Are heart rate monitors bogus?

As another poster pointed out, a lot of people use regular HRM wrong. I have a Polar FT7. I can't wear mine all day and expect it to be correct. Regular HRM are made to measure HR and calorie burns when your HR is elevated.

Personally, I don't understand why people put cleaning, food prep, and the other normal life tasks as exercise. I will very rarely put cleaning as exercise in my day. This is only when I do a really big cleaning where it takes me hours to clean the whole house... even than I put in maybe 1/4 of the time I spent cleaning. For normal cleanings I don't log. It's part of my daily activity.

Also, some HRM may overestimate calorie burns depending on the model. I had a watch only HRM at one point and with those they only take your most recent HR instead of the constant HR one with a chest strap takes. When I had the watch only one and would check my HR when I was working out hard, sometimes I forgot to recheck it and therefore my calorie burns would be far too high.

Also, keep in mind when on someones feed it normally only mentions the most recent activity logged. So say they ran for 2 hours than added cleaning... it may say "... burned 1300 calories including 30 minutes of light cleaning" .. It groups all the exercise together.

I don't understand why people log everyday activities like cleaning, food prep, folding laundry etc... These are normal activities that we all usually do. While doing them we still gained weight!! So how is logging them going to help?

I prefer my HRM calorie burn count over what MPF says and what the machine (treadmill, elliptical, etc) says. It may not be entirely accurate but I think it is more accurate than MPF's inflated estimates.

I think they really are. An HRM has to make a massive assumption about VO2max, which is going to be nowhere near reality. They also cannot hope to account for the hormones and drugs that affect heart rate, like adrenaline and caffeine.

They're better than absolutely nothing, but I think devices that directly measure energy expenditure like the Fitbit are much more accurate.

How does the fitbit measure energy expenditure?

Measuring the acceleration of your body as you move.

I'm not sure how the algorithms work, but here's how I think I would do it:

1) Measure the acceleration of the torso in 3 dimensions constantly
2) Filter out acceleration that doesn't seem to be exerted by the body itself (cars, elevators, etc)
3) Calculate the energy required to move the body mass according to that acceleration profile
4) Profit

I'm not sure exactly what it does. I know that it can determine my actual speed while running, jogging, walking, playing tennis, etc. because it shows my speed on a per-minute basis on the dashboard. I know that it tracks extra calories burned while jumping, doing the elliptical, climbing stairs, etc. because it shows increased calorie burns during those activities. So it's definitely doing something much more sophisticated than tracking steps.

I bought one last week, and I think it accurately checks my heartrate. However, I have tachycardia, not sure what it is caused by, so I don't think I can trust the calories it says I burned. For example I walked for 45 minutes at approximately 2.75 mph and it estimated I burned 413 calories. I think I probably burned closer to 250 calories. Basically while they may be accurate at tracking heartrate, they are not necessarily accurate at tracking calories burned.

I had a quiet hour at work so entered all my calories eaten and burned (measured by HRM) into a spreadsheet to see how accurate this whole food logging & exercise burn counting thing was.....
Since Jan 2nd by my numbers I "should" have lost 6.5lbs - in fact I've lost 5lbs.

So yes I would say that a HRM used properly is pretty accurate, certainly useful.

But as others have stated I wish more people would use them as a training aid instead of a calorie counter!!

I don't know anything about heart rate monitors. Maybe i'm not just all about excercising. But I do know I put on these extra pounds by eating too much, I've always been kind of active. I think myfitnesspal calories burned is too high as are the machines at the gym. That's why I don't eat back my calories. But I do count everyday activies like "cleaning the house" and "Playing with little kids" because I usually only do those things once a week. I work at a desk all week and long hours 8 to 10 per day. And when I clean my house I'm going up & down stairs carrying stuff so I think that counts. When my grandkids come over I'm flying a kite, playing tag, baseball, dancing, jumping or running. Maybe the neighbors think it odd that a 57 yr. old grandma is doing these activities, but I don't care. All activitity counts - even if it's fun! :flowerforyou:

I don't have a HRM yet, but I am getting on in June for my birthday. I have noticed that often, values differ greatly between machines and MFP, and values even differ between calorie sites.
At the moment, I am using a site which calculates average calorie burn by heart rate, weight and time. It seems more reliable to me, but it's not always possible to accurately take my own heart rate as I often miscount haha.

My Polar FT4 and the Precor machines at the gym (which also have HRMs) tally close to the same amount. Generally on an ellipical - cross country training interval I can average 400-450 calories/40 minute workout (which includes the warmup and cool down). If I come into MFP and log that same 35 minutes it will tell me I burned closer to 450 (ETA I rechecked and MFP tells me 501). I always go with the HRM and generally subtract about 50 calories to be on the safe side of "eating back my calories".

I also only log true deep and dirty cleaning. When I am scrubbing, sweeping and sweating. It generally takes me 5-6 hours to do the whole house with a couple of small breaks thrown in but even then I will only add in 1-2 hours of cleaning on MFP. I think it all comes down to being honest about your exertion. For instance MFP tells me that Swimming "Leisurely" burns 500 calories - but how many people are actually doing Leisurely laps while swimming? If you are playing in the pool with your toddler chances are good that you did not put out 500 calories worth of effort in that hour.

I say if you aren't out of breath, sweaty, and feeling the burn don't log it as cardio. If you are here to lose weight those little extra "burns" that you don't log will help boost your weight loss or at least make up for the fact that calorie estimates aren't 100% accurate.

Heart rate monitors are excellent at measuring heart rate. In my experience, less so in calculating calories burned. It is interesting that some here think it overestimates and others the opposite.

I have a Timex HRM that is pretty bad overall, and calculates calorie burn more than 60% higher than machines or even MFP typically does. I top out my HR in the mid-160's and do intervals between that and around 140, usually averaging a HR in the high 140's. My CW is 166 lbs. but I've generally been around 180-190 for most of the past 10 years (yay MFP!).

There is no way that I am burning at a rate of about 1,000 cals per hour, but that's what my Timex says. I would greatly appreciate it if one of the many MFP people who know more than I do about this could give me some feedback--am I right in assuming my HRM calorie numbers are garbage? Many thanks.

Several online calculators that use age, HR, & weight indicatewith your details 935 cal burned at an avg HR of 150 over an hour, so maybe not too far off.

I trust it to give me an accurate heart rate, but I strongly suspect it way overestimates by burn levels. Any kind of sustained intense cardio and it's giving me numbers of around a thousand per hour. Consequently I use the number it gives me, but set my net goal a bit lower than I otherwise would.