Anyone Using Calories Burned by Heart Rate calculators? Thoughts?

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vjambois
vjambois Posts: 39 Member
edited May 2017 in Fitness and Exercise
I recently got a Fitbit with heart rate and have played around with using Fitbit's automatic calculators for things like kettlebells and yoga vs taking my average HR for the exercise time period and using a calorie burned by heart rate calculator like the one on ShapeSense.com. I find that the calories burned by heart rate calculator is in the ballpark but lower than Fitbit's so I've been using the lower number.

Anyone else using their average heart rate to figure calories burned vs using the built-in tools provided by Fitbit (or any HR fitness tracker) or even MFP? Thoughts?

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  • noraknotes
    noraknotes Posts: 16 Member
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    My FitBit has the heart rate calc too, but I think mine syncs automatically to MFP. I never heard of ShapeSense, but I will have to check it out now. I personally feel that FitBit may be inaccurate in terms of calculating calories burned mainly because of differences between certain activities. (ie: walking the dog is different than walking in the park).

    I like that you use the lower number. It's better to be lower and work harder. I'm going to start trying calculating my own calories burned now! Thanks for sharing!
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    I use my Garmon for calories burnt running.
  • vjambois
    vjambois Posts: 39 Member
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    The main reason that I am entering things manually is when I'm doing a non-step based workout. I want it to use my heart rate and not my steps. The Alta HR doesn't automatically pick up "cardio" until after like 10 minutes of solid cardio rate. I'm not exactly sure of the HR threshold but it doesn't pick it up the entire time I'm doing Power Yoga yet it automatically picked it up while I was running around the house getting ready. Sigh.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    I have a Garmin GPS watch with a very high end HRM (Firstbeat). I also have a power meter on my bike, which is a device that measures the amount and rate of energy you put into a bike. It's the most accurate way to measure calories outside of a laboratory. So, being curious, I've been testing the HRM against it to see how accurate of a guess you can get from heart rate data.

    Bottom line is the HRM almost always says too many calories. It's off by anywhere from very little to more than 40 %. Steady state vs intervals doesn't seem to matter for accuracy.
  • Bry_Fitness70
    Bry_Fitness70 Posts: 2,480 Member
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    I have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR that I use to calculate calories burned. Throughout the day, I can view my BMR (resting calories) and active calories. I consider myself in maintenance, so I am basically looking to eat my resting + active calories each day. My BMR is consistently around 2,100 each day, and I work out early or during lunch, so after lunch, I have a good feel for where I will finish each day. For example, yesterday I was near 700 active calories before dinner, so I knew I should finish the day having eaten around 2,800 calories.

    Unfortunately, the interface between MFP and Garmin is awful and the numbers rarely match, so I balance what I log in MFP with what I burn on Garmin and ignore the interface calcs (it isn't as tedious as it sounds)
  • vjambois
    vjambois Posts: 39 Member
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    Yeah, I think I'll stick to grabbing my average HR from my Fitbit and using a third party calculator. I won't really know how accurate my burned calories are for a few more weeks when I can average everything out and compare to weight loss.
  • Melionfire
    Melionfire Posts: 343 Member
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    I use my heart rate from my fit bit and go on shapesense. My fit bit drastically over estimates calories burned. I'd rather be underestimating my calorie burn than overestimating.

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