Do You Burn More Calories When Your Heart Beats Faster?

Your heart rate is the most crucial factor in determining how many calories you burn while exercising. Generally, you burn more calories when your heart beats faster. However, trying to raise your heart rate as much as possible to lose more weight becomes more counterproductive and dangerous as you get older, particularly if you’re not physically fit. The strength of your muscles, including your heart muscle, also plays a role in how many calories you burn.

Calories are a measurement of energy. You need to expend energy to keep your heart, kidney, lungs and other internal organs healthy enough to remain alive. The average adult man needs to burn about 1,300 calories daily to remain alive, while the average woman needs to burn about 1,100, according to the college textbook “Essentials for Health and Wellness.” You need and burn more calories when your internal organs have to work harder. When you exercise, your heart needs to work hard enough to deliver enough oxygen to fuel your muscles. As you work harder, your heartbeat, usually measured in heartbeats per minute, beats faster and produces more oxygen. The larger amount of oxygen increases how many calories you burn while you’re exercising.

Your resting heart rate doesn’t change as you age, but your maximum heart rate does. In addition, the maximum output of blood from the heart decreases as you age. Consequently, older people have more difficulty burning calories. Your maximum heart rate is about 220 heartbeats per minute minus your age, although physically fit older people can have a higher maximum heart rate than out-of-shape younger people, according to The Merck Manual of Medical Information. Many exercise experts recommend keeping your heart rate below 90 percent of its maximum, because exercising too intensely can increase your risk of a heart problem and harm your performance. You burn more calories when you perform better. Bicycling 15 mph, for example, generally burns more calories than bicycling 10 mph.

Calories-burned charts show that you burn more calories when your heart beats faster. The “Harvard Heart Letter” study shows that a 155-pound person exercising on a stationary bicycle for one hour burns 782 calories exercising vigorously and 520 calories exercising moderately. You are exercising vigorously when your heart rate is 70 percent to 89 percent of your maximum heart rate and exercising moderately when it’s 55 percent to 69 percent of your maximum heart rate. Similarly, a 155-pound person exercising for one hour burns 744 calories swimming vigorously, 446 calories swimming in general, 632 calories rowing vigorously on a stationary machine and 520 calories rowing moderately. In addition, exercises such as fast running and fast bicycling that require a faster heart rate burn far more calories than team sports that put less of a burden on your heart.

Fitter people burn more calories because they can exercise for longer periods and can perform better. This is true although their resting heart rates are lower and their heart rates drop more quickly after vigorous exercise, according to “Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease.” In addition, stronger people burn more calories because muscle burns calories faster than fat. Men’s metabolic rate is 5 percent to 10 percent faster than women’s because their muscle mass percentage is nearly double.