calories burned

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Okay so i bought one those calorie counter things. Its where you wear this strap around the bottom of your chest and then you wear this watch that tells you your heart rate and calories burned. My question is this right now I'm at work, I have a desk job but I do have to get up and walk and its saying in 13 minutes i have burned 50 calories. The other day when I was wearing it cleaning and then i just walked around and did my everyday thing it said that in four hours I burned 700 calories. I was just wandering how accurate these things were?

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  • moneyshot
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    i was told the in-accuracy on these elctronic calorie counters can be as high as 30% ...............
  • 3babybeans
    3babybeans Posts: 8,268 Member
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    Is it a heart rate monitor or a bodybugg? Heart Rate Monitors (like the ones Polar & Reebok make) most people only wear when exercising. Check the settings on it. You need to make sure your age, sex, & weight are correct. If it is the BodyBugg, also check the settings, but I'm not sure what to tell you other than that. I know those are designed to wear all day long, though.

    Good luck!
  • candacepainter
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    the one i have is a polar and my weight and information is correct.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    They should be fairly accurate, but remember your body burn calories at rest, so you would not add the amount your HRM says to MFP as a good 80% would be included in your BMR. Some the the 700 would be caught in 4 hours would be incurred if you were in a coma. Also be sure to back out the calories you would have burned at rest from the exercise calories burned according to your HRM.

    Your HRM may tell you you burned 280 calories in half an hour but you may have burned 2 cals per minute at rest anyway so in MFP you should enter 220 (280-60). The 60 is 2 cals, that are included in your MFP goals, per minute times 30 minutes.
  • Buzzkitty1
    Buzzkitty1 Posts: 134
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    You're always burning calories. Remember that your BMR is the calories you'd burn if you just laid around breathing!