Is this for real??

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snelfk
snelfk Posts: 151 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I received a Polar F11 HRM for Mother's Day - they even let me pick it out myself. Anyway I wore it today while I cleaned houes. The normal weekly cleaning, kitchen, bathrrom, dusting, vacuum and mop. It reported that in the 1 hour and 51 min. I worked, I used 893 cals! Can this be correct?? If it is, I have been seriously under reporting my cleaning day cals, and I'm sort of affraid to wear it tomorrow on my bike ride - I don't know if I can eat that many more caloiries!!

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  • snelfk
    snelfk Posts: 151 Member
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    I received a Polar F11 HRM for Mother's Day - they even let me pick it out myself. Anyway I wore it today while I cleaned houes. The normal weekly cleaning, kitchen, bathrrom, dusting, vacuum and mop. It reported that in the 1 hour and 51 min. I worked, I used 893 cals! Can this be correct?? If it is, I have been seriously under reporting my cleaning day cals, and I'm sort of affraid to wear it tomorrow on my bike ride - I don't know if I can eat that many more caloiries!!
  • lotusfromthemud
    lotusfromthemud Posts: 5,335 Member
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    As long as you've done your settings correctly, this is probably accurate. Especially, if you clean vigorously. In my pretty sedate hour of housecleaning, I average 250 calories. Fear not, just get to eating.
    :flowerforyou:
  • snelfk
    snelfk Posts: 151 Member
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    I believe I did the settinga correctly, age, weight etc - then did the 5 minutes resting test. DId I forget something...
  • lotusfromthemud
    lotusfromthemud Posts: 5,335 Member
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    Nope, it sounds like you did everything correctly. Bear in mind that this might not be your burn every time. I've noticed that depending on how my body/energy levels are doing on a given day, what seemed to be like the "same" workout or tasks varies pretty greatly, by as much as several hundred calories.
  • lizard9800
    lizard9800 Posts: 474 Member
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    Just a reminder (and this topic has been discussed back and forth several times with no definitive answer) that in MY mind you need to make sure to subtract your BMR calories from your workout calories. If your BMR is say 1425 like mine, that means I burn about 60 cals per hour doing absolutely nothing. When I workout for an hour I subtract 60 cals from the Polar calories calculated because I would have burned that anyway. Others don't subtract BMR and still have good results. Polar gave some of us very confusing answers about it which didn't help. I just like to opt for the low end of cals so I don't go over.
    You will love your Polar though. I don't know when the last time I worked out without it.
  • snelfk
    snelfk Posts: 151 Member
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    lizard, when I looked at the numbers with what you said about subtracting my BMR (daily divided by 24), the numbers were a lot closer to what MFP lists. No matter what, I'm only counting half of the cleaning cals, but I'll see what happens with the rest as I use my Polar more.
  • strongmom
    strongmom Posts: 72
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    Hey, that monitor sounds cool. I want one!!! I didn't know you could figure calories burned from a HRM...I have alot to learn about, I love gadgets too....
  • snelfk
    snelfk Posts: 151 Member
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    okay, so I thought about this some more... Subtracting your BMR, like in lizards example of 60, only works if your workout interval is an hour. When I did the calculations for the actual minutes I had worked, the numbers were still a lot higher than MFP. Guess I'll just monitor it this weeks and see what works fo me...
  • songbyrdsweet
    songbyrdsweet Posts: 5,691 Member
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    okay, so I thought about this some more... Subtracting your BMR, like in lizards example of 60, only works if your workout interval is an hour. When I did the calculations for the actual minutes I had worked, the numbers were still a lot higher than MFP. Guess I'll just monitor it this weeks and see what works fo me...

    It works no matter how long you work out for. I always subtract my BMR calories, and I never work out for just 60 minutes. I just use decimals for values less than an hour.
    For instance:

    My BMR is 1240, so I burn 53 calories per hour. If I work out for 1 hr 20 min, I calculate that as 1.33 hours. I multiply 53 x 1.33 = ~70. So if I burn 600 calories in that time frame, I only count 530 (600-70). MFP is a VERY rough estimate just based on averages of the population of people with your height and weight. Your monitor is much more accurate, so you should use those values instead of MFP.
  • snelfk
    snelfk Posts: 151 Member
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    It works no matter how long you work out for. I always subtract my BMR calories, and I never work out for just 60 minutes. I just use decimals for values less than an hour.

    I know I can calculate the intervals less than an hour, but what I meant that was when I did do the numbers, they weren't any closer to what MFP gives.

    So you suggest using they calorie count that my HRM gives me, minus my BMR (calculated of course) for the best value of my exercise calories?

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