I wear a Fitbit that tracks my heart rate. I’ve been really stressed recently which is causing my heart rate to spike at times. When this happens, Fitbit tells me that I’m in the “exercise zone” and that I burned a ton of calories. I’m assuming this is because my heart rate falls into the exercise “fat burn” zone, but does my body actually burn any more fat than usual if I’m just sitting at my desk and anxious? Seems way too good to be true…
In: Biology
Lets say you go for a run. Running uses (mostly) your leg muscles and they need to consume more energy. Your heartrate increases to supply more blood to allow the muscles to consume more energy. A vast majority of the energy (calories) burned is from your leg muscles, but a small amount is from the extra energy used by your heart to pump blood.
If you are stressed out then technically you are burning that small amount of extra energy from your heart, but you are burning way less than you would exercising. Your fitbit does not actually measure how much energy you use. I don’t know what all sensors it has, but my guess would be that it only measures heartrate and it can’t tell why your heartrate is increasing and so it just assumes it is because you are exercising.
Latest Answers