FAO HRM Users

WelshPhil1975

From being shamefully low on exercise over the past 39 years (I am 39 now) I have started to be more and more into getting fit. Mostly through power walking and some swimming, but I am really starting to get the exercise bug lately, so I am looking into other forms of cardio aswell.

I have been seriously considering buying a HRM (the Polar FT7 watch looks like my most likely purchase, if I decide to get one) to help me with this, but one of the main reasons has been so I can fully take advantage of the fat burning zone. Now, I am brand new to this, so as I research this online, all I am reading is conflicting articles saying it’s a myth, counter-balanced with articles telling me it’s very much real.

Whilst I want to get/keep fit for the obvious health purposes, I most certainly want it to aid my weight loss aswell (alongside my calorie controlled eating, before anyone points out that it’s a calorie deficit that matters here). But because my knowledge is pretty sketchy at best on this whole subject and there doesn’t seem to be a definitive/majority view on it, is anybody who uses a HRM able to speak from experience?

I don’t want to become Olympic standard, I don’t even want to spend hours & hours at the gym, I simply want to spend, say, 30-45 minutes, a few days a week, on cardio workouts (YouTube videos, etc, initially – I can’t afford gym membership at the moment) and my regular long walks.

I’ve already got a Fitbit and it is the best thing I have purchased in a long while, but I feel I want to get a more accurate calorie burn reading to use alongside it, but I keep coming back to the question…is a HRM worth it? Will I really benefit from it (both for fitness and weight loss) for my expected level of activity?


I don’t think being told if the fat burning zone is a myth or not will help, because enough people believe it as don’t believe it, so I won’t be any closer to knowing what the actual answer is, but I would certainly value the opinion of people who use a HRM for the purposes that I potentially plan to.

Cheers

Rugbynutter

I love my HRM and wouldn't be without it. My 1st was a Polar and probably one of the best I had. I mainly used it to calculate calorie burn to get a more accurate figure. I use a Garmin Vivofit now with the aim of giving myself a kick up the backside if I'm not working so hard.

BrianSharpe

WelshPhil1975 wrote: »

I have been seriously considering buying a HRM (the Polar FT7 watch looks like my most likely purchase, if I decide to get one) to help me with this, but one of the main reasons has been so I can fully take advantage of the fat burning zone. Now, I am brand new to this, so as I research this online, all I am reading is conflicting articles saying it’s a myth, counter-balanced with articles telling me it’s very much real.

Cheers

The fat-burning zone is not a myth but its application is misunderstood/misrepresented. At lower intensity exercise you do burn a higher proportion of calories from fat, there's no denying that, but in the context of weightloss it's not useful in that fat storage changes from day to day, if you have a caloric surplus one day it gets stored and if you have a deficit, like money in bank account, it's available for withdrawal. The amount of fat you burn during exercise is less important that the total number of calories expended, which at higher intensities is a higher number (you burn roughly double the number of net calories running a mile as you do walking a mile)

Having said that, not everyone wants to be a runner or necessarily become athletic vs just enjoying good cardiovascular health - both are useful goals, and power walking / swimming will provide you with those benefits.

I'm not convinced that most HRMs (including many of the more economical Polars) are terribly accurate, most will allow you to enter basic data (age, gender, height, weight) but don't allow for things like VO2max or adjusting actual zones (they're different for everyone and most HRMs use 220-your age as the MaxHR which is not terribly useful) and their algorithms incorrectly infer a linear correlation between heart rate and caloric expenditure.

They are, however, very useful in terms of tracking changes in fitness. A workout today may yield (and I'm just making up a number here) an average HR of 155bpm, repeating this workout in 6 months or a year and seeing your average HR drop is a solid indicator of improved fitness. You can also use it to observe your recovery rate (how quickly your heart rate returns to normal after exercise) and resting heart rate.

Worthwhile investment? I think so but they're not the holy grail when it comes to measuring caloric expenditure.