Question about Polar FT7

I don't own one but it's my understanding that a HRM works best when you have an elevated HR, like from exercise. I don't know how accurate it would be if you wore it all day while, say, sitting at a desk or something like that. If anyone knows for sure then I'm very interested to find out.

I used to wear mine for a whole day, every now and then to see exactly what I was burning on a given day - so I knew how many calories to eat and/or how much more I needed to workout to lose. However, I know it drains the battery a lot when you keep the monitor on ALL day, especially if you do it frequently. But it is a great idea to get a reading for a day's worth of calories. Remember, depending on the kind of day you have - it may be more or less every other day. I would wear it on a day you know your activity and schedule is going to be typical. Hope this helps! Enjoy it - I just ordered a new one too!

I have considered the same thing. Wearing it for a few days to get an idea of my true baseline. I believe the readings will be accurate because it's a chest strap HRM and a good one at that. I wear it during my lifting routines now and its amazing how few calories traditional lifting burns. Be interesting to know caloric burn during other "life" activities.

I have considered the same thing. Wearing it for a few days to get an idea of my true baseline. I believe the readings will be accurate because it's a chest strap HRM and a good one at that. I wear it during my lifting routines now and its amazing how few calories traditional lifting burns. Be interesting to know caloric burn during other "life" activities.

HR is only one component in the calculation the HRM uses to get cals burned, if you are not exercising it throws the calculation off and you burn would be quite a bit less than the HRM shows.

I use mine for workouts. As for the bodybugg- I had one for 2 years- paid the subscription, was obsessive with the calorie burn. Wore that damn thing on my upper arm with everything. Its not sustainable. It might be sustainable if you are BIGGEST LOSER winner and get paid promotionals. I find that MFP is sustainable as is a heart rate monitor. We have lives- MFP allows us to live it.

Out of curiousity, when I got my FT7, I wore it for an hour of sitting on the couch watching tv (not doing a single thing).

It said I burned nearly 150 calories. That would mean that my 140+ pounds would burn 3600 calories over a 24 hour period doing nothing. Yeah, that's not happening.

It works great for workouts, but it's not a Body Bugg.

Did you calibrate it properly? Was your resting heartrate accurate? How long did you sit? What time of day was it? Was it right after a meal? If so what did the meal consist of? To take a single period of time with no other parameters is bad data.

God, really? I didn't say that I conducted a freaking study, I said what my experience was. It's pretty clear to anyone using the thing to work out that it works best as a indication of short term calories burnt at an elevated heart rate and not as a replacement if you're too cheap to pay the $8 monitoring fee for one of the many available items that are developed to check someone's resting heart rate.

It was two hours after I ate dinner of grilled chicken, broccoli and whole grain pasta with olive oil. I put it on, did some jumping jacks to see if it would register the increased heart rate (it did) so then I reset the calories burnt to zero, waited a half an hour and sat for an hour until I turned it off and then I stood up and took it off. It was calibrated according to the instructions.

You know what -- nevermind. Yes it's a FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC way to check your resting heart rate. And make sure that you eat back most of those thousands of calories it says that you burnt just breathing and sitting watching hockey.

ETA - from the Polar website (here's the link in case you think that quoting something without providing evidence is bad form):
http://www.polar.fi/en/products/get_active/fitness_crosstraining/FT7) Under Full Features and then Polar OwnCal it states, and I quote:

"Polar OwnCal calculates the number of kilocalories expended during training. This feature allows you to follow the kilocalories expended during one training session and cumulative kilocalories expended during several training sessions."

Did you notice the TRAINING part? Not, number of calories you burn sitting on your couch? It mentions training THREE TIMES. Perhaps you should have checked out the Polar site before suggesting Eric read the manual.

just bought an FT7 and am really skeptical about the calories burned.... this is my first HRM and before i was pretty conservative with calorie outputs as i get info from gym equiptment (which seemed to understate calories burned) to enter into MFP....

but walking for 50 minutes @5km or 3.5mph on a treadmill apparently i burned 486 kcal? noooo wayyyy i see that actually happening.. heartrate averaged 123 and maxed at 136.... treadmill said i had burned 108 calories...

yes i am overweight, but on average ill eat my net calories to lose 1.5 pounds a week putting in understated numbers from the treadmill... if i start including the calories burned per the HRM i will be eating on average 300 less calories a day per week and should be dropping heaps more weight.

i dunno, just seems to me that it is being a little overgenerous in terms of calorie output....

i have calibrated it to my current weight, height, gender etc... but i am thinking i should enter a weight about 10% less than my actual weight to get a lower number...

anyone else done the same?