Do those devices really tell you how much you burn in a day?

Interested in hearing the answers.

How difference was their estimate from what MFP gave you when you entered your calorie goals?

It tracks my overall burn for the day and I can eat accordingly. No guesswork on my part. MFP tends to overestimate the burn.

I wear my HRM only for my workouts, but I've noticed that both the gym machines and MFP don't come anywhere close to what I've actually burned during a workout. I love that it's much more accurate and it's helped me to calculate my calories in so I can lose weight quicker. I stick closer to 1550 calories/day but burn anywhere from 600-1000 during my workouts. Using MFP's estimates, I would be way off.

Same here; only wear mine while working out. Difference in calorie expenditure versus what the treadmill/elliptical say isn't off by much +/- 100 calories. Difference in calorie expenditure versus what MFP suggests for weight lifting is off by A LOT; my actual burns are usually 3 or 4 times what MFP suggests.

HRM are good for steady state cardio. They can overestimate burns when used in other ways (interval training or weight lifting or general daily activities).

I have a Fitibit. It calculates calories burned in two ways:
1) It calculates your baseline calorie burn based on your personal factors (height, weight, gender, age). Basically your BMR (basal metabolic rate), or, the calories you burn by breathing.
2) It adjusts that upwards on a continual basis by registering your movements (i.e., a glorified pedometer). It picks up on step based activity (walking, running, maybe swimming (I don't know b/c I haven't swum w/ it)) better than other activities (such as biking), and gives you "credit" for those activities.

I've found it pretty stinking accurate. They send you a weekly report telling you how many calories you've eaten (I have it linked to MFP) and how many you've burned. Since I've gotten it, I've averaged almost exactly 1 lb/week weight loss.

In the beginning, as it's "learning" your activity levels, it may give you more or fewer calories than you need. In the beginning, I stuck with MFP's recommended calories. After a while, they correlated more closely.

I wear my HRM only for my workouts, but I've noticed that both the gym machines and MFP don't come anywhere close to what I've actually burned during a workout. I love that it's much more accurate and it's helped me to calculate my calories in so I can lose weight quicker. I stick closer to 1550 calories/day but burn anywhere from 600-1000 during my workouts. Using MFP's estimates, I would be way off.

Same here; only wear mine while working out. Difference in calorie expenditure versus what the treadmill/elliptical say isn't off by much +/- 100 calories. Difference in calorie expenditure versus what MFP suggests for weight lifting is off by A LOT; my actual burns are usually 3 or 4 times what MFP suggests.

* After I finished typing the below I see this was recently answered. Carry on.

This talk about accuracy has me curious. How accurate are the computations on mfp? When I enter the exercise and the time spent I know it doesn't calculate my heartrate but does it at least use my age/height/weight?

If not, is this the reason those devices are supposed to be more accurate?

Ahhh thanks for that Gnome, going to start doing some weights.... my friend is very into it and her hubby is a personal trainer (for weight lifting) and I noticed on MFP she'd done 40 minutes of weights and burned about 140 calories. Same when I've done boxing...it's damn hard work but MFP gave me hardly any calories at all.

MFP may be inaccurate, but you have to remember that it gives you a total for that activity, and then adds it to your regular day stuff (which it calculated when setting your calorie goal). Your HRM measures your workout during a set time, and you would've been burning calories during that time frame anyway. If your HRM says 140 burned in 40 minutes and you would have burned 50 anyway, you only burned an extra 90 due to increased activity.

This is why I switched from my HRM to the TDEE method. Way easier math. lol

Activity trackers, TDEE calculations, MFP are all estimates. Some are more accurate than others and use more data. I personally found that my TDEE calculations and my fitbit flex are pretty similar and MFP is pretty low. Nothing is going to be 100% accurate, neither are your calorie consumed calculations though.

If you are really concerned about trying to figure out how much you burn during the day; eat at maintenance for a few weeks. Figure out how many calories you burn during the day on average (using TDEE, MFP or an activity tracker - this is just a guess so it doesn't really matter the method) and eat that many calories. Stick to this for at least 3-4 weeks. 1. If you gain weight then you are eating over your maintenance. Either your activity calories are too high or you are not accurately tracking your calories. Lower your calories and repeat until you maintain your weight for a few weeks. 2. If you are still losing calories during that time, higher your calories and repeat until you maintaining for a few weeks. 3. You stayed the same weight and you got your maintenance calories right. woo hoo. I did this for a few months and found out "about' what my body burns on average and that happened to match up pretty well with my Fitbit flex and TDEE calculator. i was also using a bodymedia device at the time (for the sake of this experiment) and it was way off, saying I burned an extra 250 calories a day.

How much you burn on a daily basis changes daily, weekly, yearly, etc. based on so many factors. You just have to stick to a method and adjust as needed. I think activity trackers are a handy way of estimating your calories burned and they are full of interesting data but they are just another form of estimating that happens to cost a decent chunk of money.

HRMs are only accurate for steady state cardio. They won't give you an accurate calorie burn over an entire day. For that, you would be better using an activity monitor (such as Fitbit). However, remember that all of these devices give you an estimate based on the calories burned by a person with your statistics. I love my Fitbit and find it accurate, but they are all based on estimates. The best way to know how much YOU burn in a day is to log everything accurately for 4 to 6 weeks and see if you are losing weight at the projected rate. If you are, fabulous! If not, adjust your calories up or down by 100 calories, and carry on for another 4 to 6 weeks.

How difference was their estimate from what MFP gave you when you entered your calorie goals?

It tracks my overall burn for the day and I can eat accordingly. No guesswork on my part. MFP tends to overestimate the burn.

Yep, the BodyMedia Fit makes it SO easy to achieve a deficit every day. Just moving around burns way more calories than you'd imagine--that's why I when I first started to drop a few pounds, I'd be good for a 3-4 days and then binge. I was eating 1800 calories, but some days my calorie burn would be over 2800, creating too large of a deficit. With my BMF, I was able to eat to my activity and the weight came off fast.

I wear my HRM only for my workouts, but I've noticed that both the gym machines and MFP don't come anywhere close to what I've actually burned during a workout. I love that it's much more accurate and it's helped me to calculate my calories in so I can lose weight quicker. I stick closer to 1550 calories/day but burn anywhere from 600-1000 during my workouts. Using MFP's estimates, I would be way off.

Same here.

NO. Not exactly.

A HRM on it's own will Help with a 'Estimate' of your total energy expenditure, it (or better the software where you log the data, like say MFP) also needs to know your gender, Height and weight so that it can ESTIMATE your energy expenditure (and better than nothing or a full on guess).

N.B a lot of folks early have said that the trackers CALCULATE your energy expenditure - they don't the ESTIMATE it based upon the data that you provide and their internal model - how accurate the results it gives is based upon the accuracy of the data provided and the software model.

To CALCULATE your expenditure, the tracker would need a lot more sensors that just a HRM and a pedometer!! You really need to spend time in a calorimeter to get more accurate data - where ALL of your inputs and outputs are measured .. yes that too!!

I can confirm, I use a bodymedia fit and it is scary accurate for me, it's also the only device on the market that has been proven to be accurate within clinical trials, WAY better than the crappy mfp suggestions which I find to be on the low side more often than not, feelsgoodman.jpg knowing your exact maintenance for sure and never having to guess if you're actually in a deficit

bodymedia fit + a food scale are the two best investments I've made

I agree about bodymedia. I wore a Bodybugg for a couple of years (I even have pics with it on in my profile pics) and can attest it's quite accurate. I stopped using it because of cost (monthly fee) wasn't worth it to me anymore.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness industry for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I know a lot of people wear HRMs and the like, and I wondered about that.
Will it tell me how much I actually burn every 24 hours? That would be really helpful to determine how many calories to consume, you know?
How does it work?
What has been your experience with such monitors? Is it very different than MFP's estimates?

HRMs are meant to be worn for steady rate cardio..not weight training, yoga, or just to wear 24 hours.

Different types of other devices tend to be pedometers. I like Bodymedia Link because it does a bit more than most other pedometer type tracking devices.

Overall, though, it's all an estimate. You can succeed without any of these tools but if you do use them, just educate yourself on the device (i.e. realizing HRMs can't be used for most activities outside of things like running, swimming, etc) and how they work with MFP (i.e with Bodymedia, I don't log exercises with the MFP estimates).