Heart Rate Monitor Question :)

It is 1000 times more accurate due to the fact that it accounts for your heart rate. MFP can only take an educated guess and where your heart rate was based on the amount of time you exercised.

I have a MIO Drive HRM and I love it. IT uses your own sweat instead of the gel. If you sweat a lot then you shouldn't really need the gel.

Hope this helps and have fun! That HRM is gonna motivate you to squeeze in a few extra minutes so you can burn more lol.

Since you bumped ....

Many people will tell you that HRMs are far more accurate, but they are assuming it is. The accuracy of HRMs is very overstated here. There are any number of things that affect accuracy of HRMs and lots of people have run into trouble blindly following the calories the HRM told them.

MFP doesn't need to know your heart rate. Heart rate does not have a direct relationship with calories burned.

In some cases, it might be a closer estimate but certainly not always.

Do I think it is useful? Sure. Is it necessary? No. Should it be blindly trusted? Absolutely not. In the end, they are all estimates.

A great read
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak?month=201003

I have a Polar HRM and it's been great.

I've never used the gel. Just put a little bit of water on the pads when you put the chest strap on and you'll be good to go.

It is 1000 times more accurate due to the fact that it accounts for your heart rate. MFP can only take an educated guess and where your heart rate was based on the amount of time you exercised.

I have a MIO Drive HRM and I love it. IT uses your own sweat instead of the gel. If you sweat a lot then you shouldn't really need the gel.

Hope this helps and have fun! That HRM is gonna motivate you to squeeze in a few extra minutes so you can burn more lol.

Wow. I had no idea that this type of accuracy was even possible. I stand corrected. I guess

It is 1000 times more accurate due to the fact that it accounts for your heart rate. MFP can only take an educated guess and where your heart rate was based on the amount of time you exercised.

I have a MIO Drive HRM and I love it. IT uses your own sweat instead of the gel. If you sweat a lot then you shouldn't really need the gel.

Hope this helps and have fun! That HRM is gonna motivate you to squeeze in a few extra minutes so you can burn more lol.

Wow. I had no idea that this type of accuracy was even possible. I stand corrected. I guess

Does this mean that if I use the MFP estimate, my numbers are off by a magnitude of 1000? A 50 minute run that I thought burned 600 calories actually burned as little as 0.6 or as much as 600,000? Dang. That's a pretty large range.

It's going to take some serious work to eat all my exercise calories back too.

If you are using the new style Soft Strap, just water will work fine, You do need moisture for conductivity until you build up a sweat.

12 mile walk with a Wahoo HRM: 1,073 kcal.
Same 12 mile walk with a Ki Fit: 2,645 kcal (- 1.8 kcal/min RMR for 275 minutes) = 2,150 kcal.
MFP, walking, 3mph for 275 minutes: 1,509 kcal.

862-1,292 calories is a lot to be out by, assuming the Ki Fit is +/- 10% accurate (or is it +/- 5%?)

ETA: It depends on how accurate it is for you. My HRM is for heart rate, my Foot Pod is for steps, my GPS is for distance, my Ki Fit is for calories, and MFP is for food. Depending on your exercise and body you may well fit with what MFP or a HRM estimates for calorie expenditure - they are both OK for my 3 mile walks, but after 5-6 miles when I appear to go from 8-9 kcal/min to 11-12 kcal/min with no noticeable change in heart rate the 3 different methods get further and further apart for me.

...YEAH SHE LITERALLY MEANS 1000 TIMES..... seriously? ...dont be ****'s lol

Given that the topic is focused on accuracy, perhaps people should be more careful about their claims.

Admittedly, had she even said that the HRM is 50% more accurate, I would have challenged that claim too. It is my belief that people just *assume* that the HRM is a more accurate determination of calories burned without any real basis. I am not yet convinced.

This. While everyone will yell up and down about how much more accurate their Polarmin GT40000 is, they have no empirical evidence to make a that statement. No one knows how many calories they actually burn, but since they paid X dollars for the Polarmin they will tell you, in no uncertain terms, how dead on exact it is. And then they will give you some mumbo jumbo about heart rates.

Do this. Go download the owner's manual for whichever HRM you own or are thinking about buying. Look for the section on calorie counting. I'm betting any amount of money that the calorie counting feature is listed like an afterthought, about 17 pages deep into a 25 page manual. "Oh, by the way, this thing will give you a calorie count" The footnotes might even say don't trust it. These are not the actions of a device with 1000% accuracy. Nobody hides a feature like that unless they are afraid of getting sued.