Polar fitness watch

CatJill86

Hello, I was thinking about getting a Polar watch for my workouts to keep track of calories I burn and was wondering if anyone has one and if they would recommend it? Also how do you know how many calories you need to burn daily to lose 2 pounds a week

Faithful_Chosen

Fill your stats into MFP and set to lose 2 lb a week. That said, unless you are morbidly obese, 2 lb is far too agressive! Try 0.5 or 1 instead.

And I have. Polar with chest strep. Works brilliantly. Great for tracking steady-state cardio. Definitely recommended!

KittensMaster

Not sure where you are on your journey

But 2 a week is a lot unless you are many many pounds over weight

If you are 20 lbs, a legit 1/2 pound of fat is realistic

Good luck on reaching your fitness goals!

ericGold15

If you mean two pounds of fat tissue (as opposed to fat) a week, that would be a net calorie deficit of ~1000 Cal a day.

Net calorie deficit = Food - BMR - exercise.

I've been debating getting a chest strap also. The devices that only monitor heart rate as the calorie counter are unlikely to give even somewhat reasonably accurate results unless you calibrate them with a VO2max from an exercise laboratory.

A low-tech -- but I suspect as good or better approach is this:

1. Buy a good scale with a fat percentage calculation
2. Log weekly
3. Keep a table (spreadsheet?) of your weight, fat%, and fat weight. Fat weight = total_weight*fat%
4. After a week or two you will see how much fat weight you have lost and you can correlate that with the MFP net calories. E.g, if MFP says you were 8000 Cal net negative and the scale says you lost two fat pounds, then for you (and only you,) it takes 4000 MFP net deficit calories to lose a fat pound.

I tried the above but my skinny legs, no butt or hips and fat trunk are not ideal for that approach.