Heart Rate Monitor Question...

AuntieKT

Good Morning!
I have a Polar FT4 Heart Rate Monitor and I love it! I like how it keeps track of all of my workouts and I can go back and look through their stats and everything. Just recently I have been heavily criticised for not eating enough calories in a day (I have to admit, I have been one of those 1,200 calorie a day people, so I'm sure there won't be people on here who will argue that point, LOL!) and since I have taken up a new heavy weight lifting regimen, I am finally ready to try eating more every day. I am kind of leery about eating back my exercise calories because I worry about my numbers being off and eating too much. I know the heart rate monitors are probably the most accurate thing I'm going to find to estimate my burn, but I was wondering... I should probably subtract the calories that I would have burned just sitting and doing nothing during the amount of time I worked out from my calorie burn that my heart rate monitor gives me...shouldn't I? Would an accurate way to figure out how many calories, say I just burn in an hour doing nothing, be to take my BMR and divide it by 24 (for 24 hours in a day)? My BMR is 1489 by The Roadmap calculations. So in one hour if I'm not really doing anything, I would burn about 62 calories. So if I worked out for an hour and my HRM said I burned say, 300 calories, I really should only count 238...right? What do you guys think? Am I just splitting hairs here? I tend to do that a lot...

Mokey41

It would make it more accurate. Note that a HRM isn't accurate for lifting because your HR isn't elevated enough for the algorithms to work. I'd suggest not logging calories for lifting.

AuntieKT

So, do you think that when I am lifting the calories that it says I'm burning are an overestimate or an underestimate? I'm cool with it underestimating what I'm burning. I've been wearing it everytime that I workout no matter what I'm doing just to see what it says. This whole "eating back exercise calories" is something I haven't really tried yet, so for now that information is just a number and hasn't really impacted what I'm eating at all. I just don't want to overdo it and eat too many calories. I am NOT putting this weight back on!

Mokey41

Over estimating for lifting.

windyday61

I only use my Polar 7 for cardio workout. I weight 160lbs. and programmed my HRM at 130 so that I dont have to worry about deducting calories for the time that I am working out.

AuntieKT

Over estimating for lifting.

Ok, good to know! I will only use it for cardio from now on! That way I won't have to worry about it and any calories I do burn while lifting will just be extra that I don't eat back. Thank you VERY much for your responses! I just don't want to unintentionally sabotage myself!