How accurate do you think this is?

proudjmmom

I went for a hike this morning, up over some hills/mountains. There was a lot of climbing, uphill walking, rough terrain and if it makes any difference against high winds. The entire hike took 3 hours to complete. I wear a Polar FT4, and the number of cals I burned according to it seems insane! It says I was in the "In Zone" for 2h 1m, Average HR was 144, with a Maximum of 183. It gave me a total calorie burn of 1402! My stats are 29, female, 5'2", and current weight 130lbs.

I never eat back 100% of the cal burn my HRM tells me, I leave room for error. But just curious does that sound like in insane amount of cals for a 3 hour hike? Just gauging how much I should eat back. Thanks!

JNick77

I went for a hike this morning, up over some hills/mountains. There was a lot of climbing, uphill walking, rough terrain and if it makes any difference against high winds. The entire hike took 3 hours to complete. I wear a Polar FT4, and the number of cals I burned according to it seems insane! It says I was in the "In Zone" for 2h 1m, Average HR was 144, with a Maximum of 183. It gave me a total calorie burn of 1402! My stats are 29, female, 5'2", and current weight 130lbs.

I never eat back 100% of the cal burn my HRM tells me, I leave room for error. But just curious does that sound like in insane amount of cals for a 3 hour hike? Just gauging how much I should eat back. Thanks!

I think if you have to question the accuracy of something then you have to question why you're using it in the first place. It's fairly well known that HRM's are not as accurate as advertised / assumed. The best bet is to use BMR or TDEE and not worry about MFP's calculations and the concept of eating back "burned" calories or adjusting for "burned" calories.

firstsip

More or less, it's probably not that far off. 3 hours of consistent any exercise is bound to give you a higher number, because you're doing more and keeping your heart elevated more.

I always round down from HRM roughly 25% to be safe, but you did a lot of activity in one-go: it makes sense to burn over 1000.

ndj1979

I went for a hike this morning, up over some hills/mountains. There was a lot of climbing, uphill walking, rough terrain and if it makes any difference against high winds. The entire hike took 3 hours to complete. I wear a Polar FT4, and the number of cals I burned according to it seems insane! It says I was in the "In Zone" for 2h 1m, Average HR was 144, with a Maximum of 183. It gave me a total calorie burn of 1402! My stats are 29, female, 5'2", and current weight 130lbs.

I never eat back 100% of the cal burn my HRM tells me, I leave room for error. But just curious does that sound like in insane amount of cals for a 3 hour hike? Just gauging how much I should eat back. Thanks!

I think if you have to question the accuracy of something then you have to question why you're using it in the first place. It's fairly well known that HRM's are not as accurate as advertised / assumed. The best bet is to use BMR or TDEE and not worry about MFP's calculations and the concept of eating back "burned" calories or adjusting for "burned" calories.

I would go with this ..

I never enter my exercise into MFP ...

Holly_Roman_Empire

For a three hour hike, I think that's fairly accurate. I used to do a fair amount of hiking through mountains when I lived in Hawaii and I had similar burns.

erickirb

Its probably some what good. That said it will give you total cals burned, including what you would have burned at rest over those 3 hours or so.

So if your maintenance cals give you say 1.25 cals/minute (1800/day), then in that 3 hours you would have burned 225 of those cals had you not done the hike. So the amount you should enter into MFP would be 1177 (1402-225) assuming the HRM is accurate, which most are in the 75-90% accuracy range.

Chieflrg

Also depends on your weight as well as the temperature outside. If its warmer you heart rate goes up in attempt to cool you off. Your not necessarily burning more calories though.

I use a Polar4. I'm 6'3", 215lbs, 44 year old.

When I stomp out a half marathon in a couple hours it gives me a reading around 1850-2000 calories in 60's temp and 1900-2200 in above 80's. My heart rate average isn't much higher than yours, I think around 150s so I would think your about right assuming you weigh less than me.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1105383-some1-that-has-had-cancer-would-like-share-a-run-with-me-2

proudjmmom

Thank you very much, this helps a lot.

Mr_Knight

I went for a hike this morning, up over some hills/mountains. There was a lot of climbing, uphill walking, rough terrain and if it makes any difference against high winds. The entire hike took 3 hours to complete. I wear a Polar FT4, and the number of cals I burned according to it seems insane! It says I was in the "In Zone" for 2h 1m, Average HR was 144, with a Maximum of 183. It gave me a total calorie burn of 1402! My stats are 29, female, 5'2", and current weight 130lbs.

How far did you walk? That will be the single biggest determinant. If we're talking about, say, 10 miles round trip, you're looking at about 400-600 net calories burned.