Heart rate and calories burned

clhoward6
clhoward6 Posts: 53 Member
edited November 30 in Health and Weight Loss
I have a question. On Saturday I allegedly burned 4761 calories. This is according to my fitbit. I was reasonably active all day i.e. not sitting around on the sofa all day but pottering about walking to the shops, pub, a bit of dancing.

However I still don't know whether to believe it or not. I had quite a few calories left in the afternoon so for my dinner I decided to have some Chinese snacks. Well, I basically ate my way through 1700 calories worth and felt really unwell afterwards. My heart rate rocketed and was high for the rest of the day so any activity I did, even just walking to the pub and bopping around was recorded in fitbit and I think it thinks I was more active than I was. However, the question is, if your heart rate is high do you burn more calories even if you're not actually doing high impact exercise? Or was my heart pumping effectively making all my activity cardio, and therefore accurate ish?

I haven't lost any weight over the weekend but that could be due to the amount of salt I ate.

Replies

  • StealthHealth
    StealthHealth Posts: 2,417 Member
    clhoward6 wrote: »
    However, the question is, if your heart rate is high do you burn more calories even if you're not actually doing high impact exercise? Or was my heart pumping effectively making all my activity cardio, and therefore accurate ish?

    No: heart rate an vary with or without significant calorific burn.
    clhoward6 wrote: »
    I haven't lost any weight over the weekend but that could be due to the amount of salt I ate.

    Losses and gains are difficult if not impossible, to measure over the short term (like a weekend) because of the inherent variation in weight due to hydration, in transit foods, inflammation etch so yes, the salt could be masking a loss or gain.
  • clhoward6
    clhoward6 Posts: 53 Member
    Ahhh thanks, so I probably effectively ate well over my actual allowance lol. This isn't an issue, as I think i'll still maintain a deficit for last week, but I wouldn't want to repeat it too often. Not least because I felt so ill after eating fatty/sugary junk.
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