Heart rate monitors calculating calories burnt

[Soleft]

Are heart rate monitors calculations on how many calories you burn accurate? Mine takes age, sex, height, weight into account.

The reason I ask this is I was on my exercise bike yesterday. I have a heart rate monitor which also tells me how many calories I'm burning. I usually reach about 120 bpm and just stay at that, in an hour session I burn about 300 calories, so says my heart rate monitor.

Yesterday I tried something new, swinging my arms like I was doing the butterfly stroke while on my exercise bike. Admittedly I looked a little silly like the wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man. What I did notice was that my BPM went up to 150-170! I was burning more than 10 calories per minute. By the end 50 minute session I had around 600 calories burnt off.

So is what my heart rate monitor saying true? Am I really burning all of those calories off? I just find it hard to believe it, because it doesn't tire me out at all and if I was to go for a fast jog it would wear me out quicker but I would only hit 150bpm.

[smokeater]

Given what it takes into account, it's probably giving you a reasonably accurate figure. It'll likely be off a bit because none of them are perfect. Calorie burning is a weird thing because sometimes you don't feel like you've done much work. Would you believe that you burn 123 calories just by drinking an 8oz glass of ice water? Your body uses that much energy just to bring the water to your core temperature. Yet you don't feel a thing.

[desslok]

since it doesn't know your VO2 max, its making an educated guess, similar to if you put in the info into one of the online calculators. Close enough for most people, as long as you use the same way to calculate to keep consistent.

[daniel327]

I looked a little silly like the wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man.



Whacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men are not silly.

Al Harrington runs a serious emporium and warehouse dealing in these items.