morning

I am fairly happy it is accurate.

ruqayyahsmum

Depends for me

Used to be over 100 and often closer to 120 at rest when I was at my biggest

Usually now it's between 60-65 if I'm eating right and exercising, drifts up 10 beats if I've slackened off for a few weeks

Other times my resting heart rate goes back to the 120 at rest is if I'm in pain or having a hypo

I now if I'm not feeling right look at my heart rate. If it's normal resting rate then I don't worry, if it's high I know I'm heading for a hypo and grab a little snack

janejellyroll

It's usually in the high 40s to low 50s. Based on the manual readings taken during medical checkups, I feel like this is reasonably accurate.

NovusDies

My AW has me at 50. My BP cuff often has me at 53.

Both have been coming down slightly in the last 60 days. I was routinely 55-57 on both.

Joanna2012B

Mine is low 50's. I feel it is very accurate as I check it manually sometimes and compare.

AnnPT77

My resting heart rate (RHR) varies a lot, because my exercise levels vary seasonally, and (absent health problems of certain specific types) a dropping heart rate implies improving cardiovascular fitness. It can be down in the upper 40s/low 50s in Summer (my more active season), and get up into the mid/upper 50s in Winter. It will go up from there for an individual day if I eat above maintenance, or drink alcohol (also normal). I've literally set off the bradycardia (low heart rate) alarm when in prep for out-patient surgery, even before any sedation, because my HR kept dropping below 50. (My surgeon was excited in a good way, saying this was "fitness induced bradycardia" and a positive thing.)

I'm age 64, and active, in case that matters.

Before I had a tracker, I used to do first thing in the morning checks of RHR on days when I woke up without an alarm clock. (This is the type/time of measurements that folks used to use for fitness-related benchmarking.)

That way of measuring usually produced a slightly lower number than my tracker does. I'm not sure exactly what the tracker is doing to calculate resting rate, but I can literally look at my tracker-related app when it has just updated from my watch, and see an in-the-moment heart rate that's several BPM lower than the resting rate estimate that's displayed right next to it.

I do think that my tracker measures my heart rate reasonably accurately, under most conditions. I've compared its in-the-moment reading to the readings from doctors-office devices. I have a long (decade plus) history of using a chest-belt Polar HRM for exercise tracking, and my exercise values at very well-metered power output (Concept 2 rowing machine) are very consistent between tracker and Polar for near-identical workouts.

There's one caveat to that: For certain exercise activities that involve lots of arm flexing (rowing is one), I've found that the wrist-based HRM will lose connection sometimes, and produce inaccurate results. This is very obvious from looking at the HR graphs afterward: There's an obvious giant drop in HR that doesn't track with exercise intensity, or RPE (rate of perceived exertion, i.e., the way I feel at a particular intensity, a thing I have pretty long experience with). So, I make it a point to wear a linked chest belt for types of exercise that involve a lot of arm flexing. (What I said above about comparing workouts is from wrist-based readings where I forgot the chest belt, but lucked out and didn't get any obvious disconnects.)

I do have about the most favorable situation possible for a wrist-based HRM reading to be reasonable: I'm pale-skinned, not huge amounts of arm hair or moles/freckles in the relevant spot, don't have unusual heart conditions, etc.

The highness or lowness of resting rate is not really a clear indicator of your "metabolism". Statistically, fitter people tend to have lower RHR, but higher BMR/RMR (basal metabolic rate/resting metabolic rate) primarily because their body weight has a higher fraction of muscle (more metabolically active, by about 2 calories per pound per day) than fat, at any given body weight. Beyond that sort of thing that may be relevant in population averages, a lot of RHR is just genetics, and still may or may not say anything about "metabolism" (RMR/BMR).

diets_and_daiquiris

Mines normally around the low 60s..... Never thought to question that until now 😂

WinoGelato

I’m sitting at my desk at work and have been for about 2.5 hours and my FitBit Versa says HR is 68 right now. The 30 day trend says imminent averages around 70? That’s high compared to some of you!

janejellyroll

WinoGelato wrote: »

I’m sitting at my desk at work and have been for about 2.5 hours and my FitBit Versa says HR is 68 right now. The 30 day trend says imminent averages around 70? That’s high compared to some of you!

You're working harder!

cwolfman13

Average over the past month has been 60

PAV8888

I've noticed the same thing as Anne re tracker testing HR being higher than first thing in the morning lying in bed.

That said, to me it is a useful metric for me as I am not a super exerciser improving my conditioning.

63-66 usually means my weight trend is going to be relatively flat. Over 66 I expect an upward trend. Below 63 we are going down!

You can say that too many cookies literally increase my resting heart rate!

(OK, other issues such as impending illness will increase heart rate, so will stress. And yes a few extra hikes might drop a point. For some reason Fitbit claims my cardiovascular state is excellent at 51. I believe it is a VO2 Max estimate based on extremely submaximal, in my case, exercise)

I've also met people who have lived a long and relatively healthy life with resting HRs in the 80s

MelanieCN77

Average over time is 49 according to a couple of years of Apple Watch tracking.

magnusthenerd

True resting heart rate is supposed to be the rate just before waking, so a device worn overnight is going to be one of the most accurate. It might not represent, though, what your heart rate goes to when you are in a relaxed state at other times.
I've found changes in my RHR the most interesting, more than the actual single day's limit. It seems like when I'm catching an illness, the RHR goes up. I'd need to screen the data better, but it might actually help predict it.
When I initially lost weight, my RHR was more aware of how lean I was getting than I was. When I looked back at my data for a month or two before hitting single digit body fat, my RHR was dipping into the high 30s (37-39). That should have been a sign that I was leaner than I was using as my basis for setting weight loss goals.

shaf238

I'm not sure how accurate it is but I'd like to think that it's accurate in terms of trend. If it says I'm at 60 and then over the period of 2 months it goes to slowly to 55 for example, while that may not be my exact resting heart rate I want to think that it's heading in the right direction.

drmwc

Mine claims 48. That ballpark tied up with my Polar chest strap, which I've managed to lose. I don't understand the Fitbit algorithm for determining this - my rate is below this fairly frequently.

Fflpnari

40-50 range. If Im eating healthier it will be 40 If I overeat for several days it will be around 50. I check my HR manually and its pretty accurate

YellowD0gs

My very new Garmin Vivosmart 4 says 58 (after 3 days of measuring). That's pretty close based on a couple of other measuring tools. Today on the treadmill though...no way was I clicking at 158 for 30 minutes! None. More like 105-ish tops.