Is it possible to measure calorie burn from heart rate alone?
I have a Polar heart rate monitor chest strap, and a compatible Android phone on which I can run a number of different apps for recording my heart rate. My primary interest is in how many calories I am burning during any one exercise. I play a variety of sports and run regularly.
What concerns me is that just about every app I've tried comes with an option to select a type of exercise, and then it will calculate different calorie burn rates.
Worse, these different calorie burn rates seem to be derived from a lot of assumptions about how much a person would burn doing these activities, not what I'm actually doing. As a test, I've tried connecting the heart rate monitor, choosing an activity, like "team sports" or "rock climbing", and then just standing there without moving. Regardless of the fact that I'm not actually doing anything, each app shows me burning calories fairly aggressively, as if I were engaged in that activity.
What I really want is an objective measure, something that doesn't try and make guesses based on the type of workout I'm doing, and lets me know what the most likely minimum calorie burn I am doing given my current exertion level, as measured by my heart rate. And, of course, taking in some known measurements about me, such as my height, weight, and age. Maybe GPS and pedometer as well, but whatever measurements it uses, it should be objective and not assumed.
I saw this related question, which leads me to believe that it should be possible to only use heart rate, and yet I can't find an app for Android that does that.
Is it actually not possible? Is there a reason why these apps are all making up numbers and not just going with the heart rate input?
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Yes it is, this is the Formula when you dont know the VO2max (Maximal oxygen consumption)
Male:
((-55.0969 + (0.6309 x HR) + (0.1988 x W) + (0.2017 x A))/4.184) x 60 x T
Female:
((-20.4022 + (0.4472 x HR) - (0.1263 x W) + (0.074 x A))/4.184) x 60 x T
HR = Heart rate (in beats/minute)
W = Weight (in kilograms)
A = Age (in years)
T = Exercise duration time (in hours)
With VO2max known you can calculate the calories burned like this:
Male:
((-95.7735 + (0.634 x HR) + (0.404 x VO2max) + (0.394 x W) + (0.271 x A))/4.184) x 60 x T
Female:
((-59.3954 + (0.45 x HR) + (0.380 x VO2max) + (0.103 x W) + (0.274 x A))/4.184) x 60 x T*
Source: www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx
You have a online Calculater Tool on this Website if you dont want to calculate everything on your own.
On the bottom of the Website you also have some calculations about the Equation for determination of the maximal Heartrate based on age and the equation for Exercise Intensity Conversion from %MHR to %VO2max. But I don't know what to do with these 2 Formula so i didn't post them.
Some guys at Stanford did some actual experiments on this :) Got people to do various forms of exercise, such as sitting, running, and cycling. They measured the oxygen and carbon dioxide in breath, strong proxies for the actual underlying metabolic rate; whilst also measuring heart rate using one of five consumer wrist devices. They then ran a whole bunch of statistical analysis. On the team were Trevor Hastie, who is pretty big on stats :)
An informal write-up is at med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/05/fitness-trackers-accurately-measure-heart-rate-but-not-calories-burned.html statistics notebooks are at 52.9.243.254:8000/user/X1pHXP1Ouf4f/notebooks/Energy%20Analysis.ipynb
Example image from the notebook linked above:
I'm sorry but I don't see being able to calculate without the vo2 max or at least the persons resting heart rate. I use my bmr + (average heart rate - resting heart rate)*6 and it comes out very close to my calorie burn for the day. The 6 is just a variable that works for my body and could just as easily be a 5 for a overweight female or a 7 for a male athlete. There are flaws to this also but it does not come out with outrageously high numbers like that formula
You might be able to calibrate it using a rowing machine, which I assume calculates calories based on force x distance, and/or treadmills which you can set at different gradients to separate out the assumptions about how much you expend running from the part due to gain in height (gain in height x your weight = energy used).
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