Calories Burned w/ HRM vs Calculators/MFP

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LemonLizard
LemonLizard Posts: 86 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm just wondering how to decide what calories to put in for exercise. With certain activities, my HRM gives me a much higher calorie burned estimate than calculators or what MFP would suggest. I have a heart rate monitor, a chest strap with watch, that allows me to put in my age and weight. Should I adjust the numbers and average them out, or go with what the heart rate monitor says?

Walking for 30 minutes, incline 4 on the treadmill at 3.5 mph says 414 calories burned from my HRM. Is that accurate, or a large overestimation? My heart rate averages around 145-155 doing that. I'm 5'2, 144lb.

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  • chris_in_cal
    chris_in_cal Posts: 2,289 Member
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    LemonLizard wrote: »
    I have a heart rate monitor, a chest strap with watch, that allows me to put in my age and weight

    What kind of watch are you using nowadays. No tech has advanced more rapidly over the last five years.
  • Moondancer77
    Moondancer77 Posts: 17 Member
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    I use a heart rate strap and all that too, but if I had to manually add it in, then I'd google "calories burned for walking at 3.5 mph 144 lb woman". I used to do that all the time before heart rate trackers became popular and it worked out fine for me. Generally 1 mile is about 100 calories, so you burned about 175 calories. I also always felt it was better to underestimate than overestimate.
  • chris_in_cal
    chris_in_cal Posts: 2,289 Member
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    Moondancer77 wrote: »
    Generally 1 mile is about 100 calories, so you burned about 175 calories.

    I like your laissez faire guesstimates. You are an extreme. Other people here are asking about the weight loss in urine, how many grams of carbohydrates are in a slice of bacon, how many calories are burned during sex, and how MFP can estimate 1347 calories per day when clearly 1322 is much more accurate. Way on the other extreme.

    I'm glad you have something you are comfortable with. What strap do you have?
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,223 Member
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    Answering an unanswered OP after 9 years, I don't think I've seen that before 😆

    I would use this calculator (set at net calories):
    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs
    Although I wouldn't know what grade to enter for the incline.
  • chris_in_cal
    chris_in_cal Posts: 2,289 Member
    edited August 2023
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    Lietchi wrote: »
    Answering an unanswered OP after 9 years, I don't think I've seen that before 😆

    I would use this calculator (set at net calories):
    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs
    Although I wouldn't know what grade to enter for the incline.

    OP announced her grand return today. It's worth a celebration. @LemonLizard

    I think a $20 USD fitbit would be as/more accurate than the top of the line from 5 years ago.

    A rough estimate on calories burned from walking using a $20 fitbit, is about as good as is needed nowadays.

    Whereas five years ago, things were all over the place.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,223 Member
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    Aha, welcome back LemonLizard!

    As for the 20$ Fitbit: perhaps.
    I've still seen some way high estimates from Fitbit for some people in the fairly recent past, but perhaps they are a minority and less than before.

    I would still recommend checking with the calculator - not each time, but occasionally to get a baseline idea of accuracy. Certainly if the walking is frequent/for long durations.
  • LemonLizard
    LemonLizard Posts: 86 Member
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    I love this so much lol, 9 years late - better late than never! 🤣 I don't use the heart strap monitor anymore (I'm sure I've lost it somewhere in between multiple moves) but Fitbit is what I've been using now and I love it!
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,986 Member
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    Where are these $20 Fitbits sold? I don't see anything on Amazon when I select "up to $25."
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,986 Member
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    In case anyone reading is wondering about the original question, here's my answer on a similar thread:
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Presumably if I had MapMyFitness synced to MFP, MFP would only give me the exercise calories, but looking at the number in the MMF app, I also get BEE calories. Until I figured this out, I was baffled by what seemed like freakishly high numbers.

    I just enter exercise from the MFP database.

    https://support.mapmyfitness.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500009117762-Why-Aren-t-My-Calories-Displaying-Correctly-

    "... Our products calculate total burn, which includes caloric burn for both resting and active phases of activity. This means the calories you would typically burn by merely being alive automatically add to the number of calories you would burn from whichever activity you do."
  • chris_in_cal
    chris_in_cal Posts: 2,289 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Where are these $20 Fitbits sold? I don't see anything on Amazon when I select "up to $25."

    My Fitbit Inspire 2 ( the Inspire 3 is out now) was $20 used on ebay. It has worked flawlessly for a year now.
  • chris_in_cal
    chris_in_cal Posts: 2,289 Member
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    LemonLizard wrote: »
    I don't use the heart strap monitor anymore (I'm sure I've lost it somewhere in between multiple moves) but Fitbit is what I've been using now and I love it!
    Any fitness technology that you have that is over nine years old probably should be lost. :wink:
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,660 Member
    edited September 2023
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Where are these $20 Fitbits sold? I don't see anything on Amazon when I select "up to $25."

    This is similar to what I bought, but, as mentioned in another post, they are not fitbits.crkdbnhbqb2r.jpg
  • zebasschick
    zebasschick Posts: 968 Member
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    I think the only way to be sure is to experiment. MFP gives me a higher burn than my weight loss suggests that I actually have, but my current heart rate monitor which is an old polar, gives me approximately half those calories. Other devices and apps have given me even higher calorie burns, but judging by my lack of weight loss when I use them, they were incorrect.

    That being said, I try and judge my burn on treadmill with a 5% incline sort of independently of those things, because walking on a treadmill gives lower calories even using the heart rate monitor when using MapMyFitness.

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