Estimating calories

dogdaze

I see advertisements for activity monitors (but they are costly) and lots of references on this site for using heart rate monitors for estimating calories. My pedometer does provide a calories burned estimate (which seems conservative versus the exercise database on MFP). How do these things compare and how accurate are they anyway?

MzBug

Pedometers only count how many times your foot hits the ground basically. Some of them you can input the length of your stride and it will estimate the distance traveled. Any information your pedometer gives for calories burned I would take with a big grain of salt. Check multiple web sites and compare the information, then use the average. MFP is sometimes way off on calorie expenditure information.

Amarillo_NDN

There is nothing, I repeat nothing you can buy that is 100% accurate.

Some will be over and some under. Main reason is because a lot of them go with "Avg" and we are all different in lots of ways.

My best advice for you is to pick what you enjoy or what motivates you. For me, it my GPS watch and my IPhone. It is always better to under estimate how many calories you burn and over estimate how many calories you eat. That way it will actually help you lose.

dogdaze

Thanks for the replies. I can see that the pedometer might be inaccurate but my Omron is more than a step counter since it will calculate distance and the calorie function seems to take speed into account (it will register more calories for a mile walked in 15 minutes than it does for a mile walked in 25 minutes).

What about heart rate monitors for measuring calories?