IS MFP or HRM more accurate ?

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Replies

  • Babieseverywhere
    Babieseverywhere Posts: 311 Member
    You covered almost two miles. I'd find it very hard to believe that you burnt ~260 calories per mile, unless you had the incline on the treadmill cranked up to the ceiling.

    LOL, just 2% incline. Mmm, have to look into this further.
  • ChrisIn757
    ChrisIn757 Posts: 159 Member
    A HRM is by far the better choice cause its monitoring REAL numbers that are associated with your body. Depending on how high tech your HRM is it can measure your pulse, how much you are sweating, etc. If you have taken the time to enter your weight, age, etc into it you are getting a much more accurate picture of what YOUR body is doing. Whereas if you put just a length of time of your work out into a website, it is a guess based on the "average heart rate" of what you are burning. I'd imagine they probably estimate low as well, to encourage you to work out more.

    If you have access to a piece of work out equipment (treadmill, stationary bike, etc) with a built in HRM, you can see the difference that I am talking about. While the excercise equipment will usually keep a pretty accurate check of your HR, your calorie burn will be WAY different because the HRM knows more about you.
  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
    Tough call. I don't have any experience with the Zephyr HRM so I can't say for sure.

    But for comparison, I am a male and am 6'3" and about 260lbs. I do 2 miles @ ~4mph every day for the last few months. I burn ~300calories. I'd say given that you are much smaller and female, 200-250 is a pretty good number. 500+ sounds ridiculous.

    I got my 300 calories by averaging out a couple different calculators (including MFP), including my pedometer. I feel that is a fairly accurate number since I eat those calories back and lose pretty much exactly my expected amount every week for months now. I just got a new HRM (polar FT60) and am curious to see what that gives me. My old cheap Timex ($50) would give me crazy figures, 600+ per 30 minute walk for example. No way that's even possible.
  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
    Tough call. I don't have any experience with the Zephyr HRM so I can't say for sure.

    But for comparison, I am a male and am 6'3" and about 260lbs. I do 2 miles @ ~4mph every day for the last few months. I burn ~300calories. I'd say given that you are much smaller and female, 200-250 is a pretty good number. 500+ sounds ridiculous.

    I got my 300 calories by averaging out a couple different calculators (including MFP), including my pedometer. I feel that is a fairly accurate number since I eat those calories back and lose pretty much exactly my expected amount every week for months now. I just got a new HRM (polar FT60) and am curious to see what that gives me. My old cheap Timex ($50) would give me crazy figures, 600+ per 30 minute walk for example. No way that's even possible.

    Tried out my Polar FT60 today, wow it's very close to what I expect. Did 30 mins on the elliptical, came out to 513 calories. MFP calculated 527. Pretty good!

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