HRM and BMR

Hi! I'm not an expert in the area, but it seems to make sense because it is caculating how many alories you burn in that amount of time.

Technically this is correct but most of us don't bother with the calculations since the calorie counts and exercise burns are relatively inaccurate anyway and the amount is rather small. What many of us do is not to fully eat all the exercise calories all the time so we have a little leeway.

I have a Polar FT7 HRM that I wear when I exercise.

I read a post on the forums about having to minus an hours worth of my BMR from the calories burnt on my HRM because MFP already takes my BMR into account when it works out my calories.

So, if I work out for an hour and burn 400 calories, do I then minus my BMR divided by 24 (which in my case would be approx 75cals) and only eat back 325cals?

Confused.

If you are burning 400 calories during exercise, I would be wary about eating back exercise calories at all. If you weigh over 200lbs or have a body fat percentage over 40%, you would probably be better off increasing daily calories to 1400-1500 and not counting workout calories at all (at least not in your eating plan).

BMR calories fall well within the "standard of error" of estimating your daily calorie balance. You cannot track calories to that level of precision, so IMO, it's not worth going through the mental gymnastics to try and figure it out.

Technically, you should subtract the "Calories burned from normal daily activity" on your goals page, not the BMR calories.

Azdak, thanks for your response, can you tell me why?

(I mean, I understand any exercise is better than none, but I'm not sure if you are implying that I might not be working hard enough.)

Sorry, not trying to imply anything about your work ethic. I think that people in general spend too much time trying to achieve precise calorie counts when it's just not possible to do so. You wrote that you were wondering about backing out BMR calories, and you "eat back" the remaining 325 calories.

I just don't think it's that important to be that precise. If you are burning roughly 400 calories per workout, IMO it's better to just eat a few more calories each day and not worry about counting or "eating back" exercise calories at all. You won't go into 'starvation mode" and you will probably maintain a larger calorie deficit.

Here is more detail if you are interested: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/why-i-don-t-count-exercise-calories-114873

Dont really understand much of that lol, I was told when using HRM to up your time of exercise on MFP as the HRM is more acurate as it is set to you and gives a more acurate reading of calories burnt?