Polar Calories Reading...

FirecrackerJess
FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hello. I got a Polar FT7, had it now for about a week and a half. Now I knew that the heart rate monitor and the machines at the gym were going to not be correct, and be off. I was surprised by how much the heart rate monitor differed from the machine, but I just figured it was was it was... that big of a difference. However I tried today the Polarpersonaltrainer.com website where you input your watches data, and well I am manually entering everything. When I enter the max HR and the avg HR it auto fills in the calories burned, but it too is off from what the watch says.

Does anyone use the Polarpersonaltrainer.com website with their monitor? I am starting to wonder if my HRM is off, or messed up or something. I would assume the Polar site would match up more with its HRM but it does not seem to be the case. Or am I missing something here?

Thanks.

Replies

  • jackiecamarena
    jackiecamarena Posts: 290 Member
    Bump. Also curious.
  • Nicolee_2014
    Nicolee_2014 Posts: 1,572 Member
    Interesting. I am going to have a look at this. The problem I'm having with my HRM at the moment is it is forever dropping out - so if I go for a big walk, I don't hear that it has dropped out & when I get home I notice. Annoying!
  • pricesteve
    pricesteve Posts: 39 Member
    I'm pretty sure the Polar FT7 shows Gross calories burned, the equipment in my gym shows Net Calories burned, so allowing for 100 Cal/Hour Base Metabolic rate needing to be deducted from the Polar reading, for me at least they match up pretty well.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    I'm pretty sure the Polar FT7 shows Gross calories burned, the equipment in my gym shows Net Calories burned, so allowing for 100 Cal/Hour Base Metabolic rate needing to be deducted from the Polar reading, for me at least they match up pretty well.

    I'm sorry, I didn't follow that... ?
  • sadgirl114
    sadgirl114 Posts: 18
    I'm pretty sure the Polar FT7 shows Gross calories burned, the equipment in my gym shows Net Calories burned, so allowing for 100 Cal/Hour Base Metabolic rate needing to be deducted from the Polar reading, for me at least they match up pretty well.

    I'm sorry, I didn't follow that... ?
    I think what he was saying is that ewuipment shows only the calories you burned running for example, but the polar does how many calories you burned running PLUS what your body would burn just by existing (so if you burn 2000 by sitting on your bum that would be about 83 calories per hour.) So if the equipment says you burned 400 calories in 2 hours of running then the polar would say 400 calories burnt running PLUS 2 x 83 (166) for your bodys natural burn...
    I think that made sense :D
  • umer76
    umer76 Posts: 1,272 Member
    I also have Polar FT7. So what you are saying is when recording cals burnt via HRM for 2 hours walk/jog on mfp we should deduct the natural burn per hour. Although it will not be a huge difference but still good to be accurate.
  • lucan07
    lucan07 Posts: 509
    Try converting polar calories to nett here and see if that explains the difference.

    http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/net-versus-gross-calorie-burn-conversion-calculator.aspx
  • jmayerovitch
    jmayerovitch Posts: 71 Member
    I'm assuming the gym equipment is showing you MORE calories burned, not less. Gym equipment (especially ellipticals and bikes) is notorious for over-estimating by as much as 400 calories per hour, although treadmills sometimes underestimate depending on what you're doing.

    However, one issue with the FT7 vs. higher end models is that it doesn't incorporate your VO2max (or the equivalent estimate that Polar uses). It basically assumes you're of average fitness. At least I'm pretty sure FT7 doesn't use that. For instance, the RS300X tests your resting heart rate, estimates your VO2max from that, and uses the result to calculate your calories burned.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    Maybe I did not explain myself very well.

    The thing is not the calories on the Polar vs the ones on the machine. I expected that to be different with the Polar showing less because the machines are known to overstate calories burned.

    What I was asking, was if anyone has used Polar's own website where you can sign up and track your workouts as well. Because there when you enter a workout, it asks for the average heart rate and the max heart rate. When I enter those two datas, it auto fills in their own calorie section. So for example, lets say my ave heart rate is 136 and max 151, their site would auto fill the calories with lets say 500. While the watch, the monitor itself says 345. Shouldn't Polar's site match the HRM? It has me wondering if there is an issue with my HRM.
  • lucan07
    lucan07 Posts: 509
    I'm assuming the gym equipment is showing you MORE calories burned, not less. Gym equipment (especially ellipticals and bikes) is notorious for over-estimating by as much as 400 calories per hour, although treadmills sometimes underestimate depending on what you're doing.

    However, one issue with the FT7 vs. higher end models is that it doesn't incorporate your VO2max (or the equivalent estimate that Polar uses). It basically assumes you're of average fitness. At least I'm pretty sure FT7 doesn't use that. For instance, the RS300X tests your resting heart rate, estimates your VO2max from that, and uses the result to calculate your calories burned.

    I find my old lower end FT1 accurate as I calculate my own using VO2max before converting to nett easy to do same with any HRM
  • jmayerovitch
    jmayerovitch Posts: 71 Member
    Are you sure it wasn't asking for YOUR max heart rate? Not the max for the workout.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    Are you sure it wasn't asking for YOUR max heart rate? Not the max for the workout.

    Yep. It's just very confusing.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    This is what I mean. It fills in its own thing, 573 but my Polar F7 says 238. I would think the polar site would match with its own watch?

    polarsite.jpg
  • jmayerovitch
    jmayerovitch Posts: 71 Member
    I think it means your max heart rate (either known from your VO2max or estimated from a calculation). Try putting that in.

    It looks like your watch is much closer to accurate. Over 500 is way too high for less than an hour at 110.

    Also, one thing to keep in mind is that HRMs are not really designed to give accurate calories burned below 120 bpm.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    I assumed it was asking for what the watch gives since the watch gives a AVG and MAX HR.

    Yeah my HR wasn't as high as usual this time, hurt knee.

    So you at least think my HR is accurate? That is the main thing I was worried about.
  • jmayerovitch
    jmayerovitch Posts: 71 Member
    I think so.

    I just realized that I have an account at polar too (I just never used it). Went on there and did hte same thing you did. Regardless of what I put into max HR, it gave me an outrageously high number for some hypothetical values. My guess is their manual algorithm is messed up for some reason.

    A good manual entry website is: http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx. Replace VO2Max with your OwnIndex from Polar and you get results almost identical to your heart rate monitor.
  • acpgee
    acpgee Posts: 8,005 Member
    Your max heart rate looks wrong. Use this formula

    http://www.brianmac.co.uk/maxhr.htm

    if your HRM doesn't calculate VO2Max with a fitness test.

    Your reading looks too high to me too. I need to keep my heart rate between 140-155 to burn 500 cals an hour.
  • lucan07
    lucan07 Posts: 509
    Your max heart rate looks wrong. Use this formula

    http://www.brianmac.co.uk/maxhr.htm

    if your HRM doesn't calculate VO2Max with a fitness test.

    Your reading looks too high to me too. I need to keep my heart rate between 140-155 to burn 500 cals an hour.

    The max HR shown is max HR achieved in that exercise session not Maximum HR for age,
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
    I'm pretty sure the Polar FT7 shows Gross calories burned, the equipment in my gym shows Net Calories burned, so allowing for 100 Cal/Hour Base Metabolic rate needing to be deducted from the Polar reading, for me at least they match up pretty well.

    I'm sorry, I didn't follow that... ?
    I think what he was saying is that ewuipment shows only the calories you burned running for example, but the polar does how many calories you burned running PLUS what your body would burn just by existing (so if you burn 2000 by sitting on your bum that would be about 83 calories per hour.) So if the equipment says you burned 400 calories in 2 hours of running then the polar would say 400 calories burnt running PLUS 2 x 83 (166) for your bodys natural burn...
    I think that made sense :D

    Neither equipment nor HRMs calculate net calories. For the most part during exercise the number is small enough that that is not worth the mental effort to think about.
  • FirecrackerJess
    FirecrackerJess Posts: 276 Member
    I have no idea what my VO2 is. And yes, the Max HR is for the activity not my age. Thanks everyone.
  • jskoala
    jskoala Posts: 2 Member
    I have the EXACT same problem! I just got the Polar FT7 HRM last week, and I manually input each workout onto the polarpersonaltrainer.com. Today for example, I was on the elliptical for 60 minutes. My Polar FT7 told me my average HR was 130, max HR was 139, and I burned 489 calories during that workout session. Cool. I enter this into the polar website and it automatically bumps up my calories burned to 705. I can't figure out why the HRM and the website track different calories burned for the same workout, HR, everything.

    I tried searching for reasons online, on the polar website, everything, but kept coming up blank. It's a little frustrating. I've been tracking the calories my Polar FT7 comes up with, as opposed to the inflated number from the polar website.

    Does anyone know why this is happening?
  • C6poohbear
    C6poohbear Posts: 1 Member
    I'm having the same issue with the app. My heart rate monitor is blue tooth so it automatically syncs to the app. Today my watch said 339 calories and the app said 473. I'm not sure why it is occurring since both are hard on the same heart rate monitor and run at the same time.
  • CM9178
    CM9178 Posts: 1,251 Member
    jskoala wrote: »
    I have the EXACT same problem! I just got the Polar FT7 HRM last week, and I manually input each workout onto the polarpersonaltrainer.com. Today for example, I was on the elliptical for 60 minutes. My Polar FT7 told me my average HR was 130, max HR was 139, and I burned 489 calories during that workout session. Cool. I enter this into the polar website and it automatically bumps up my calories burned to 705. I can't figure out why the HRM and the website track different calories burned for the same workout, HR, everything.

    I tried searching for reasons online, on the polar website, everything, but kept coming up blank. It's a little frustrating. I've been tracking the calories my Polar FT7 comes up with, as opposed to the inflated number from the polar website.

    Does anyone know why this is happening?

    It sounds to me like the website is calculating wrong, or something isn't being entered correctly? I don't think you would've burned 700 calories on the eliptical for an hour at that HR.
  • CM9178
    CM9178 Posts: 1,251 Member
    I just signed up for the personal trainer site, when doing that, you have to input your age, weight, etc. Maybe yours doesn't match what you have set in your HRM? That would definitely cause the calories burned to be calculated differently....

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