Forgive me if this has been asked already about HRMs--I don'

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beckbeck
beckbeck Posts: 31
in Health and Weight Loss
When your heart rate monitor says that you have burned, say 600 calories, is that 600 above and beyond the calories that you would have burned in the same amount of time, just sitting and relaxing? Or do I need to find my baseline just sitting and then subtract that from the 600 calories the monitor says I burned while working out?

I ask because it seems like since I got my monitor (and started entering WAY more calories burned than the site says activities burn), I'm not seeing the weight come off as much! I've been eating my exercise calories. Maybe I am not really burning that many?

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  • anvy0530
    anvy0530 Posts: 1,606 Member
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    I believe that the HRM calories burned is the amount of calories you burned during that time period of exercise. You may have to tweak how many of your exercise calories you eat back to optimize your weight loss. Some people eat all of them for best results. Some people don't eat any at all. As for me, I eat some of them but not all and it seems to work.
  • aippolito1
    aippolito1 Posts: 4,894 Member
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    Yes, it's 600 apart from what you would burn just sitting. Try eating less of your exercise calories or stick to just a set amount of calories to see if you lose.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    No, most people enter the amount in on the HRM or machine and don't back out the amount they would have burned anyway, which is incorrect. The HRM estimates how many total calories you burn during the time it is in use, not the extra calories burned. To get extra calories you will have to back out the amount you would have burned at rest which is probably 1-2 calories per minute based on your information. As an example say your BMR is 1800 calories take this and divided by 24 to get cals per hour then by 60 to get cals per minute. This gives you 1.25 cals/minute 1800/24/60.

    So if in an hour long workout your HRM says 600 you will have to back out 75 to account for what you would have burned anyway so the amount to enter in MFP would be 525 (600-75) Calories burned are just estimates and this way of calculating what you would have burned anyway is not 100% accurate but should be a good estimate of how many calories to take off from what the machine or HRM shows.
  • beckbeck
    beckbeck Posts: 31
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    Thank you so much for so many quick responses!

    Erik, that is exactly what I needed to know. Thank you so much! I know I could do all this research on my own but I have four kids and not a lot of time to be on the computer so I really appreciate your taking the time to write all that out for me.

    And thank you all for your suggestions on eating my exercise calories! When I am doing P90X, I feel like I need to eat most of them back because I get so hungry, especially on Plyometrics days! I'm just not sure if my body will try to go into starvation mode if I don't eat them...but then again, I'm afraid that I am WAY overestimating my calorie burn with my monitor and eating way too much! I'll make the adjustments according to what Erik told me and just do what feels right for my body for a while...

    Thanks again!

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