Heart Rate Monitors
 

Kind of an odd question, but I am just curious. To those of you who have the heart rate monitors, do you only have them on you when you are biking? Or do you keep them on for the rest of the day to get a total for calories burned?

I only use mine when on the bike and when running. Otherwise it's a fancy watch. I don't see how any of them can accurately calculate the calories burned.

I've had mine on all day before and I found out that I only burn a few hundred calories if I don't exercise!

Using a heart rate monitor during the day is useless to find out how many calories you are burning. Your body burns calories when it thinks, when you are day dreaming, your burning calories. Brushing your teeth burns 30 calories, walking around (if you work in an office perhaps) probably 200. Your HRM won't calculate these things...

I don't like wearing my heart rate chest strap when riding, it's not comfortable and I occasionally have to repositiong the sensor mid ride to keep a signal. I usually use my breathing as an indicator. I want to work hard enough that I am breathing hard but not so much that I am gasping. That should keep me in my training range.

I mostly use my HRM when I do something really strenuous that keeps me anabolic so I dont' push myself dangerously. (Like climbing stairs at work) Also sometimes it's interesting to see your hear rate during daily activities like cleaning.

Any caloric loss calculation from heart rate monitors would have to be calibrated and probably to each individual and maybe to each kind of activity.

Even keeping track of oxygen consumed and co2 generated is not totally accurate for estimating caloric expenditure. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats each generate different amounts of CO2 for caloric expenditure. So you have to know what fuel is being burnt and that is largely a guess unless you use radio labels (radioactive isotopes to keep track of proteins, fats and carbohydrates).

If I remember correctly just the maintenance of the human nervous system requires about 300-500 calories per day and that would happen even if you slept all day. Extremely sedantary people can get their daily caloric consumption down close to that though.

If you are somewhat active, your caloric burn is much higher. The highest caloric burn that I heard of ever being recorded for a profession was for lumber jacks in the winter using hand tools and they burnt about 10000-12000 calories per day or more than most people burn in a week. I guess that is why they ate so many flapjacks.