HR feature adding too many calories due to low resting HR

[slickmickey]

so i'm asking this for my husband - last summer he had a massive heart attack and has since been put on many different meds, including beta blockers and blood pressure pills which can have the side effect of lowering your heart rate - which is good, less stress/lower risk of anyother heart attack!

His resting rate is the low 50s now, but as soon as he stands/starts walking it can go to as high as 110.  because of this, his fitbit is always putting him into fatburn zones and throwing off his calories (we sync with myfitnesspal).  he wants the heart rate feature since he wants to keep an eye on his heart rate (just to be safe!) but he doesnt know what to do about all these exercise calories it's trying to give him back.  is there way way to set it so it doesnt do this?  he tried creating "custom zones" that were 120+ but it doesnt seem to be doing anything different than it's default zones.  yesterday he walked about 4500 steps all day, but it gave him back 2000 calories due to the heart rate being so much higher when he is walking then resting.

[Blade7658]

Does his HR stay above 110 for a long time when he is up? Standing up, it is common for your HR to jump but usually it comes back down. If that is the case, the calorie burn should be fine.  Can you give us an idea of average daily calorie burn? The device isn't meant to be accurate to within 2%, but knowing the number (and his height/weight) we could help you know if it is close to reasonable.

Hope he stays feeling well!!

Keep stepping

[slickmickey]

Yes, his HR does stay up - it might go down to about 90 if he's just standing for a bit but is usually 100-110ish while walking (like grocery shopping, its usually 105 mid-trip cause i make him check every now and then).

I dont know his calorie burn, sorry but it really wouldnt be more than BMR.  But he's 6'1, 275, mostly sedintary.  an average day is under 10K steps.  No exercise other than daily walking (we havent started exercise walking again yet)

[Ozzie65]

Hi @slickmickey - The only option that I can think of is to disconnect his Fitbit account from MyFitnessPal. He can always log his activity in MFP manually, but this would cut out the issues with the heartrate.

[Rich_Laue]

 @slickmickey I can think of one option to try, go to this help page and scroll down to Custom. You'll find info on how to setup custom HR Zones

[Blade7658]

It is very possible his heart rate really is 90 when he is up and around (for real), which does mean he would burn a few more calories.  I looked up his daily calorie burn based on height, weight, low activity and a made up age of 65 (it won't make that huge of a difference) and he is burning 2,500 calories a day per the calculator I used. If you are getting in that neighborhood (I would say + or - 5% is reasonable which means 2,250 - 2,750) than I wouldn't worry about the HR issue affecting calories.  One of the screens on the Surge tells you how many calories you burned and the app or website will also tell you what you burned thus far today and the previous days as well (you have to look at previous days).