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

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lavendy17
lavendy17 Posts: 309 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
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?
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Replies

  • randomtai
    randomtai Posts: 9,003 Member
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    My BodyMedia FIT does. They are called activity trackers.
  • lavendy17
    lavendy17 Posts: 309 Member
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    How difference was their estimate from what MFP gave you when you entered your calorie goals?
  • Aunt_Kiki
    Aunt_Kiki Posts: 47 Member
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    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.
  • blytheandbonnie
    blytheandbonnie Posts: 3,275 Member
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    Interested in hearing the answers.
  • randomtai
    randomtai Posts: 9,003 Member
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    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.
  • Squishy66
    Squishy66 Posts: 11 Member
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    Being a runner, I use my HRM/garmin every time I exercise. Because you put your profile into them (age, sex, height, weight and what activity level you are) it works out how many calories you burn. I've not found too drastic a difference in what my garmin says and what MFP says, but I do tend to go by what my garmin tells me I've burned. The other thing to bear in mind, I start the watch when I leave the house, and I stop it again when I reach the front door. It then takes a little while to recover and your HR to return to normal 'resting' rate, so you are still burning calories as you recover. They are a great gadget, and with a garmin you know how far you've run and how fast. It depends how geeky you want to be! :-) Knowing your HR is also good for determining how you are feeling.... a higher HR than normal could mean that you are tired or coming down with something. I gave blood last week and have done a run this evening and I was slower than normal and my HR was much higher.... lack of red blood cells! I'm not sure how accurate those ones are that are at the gym, on treadmills etc. I use a Garmin Forerunner 110 if you're interested.
  • G3nome
    G3nome Posts: 5 Member
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    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.
  • bgelliott
    bgelliott Posts: 610 Member
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    BodyMedia is the most accurate
  • DrJenO
    DrJenO Posts: 404 Member
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    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.
  • Morgaath
    Morgaath Posts: 679 Member
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    Another BodyMedia wearer here. I love it, and think it is reasonably accurate, as most of the tech is the same stuff that is not "just a fancy pedometer" is the same type of stuff a hospital uses.
    Check out the link, click the arrows on the left side to see the details, and it will give you an idea of what all it shows.
    http://www.bodymedia.com/activity_manager_demo.html

    Also love pulling up the 28 day history so I can see how I have down over the last 4 weeks. Helps me understand the big picture of my overall activity, sleep, and diet.

    And it links into MFP.
  • Squishy66
    Squishy66 Posts: 11 Member
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    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.
  • Squishy66
    Squishy66 Posts: 11 Member
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    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.
  • brando79az
    brando79az Posts: 224 Member
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    * 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?
  • Samstan101
    Samstan101 Posts: 699 Member
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    I have a Fitbit One. I log all non-walking activity of the Fitbit site. For cardio I take my calorie burn from my HRM & Garmin and over-ride the Fitbit database, for weights & swimming I use the Fitbit database (compared to my HRM the Fitbit database under-estimates calorie burn IME rather than MFP's that over-estimates). I track daily my TDEE & calorie intake as well as weighing regularly. Based on this data and assuming that 3500 cals = 1lb of fat, since end of Nov-13 my total calorie deficit equates to 33.8lbs of fat. I've actually lost 32lbs. Allowing for logging inaccuracies (not weighing all veg, the odd drunken weekend where my logging has been minimal/ non-existent or very blurry) this is close enough for me to be satisfied that the Fitbit and my methodology are accurate enough for me!
  • Mischievous_Rascal
    Mischievous_Rascal Posts: 1,791 Member
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    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
  • lavendy17
    lavendy17 Posts: 309 Member
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    Thanks everyone, I was really wondering about the entire day not just workouts.
    I just see people who are similar to me have a big range of calorie goals and some say MFP is too low, some use TDEE... Just thought- if I knew how many calories I burn by being alive, getting around, some exercise too, I could more easily determine how much to eat.

    I have a fear of being hungry so when MFP tells me to eat around 1300 calories I freak out. When I have it set to 1500-1600 I end up eating closer to 1400 but feel a lot less stressed about running out of calories.

    Bottom line- this guessing game sucks.
  • TheStephil
    TheStephil Posts: 858 Member
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    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.
  • karmasays
    karmasays Posts: 82 Member
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    I use BodyMedia Link armband and have it sync with MFP as I find MFP has a superior Food Diary database.

    It gives me my total burn throught the day, syncs my food entries from MFP, gives me my deficit, tells me how much moderate and vigorous activity I get, how many steps I take, AND how many hours of sleep I get.

    I'm pretty sure the total daily burn takes into account my height, weight and age (TDEE basically) and adds/subtracts the daily burn based on my activity levels. Most days I meet my targets...except for sleep (working on it!). I don't input any exercise or cardio workouts into MFP, I left BodyMedia sync. I do however, usually try and log the weights I lift (i.e. LBS, sets and reps).

    Personally, I find it really beneficial to see all this info every day and it keeps me motivated to try and reach my targets.
  • lcfairbairn74
    lcfairbairn74 Posts: 412 Member
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    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.

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