[Yellofly]

Hoping someone can offer some insight:

I just got a Polar F4 heart rate monitor. My resting heart rate is around 104 BPM.

Today, I went to the mall (leisurely shopping, not rushing by any means.), ate at the food court, drove around in the car.

4 hours & 20 minutes of this, my calories burned are at 1796!?!

Doesn't match up with my stats at all. Using the online calculator, my RMR is around 1350 cal/day and my AMR is around 1550 cal/day.

Can anyone help me out with this? I'm guessing the monitor thinks I'm working a lot harder than I am.

I'm worried the monitor might be useless to me if the main reason I bought it was to count calories. What do I do?

Have been on an exercise plan for 10 months, so my HR isn't high because I'm just starting out. I'm 5'5, early 20s.

[Meg]

Hi Yellofly!

Are you absolutely positive that your resting heart rate is 104? As in, it's 104 when you've just woken up and haven't moved around yet? Most adults have a resting HR around 70, with normal daytime HRs ranging from 60 - 100. People who have been exercising for a while generally have a lower resting HR, often in the 50s or 60s, sometimes even the 40s (Lance Armstrong's resting HR is 35 - 36 bpm!)

If your resting HR is genuinely 104, my advice is to check with your doctor to make sure you don't have an underlying health problem that makes it so high. If he gives you an all-clear, then I'd talk to him about appropriate heart rate zones for exercise. You're right, you'd be way off the charts with a resting HR that high.

But first, check and be sure you're right about the 104. That's really, really high for a resting HR.

[Sarah Mac]

Hmm I got a Polar watch also

Does your watch have the test you can take? If so, when you are relaxing in bed do the 5 minute test to make sure Make sure it is a calm environment with no distractions.

Also when you make sure if your HR is correct or not, let your watch run all day. I did and was shocked at how many calories you can burn moving around and being sedentary

Keep us updated!

[Yellofly]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate any help I can get with this.

I put in 104 bpm as resting heart rate because I put on the monitor when I woke up yesterday, I sat in bed and watched TV then read a book for a little while. The whole time, the reading stayed around 104. I figured I was sitting in bed, not moving.

That, and every doctor's visit, and every time I've taken it on my own, my pulse is somewhere between 105 and 110, so I thought that was my normal heart rate.

Anyway, I decided to leave the monitor on for 24 hours to see what kind of statistics I can get. I woke up this morning with the monitor on, and found my bpm was at 70, then a few seconds later was hovering around 82-85. When I sat up in bed, it was around 102-107.

An update on the calorie count: As of this post, I've been monitoring for 20hrs and 4 minutes. Calories burned are a ridiculous 4214. I didn't exercise at all, other than just going to the mall yesterday, which can certainly not be described as exercise. I slept 8 hours of that, and the rest of the time, I was online for a little while, then I pretty much sat in bed. (I've got chronic pain issues) Nothing vigorous.

So here's my question: If I'm supposedly burning over 4000 calories per day, and I'm eating exactly (yes, I count it all) 1300-1600 calories per day, why aren't I dropping 6 or so pounds a week? Right now, I lose around 1 pound per week. I think the monitor's calorie count is way off.

I went back and checked Jillian's "winning by losing" book, and did my BMR and AMR using her formula, and the results came in a little differently than when I used the online calclulator. Using the book, I got: 1578 BMR and 1736 AMR.

I'm completely stumped. The only logical thing I can think of is that I'm simply not burning over 4000 calories like the monitor says I am.

What do you think?

[sacha]

Your monitor is broken. Or is not being used correctly. Either way, the last reading is VERY inaccurate. That's equivalent to your resting calorie burn *and* another 3 or so hours of mountain climbing or running 4 hours straight at a 7 minute/mile place.

[Yellofly]

So the grand total after 24 hours monitoring is 5101 calories burned, according to the monitor. Average Bpm 95, Highest Bpm 165.

The only numbers I put in were height, weight, and age.

Sarah Mac - my monitor doesn't have that feature. Good idea, though. I wish it did.

So... is it me? or should I return the monitor for an identical one and hope it works out better?