calories burned on HRM

GREAT question and one that I am VERY interested in the answer to.......

This is a bit of cheating but not entirely. during that phase you would burn more than at rest, but not as much as if you where still running. the equation in the HRM also assumes you are moving the whole time, so during strength training and recovery will over estimate the burn based on HR due to the other parts of the equation being off.

If anything I would stop it right after and the "after burn" should make up the difference from you not deducting your resting burn from cals burned.

HRMs tell you total cals burned, not just cals burned from exercise. In other words if you didn't workout you would have burned some of those cals anyway and MFP already accounts for those in your daily intake. If your maintenance is 2000 cals you would burn 1.39 cals/minute at rest so for an hour long workout you should back out 83 cals (1.39*60), since there is an after burn those cals should be taken care of by the over estimation by not removing maintenance cals.

Some my disagree with me, but personally, I would count everything above your normal resting heart rate directly after exercise. So say that your resting heart rate is normally between 70-80 bpm, then I would count anything above 100 bpm.

The reason I say above 100 bpm is because your heart rate can easily reach 100 bpm during normal day to day activity.

Just my .02 worth. I am sure others will have a different opinion.

This is a bit of cheating but not entirely. during that phase you would burn more than at rest, but not as much as if you where still running. the equation in the HRM also assumes you are moving the whole time, so during strength training and recovery will over estimate the burn based on HR due to the other parts of the equation being off.

If anything I would stop it right after and the "after burn" should make up the difference from you not deducting your resting burn from cals burned.

HRMs tell you total cals burned, not just cals burned from exercise. In other words if you didn't workout you would have burned some of those cals anyway and MFP already accounts for those in your daily intake. If your maintenance is 2000 cals you would burn 1.39 cals/minute at rest so for an hour long workout you should back out 83 cals (1.39*60), since there is an after burn those cals should be taken care of by the over estimation by not removing maintenance cals.

+1

Especially the part about the difference between your regular resting burn and what you burn during exercise. You're "double dipping" your calorie burn by running your HRM longer than you exercise. You run the risk of eating more than you burned if you eat back your exercise calories and that will keep you from losing weight.

I agree - the HRM "thinks" you're still running after you have stopped, so even though you may have a high heart rate, you're not actually using your thighs, your abs, your calves etc (i.e all those bits that actually burn the calories!). It doesn't know this, so it just keeps on calculating the calorie burn, assuming you're still going.

Now true, you DO continue to burn calories after you have finished exercising, but it's probably best to just log the calories you burn while you're actually exercising and regard those "afterburn" calories as a nice extra. Besides, as ADZAK says, some of the afterburn figures given on the web are wildly exaggerated - one recent study showed that very High Intensity Interval Training could mean that athletes could burn an extra 30% of their workout calories, after their workout. But remember, this was HIIT in athletes! This probably doesn't add up to much more than the kind of numbers ADZAK suggests for most people doing their daily workouts, if that.

Best to be honest with yourself, and just count the workout calories. If there is any afterburn, then that will just be a nice surprise for you the next time you get on the scales!

@ Timdog 57

If it's any use, I use a Beurer PM25 and it says in the manual that it calculates calorie burn from the usual inputted data (weight, gender, height etc) and heart rate. However, the algorithm it uses is based on "moderately fast running." I've noticed that that does seem to have an impact on what it says. When I wore it for an hour whilst typing, it said I had burned something like 500 calories. At first I thought it was broken until I realised it just assumed that I had a 72 heart rate "whilst running", so must be super-fit. Similarly, it seems to overestimate calories burned whist doing HIIT on the exercise bike (again, the bike could be wrong, but it's top of the range and I'd imagine it's more accurate as it knows how many watts are being produced and how much energy needs to be put into it to generate those watts. Also the numbers do seem very high - 900ish per session). I imagine that's because while you're doing the easier bit of the interval you're not working as hard, but your heart rate is still sky high. It doesn't know this so just assumes you're still pedalling away and adds on the calorie burn accordingly.

It does seem more accurate on moderate pace cycling and fast walking, however (when using online calorie calculators to compare). I don't actually run, unfortunately so I can't determine how accurate it is on the activity algorithm it actually uses.

Hopefully Azdak can add something to this.

@Azdak- Not to highjack the thread, but I have a question about something you said in this post.

"HRMs cannot accurately estimate calories burned during non-aerobic exercise conditions"

What level of accuracy for non-aerobic excercise are you thinking a HRM can display? I just purchased a HRM (Polar FT7) mostly because I wanted to track calories for strength training sessions and interval sessions better. I'm interested in tracking HR, but I'm far more interested in calories. Do you think the level of accuracy in my HRM is going to be any better than the calculations that MFP is giving me? When you say they're not accurate, how not-accurate do you mean?

The algorithms that Polar uses to estimate caloric expenditure are all verified against standard analysis of expired gas during steady-state aerobic exercise. In other words, they develop the algorithms, predict energy expenditure in a group of people doing a particular workout (or exercising at various intensity levels). The subjects then do the workout(s) and actual oxygen uptake is measured. The actual results are compared against the estimated numbers and that produces your "accuracy" percentage. Obviously, there is a lot more interim research that takes place first.

The important thing to remember is that the prediction equations are based on heart rate response under specific conditions. Heart rate can increase for different reasons under different exercise conditions. Sometimes the heart rate increase reflects an increase in oxygen uptake (which means increased caloric expenditure), sometimes the heart rate increase occurs with NO increase in oxygen uptake or calories burned. Under those conditions, HRMs are not accurate.

Strength training falls into the "not accurate" column. That is because HR increases, but due to a different mechanism compared to aerobic exercise. Because oxygen uptake does not increase, neither does direct caloric burn. (This does not mean that strength training does not burn calories--it just means the effort cannot be captured with an HRM).

Interval training lies somewhere in the middle. For HIIT, the alternating high/low intensities will not mimic the same conditions as steady state cardio. Circuit-type interval training can fall somewhere in between--depends on the exact structure of the workout. For example, one workout studied showed that the actual oxygen uptake during exercise was 18%-38% less than expected given the average heart rate for the workout.

So the question of accuracy depends somewhat on your expectations. And most exercise tables (on MFP and elsewhere) are much worse when it comes to things like interval training. I would say that for a typical HIIT session, if the HRM says you burned 325 calories, the real number might range from 250 to 450. Unless you have a metabolic cart, nothing will be much more accurate than that. I don't know what level of "accuracy" you were expecting, but even under the best of circumstances HRMs will be no better than 80%-85% accurate in my experience--and that's only with steady state cardio.

Alright, so I just used my FT7 for the first time today, and it was during a strength training session. When I got done my HRM told me I'd burned 900 calories, and for the same workout MFP tells my I burned 390 calories! I expected there to be some difference, but I didn't expect a 250% difference. Since I eat my exercise back, my inclination is to use the calories that MFP gives me thereby erring on the side of eating fewer calories. I have to say though, that the dramatic difference really makes me wonder what my actual burn really is.

The questions swirling in my head are:

Is my HRM closer to the truth even for a strength training session?

Is MFP actually closer to the truth for a strength training session?

Where would a product like Body Bugg come out in this mix?