Subtracting resting calories from HRM reading

kitinboots

I'm a little confused about the reading on my HRM.
When I got it, I put it on while I sat and watched tv for an hour. It said I burned 170 calories.
Does this mean that if I go running for an hour I should subtract 170 from the calorie count, since my body would have burned these anyway?

cmriverside

Did you enter your personal stats into the HRM? I doubt you actually burned 170 calories in one hour just sitting. HRMs are not accurate for resting activities, they are meant to be used for sustained aerobic activity.

That said, you can manually deduct your RMR from the count if you feel like it. Here, this is really helpful:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472


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Tourney3p0

170 is really high. If you extrapolate that out to a day, that would mean that you would burn 4080 calories in 24 hours of watching TV. Obviously this isn't happening unless you were doing a lot of moving around.

HRMs aren't meant for monitoring at rest and so we can assume it won't be very accurate. However, that reading is so far off that I would suspect you're either missing a zero somewhere in your settings, or the HRM is defective.

Probably the best way would be to calculate your BMR and divide that by 1440 (60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day) to get your expected calories burned per minute. Then use that number when calculating your actual calories "earned". That still leaves you with an HRM reading that I wouldn't trust, resting or not.

kitinboots

170 is really high. If you extrapolate that out to a day, that would mean that you would burn 4080 calories in 24 hours of watching TV. Obviously this isn't happening unless you were doing a lot of moving around.

HRMs aren't meant for monitoring at rest and so we can assume it won't be very accurate. However, that reading is so far off that I would suspect you're either missing a zero somewhere in your settings, or the HRM is defective.

Probably the best way would be to calculate your BMR and divide that by 1440 (60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day) to get your expected calories burned per minute. Then use that number when calculating your actual calories "earned". That still leaves you with an HRM reading that I wouldn't trust, resting or not.

Hmm okay, so that would give me 58 per hour.
How can I find out if my HRM is faulty? Its a brand new Polar ft4, I've used it about 6 times.

Smuterella

My understanding is that an HRM would not actually be able to calculate your resting burn rate - they are most accurate when they have a faster heart rate to read apparently.

happymiche

HRM are more for fitness...I wouldn't wear it all day, just when you're doing organized fitness activities.

mrpurdy

If you just want an estimate, my BodyBugg (NOT a HRM) shows that I burn about 1 calorie a minute while sleeping, so I always subtract this from my exercise calories.

SassyCalyGirl

no-do not subtract them. Your body burns calories at rest-its normal. When you are ready to run/exercise activate the HRM about 2 minutes before you start so it will start reading-then after your workout wait until your heart rate is at its resting point-(about a 5 min cool down-then stop the clock-that should be your "calories burned".

your HRM should not be worn unless you are actively exercising it is not meant to be worn all day-you will never get an accurate reading of exercised calories burned otherwise.

dad106

Honestly, don't worry about subtracting calories from the HRM and don't wear them at rest.

HRM's when set up correctly and used with steady state cardio activities, are only 80% accurate. If you tweak the max heart rate or add in Vo2max, then it goes up to about 90%, I believe.

Just log what the HRM gives you and you'll be fine.. It's all an estimation anyway as nothing can accurately tell you that you burned XYZ in 60 minutes.

kitinboots

I just don't want to log extra calories if its reading too high when I'm exercising too.

Today I went for a 90minute walk/run with the dog, up the valley and back down again. We're at altitude and I'm currently not very fit so I get out of breath and my heart rate gets quite high fairly quickly. My HRM told me I burned over 800 calories in that time.
I had Endomondo running on my phone to track distance and it estimated 500 calories.