New to cardio and RHR keeps going up!

[theseay]

Hi there, Fitbit Community!

At the beginning of this week, I started to do 15 minutes of cardio a day to improve my resting heart rate. Even cut out sweets and alcoh However, every morning when I check it, it has increased 1 beat from the day behind. A steady trend upward instead of downward. Why could this be? I’m getting a little worried my heart can’t handle even 15 minutes of vigorous exercise. 

Some specs about me: 26, female, 115 pounds, eat relatively healthy

[theseay]

EDIT:

I clicked post before I was ready to send. Sorry! Still new here. Anyway, my specs are:

26, female; 115lbs, eat relatively healthy, never exercised until this week, RHR at beginning of week:

71bpm, RHR now that I’ve done 5 days of cardio: 75bpm. 

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

[Dominique]

You can’t really draw any meaningful conclusions after a mere five days of observations. If you know you are doing the right things (clearly, exercising is better than not exercising), just trust the process and continue what you are doing.

It is normal for your RHR to fluctuate from day to day. Added stress can result in a temporary increase in RHR, and including exercising into your previously sedentary routine may constitute a source of stress.

Also have a look at your cardio fitness score, and how it evolves over time (though again, you will need several weeks or months before you can draw meaningful conclusions).

[Soniamber]

Well to

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@theseay wrote:

Hi there, Fitbit Community!

At the beginning of this week, I started to do 15 minutes of cardio a day to improve my resting heart rate. Even cut out sweets and alcoh However, every morning when I check it, it has increased 1 beat from the day behind. A steady trend upward instead of downward. Why could this be? I’m getting a little worried my heart can’t handle even 15 minutes of vigorous exercise. 

Some specs about me: 26, female, 115 pounds, eat relatively healthy

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[Soniamber]

You would need to train consistently at-least for 6 months to evaluate your resting heart rate. If you are looking to analyse the progress in between, I would suggest keep doing your best and may be every month you can have a check on how is the progress, and over a period of 6-8 months you will have sufficient data points to analyse. 

[SunsetRunner]

RHR depends on very many factors. It depends on your fitness level, on your sleep quality, on your health, on the food you eat, on the stress level and I could go on with this list. Just a few days of cardio won't really show meaningful results and increase/decrease in RHR are very normal thing.

See the spike below. My RHR increased quite a lot within a few days. Why? I got sick with fever, I was abroad where temperatures were reaching 47 degrees of Celsius ( very hot! ), I stayed active exercising etc. My RHR responded to it. Then when I started getting well the RHR started dropping again. It is just one example and small changes in RHR because of random factors are nothing unusual.

[writergal28]

That time of the month also affects your heart rate!

[Colinm39]

@theseay  Is your Fitbit a sleep tracking Fitbit, because it's important you wear that while asleep because Fitbit state that in their RHR help...and my graph below shows that.

Here is my RHR plotted against my sleep average HR and it definitely follows..  The sleep spikes are caused by exercising too late at night and the one large one in May 2018 is after I fell and jarred my body and head.. in the late evening.

It's winter next month here, and you will notice the 2018 Autumn follows a pattern of this years Autumn. Also we had above average night temperatures in January 2019. In the winter period you can see what extra blankets or a Doona affects HR

The spike with decreasing gradient between April and May this year was the after affects of my Flu injection. I felt OK ..

[Dulce9]

That was my experience when I started increasing my cardio exercise--my RHR went up about 5 beats altogether.  When life events intervened and I wasn't able to exercise, it went back down 5 beats.  Then when I was able to exercise again, it went back up promptly.  I haven't seen any decrease in my RHR after several months of regular cardio.

[Dominique]

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@Dulce9 wrote:

I haven't seen any decrease in my RHR after several months of regular cardio.

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How about your cardio fitness score: has it also remained unchanged after all these months?

[Dulce9]

Hi Dominique, nice to see you again!  Because I have a low RHR (50-55), my cardio fitness score has pretty much always been "excellent," even as a beginner.  My mom told me that when she was an athletically inclined young woman, her heart rate was in the 40s.  

[kaelarenee7]

After getting my Fitbit and working out more, I was able to get my RHR from the high 60's to the high 50's. Then I got sick, and then I hurt my back, so it went back up to the high 60's and even 70. It has taken a couple of months of regular exercise to get it back down to the low 60's and high 50's. Give it time and keep up with your workouts, and after awhile you should see a decrease.

Keep in mind, as other people have mentioned, there are other factors and you will have fluctuations.

[sabinus]

Take a squizz of lime every morning before you take in anything,then you try to work out only for 15minutes.

Then you will see a positive answer.