heart rate monitor's

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brockbennett1981
brockbennett1981 Posts: 187 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Do they accuretly count calories and witch ones are good? Thanks you

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  • kpodaru
    kpodaru Posts: 133 Member
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    i use one with a heart rate strap; closest thing you can get to monitoring your heart rate and cals burned. i have an older model (polar ft60) but want a new garmin one!
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,978 Member
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    I also have a Polar with a chest strap and love it. Just remember that HRMs are for steady state cardio only. For anything else they can be wildly inaccurate.
  • strong_curves
    strong_curves Posts: 2,229 Member
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    None of them are 100% accurate, but they can give you good estimates of calorie burns.
  • bfanny
    bfanny Posts: 440 Member
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    Why is that? That is not accurate for say lifting!
    It sure beats the machines @ the gym that give crazy amounts of cals
  • brockbennett1981
    brockbennett1981 Posts: 187 Member
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    Anyone else?
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
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    None of them actually counts calories. They count heart beats and plug that number into a formula. How close the resulting caloric estimation is depends on quite a few variables ... what activity you're doing, model of HRM, etc. They are not inherently more or less accurate than a machine ... again that depends on what HRM, what machine, and what activity.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/773451/is-my-hrm-giving-me-incorrect-calorie-burn/p1
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,978 Member
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    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

    gives a good explanation on why they are for steady cardio.
  • brockbennett1981
    brockbennett1981 Posts: 187 Member
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    Thanks kami and brian
  • tekkiechikk
    tekkiechikk Posts: 375 Member
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    I have a Polar FT7 HRM (chest strap). The amount of calories it says I burn from cardio is always really close to what MFP calculates (e.g. treadmill, 3.5 MPH for 68 minutes yesterday and the difference was only 2 calories, and that's pretty consistent for all my treadmill sessions). My NordicTrack treadmill, on the other hand, overestimates calorie burn by nearly 100 calories every time I use it for more than an hour. Of course, treadmills are notoriously inaccurate that way from what I've read.

    Have had the FT7 for a couple months and am consistently losing weight by relying on the calorie burn it tells me (along with recording my food and staying under calories), so it must be somewhat accurate.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,943 Member
    edited May 2015
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    brockbennett1981 wrote: »
    Do they accuretly count calories and witch ones are good? Thanks you
    I've had a Polar FT7 for almost two years that I love. For me, the counting of calories has been more accurate than anything else. I lost most of my 44 pounds while using my heart rate monitor during cardio, and I've been using it during my almost a year and a half maintenance.

    Even though the numbers are estimates, I know they are accurate for me due to my results of losing weight and maintaining.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,943 Member
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    tekkiechikk wrote: »
    I have a Polar FT7 HRM (chest strap). The amount of calories it says I burn from cardio is always really close to what MFP calculates (e.g. treadmill, 3.5 MPH for 68 minutes yesterday and the difference was only 2 calories, and that's pretty consistent for all my treadmill sessions). My NordicTrack treadmill, on the other hand, overestimates calorie burn by nearly 100 calories every time I use it for more than an hour. Of course, treadmills are notoriously inaccurate that way from what I've read.

    Have had the FT7 for a couple months and am consistently losing weight by relying on the calorie burn it tells me (along with recording my food and staying under calories), so it must be somewhat accurate.

    Both gym treadmills I run on render numbers anywhere from 150-250 calories more than what my heart rate monitor does (they are Precor treadmills), and the elliptical is about 150 calories more than my heart rate monitor.
  • Nuke_64
    Nuke_64 Posts: 406 Member
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    I have a 3 year old Garmin. Its the standard chest strap with a cheaper watch. I currently used Endomondo app on my phone (Galaxy S5) to connect to it. That adds GPS, uses a few more parameters to figure out calories burned, and uploads to MFP. I eat back half of the calories it reports I burn that day, and I bank the rest to maybe use later in the week (like the past 4 days of riding for tonight's pizza and beer--I will still have some left in the bank). You can just buy the chest strap for under $50.
  • brockbennett1981
    brockbennett1981 Posts: 187 Member
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    Do u just wear it all day and put the chest strap on when working out and watch stays on?

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