HRM ?-calories burned

heatherfrancis

(I am pretty fit and have been exercising religously for over 2 years straight , but could use a little advice on these gadgets and calorie counting since i have never really worried about calories until now...)

I recently bought a cheaper HRM with the strap from Walmart.com after looking through the reviews. The reviews looked pretty good for the money so I bought it. My biggest concern is the calorie burned reading... I used my new HRM during my half marathon training today which was a 4 miler that was run in 11 min miles. When I got done with that it said I had burned right at 300 calories or so. My treadmill said 650ish. They seem really far apart and I also know that you usually burn 100 calories a mile. So that being said I should have atleast burned 400 calories...My watch has the option to set it up to set your low HR and your Max HR for walking, jogging and running. I have each one set up, but am not sure if I am putting my max too high and thats why I am not burning the calories because during this run, my max HR gets up to 165ish but when I am sprinting it can get a little higher. This morning I had my max set at 193 and of course I never got much higher then 170. Does anyone have any knowledge on this.

Also, I have a desk job and sit most of the day, so I decided to wear my moniter to work. It usually wont show any calories burned unless I get up and raise my heart rate a little, so I was wondering if I should count the calories on MFP as exercise or not. Example I get to work at 8ish and leave around 5ish, it is 3:43 now and it says I have only burned 79 calories today- mostly because I did a few bursts of quick exercises. Sould I count this as calories burned along with my run and weights this morning?