Wore my HRM for a day, is that an accurate number for TDEE?

curvykent
curvykent Posts: 140 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I wore my heart rate monitor yesterday from about 9:30 am- 8:30 pm. I was up at 7 am and didn't go to bed until 11 but I wanted to get an idea of how many calories I burn in a day. I don't see why this would be inaccurate since I use it to measure my calories burned during exercise and it lines up with the calculations MFP gives. However I was surprised to see 2120 as my cals burned. Now, I did do 70 minutes of yoga which based on previous weeks burned around 300 cals. I also breastfeed so that is anywhere between 300-600 calories a day and I am a very active momma always on the go and constantly cleaning my house. I would say yesterday is an example of a typical day.

My questions are two part. Is this an accurate way to get my TDEE number? Or should it be a little higher to account for the hours I was up and not wearing the hrm?

Please be kind to me, if you have a snide or snotty comment can you keep it to yourself please? I know the TDEE questions are endless so if you don't want to help me out just move along. Thanks.

Replies

  • holderh1
    holderh1 Posts: 41 Member
    Are you wanting to lose or maintain? If that is your daily schedule I would think it would be a good starting point. I have a polar hrm and I love it. I have continually lost weight going by the calorie burn so i would trust mine. You could try it for a month and see if you maintain your weight. Maybe weigh yourself and measure and then put the scales and tape away for a month, eat according to your hrm and see what happens. Best of luck!
  • curvykent
    curvykent Posts: 140 Member
    I'm wanting to lose weight. I have my calorie goal set at 1628 or something right around there.
  • Thomasm198
    Thomasm198 Posts: 3,189 Member
    Wearing a HRM all day is not an accurate count of calories burned. They are simply not designed for that.
  • The_Enginerd
    The_Enginerd Posts: 3,982 Member
    Wearing a HRM all day is not an accurate count of calories burned. They are simply not designed for that.
    ^This. The algorithms HRMs use do not give accurate calorie calculations except during steady state cardio at a fair intensity. They overestimate burns during low intensity exercise, such as walking, and are not designed to determine calorie burns while sedentary where they would be even worse.
  • janettebishop940
    janettebishop940 Posts: 88
    Bump.
  • curvykent
    curvykent Posts: 140 Member
    Interesting. I use my HRM primarily for tracking my walking and it's calculations line up closely with MFP's calculations so I think with my monitor it is pretty darn accurate in terms of low intensity exercises. Although my walks are at a brisk pace so I don't know if that is technically low intensity.

    I just did my TDEE calculations on another site and those numbers aligned with the daily caloric burn I did that day too. So I'm thinking it may have been pretty accurate afterall.

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