How to accurately calculate calories burned in exercise??

klackey23 · February 2013

I'm just entering maintenance and now I will need to be eating back all my exercise calories, but I feel like it's hard to know what's accurate. I have a heart rate monitor, but it always seems to spit out higher calorie burned amounts than what I get when I take the average heart rate the HRM gives me and plug it in to an online calculator such as http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx or http://www.calories-calculator.net/Calories_Burned_By_Heart_Rate.html. MFP's numbers are way under what I get calculating by average heart rate.

For reference, I'm 5'5'', 26 years old, 128 pounds. I'm pretty fit, but not a marathon-runner or anything and my heart rate still gets up there (175-180) when I exercise, but always comes down immediately when I stop. (recovery rate = 25-30)

Is calculating calories burned by going off my average heart rate is most accurate? yes or no?

djtessatessa · February 2013

get a heart rate monitor.

get a good one though - I bought a crummy and it is clearly wrong (i know my hr was much higher than it is telling me, etc) so i would like to get another one. hmph.

starrisonmclennon · February 2013

http://www.calories-calculator.net/Calories_Burned_By_Heart_Rate.html
as long as you can count how many times your heart beats in 6 seconds (then multiply by 10) that should tell you how many calories you've burned, you need to put in other information too

Ta2dchic20 · February 2013

Your monitor is going to be the most accurate. It's calculating off of your body's performance

Other tools aren't tracking your heart rate. Nice job on getting to maintanence!

klackey23 · February 2013

Bump

How to accurately calculate calories burned in exercise??

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