Polar Heart Rate Monitors??

clcastro34

Has anyone tried using a heart rate monitor for burning fat?

I've been using one for the past week and was just wondering if anyone else has any experience with them and how effective doing cardio in your fat burning zone is. What I'm worried about is burning more fat calories yea but burning less calories overall because I'll be doing less intensity.

Could use any advice I'm still new to it!!

BeautifulScarsWECHANGED

Hmmm....not sure if this is going to be helpful or not, but I just got my Polar HRM and used it for the first time today. My experience so far is that MFP overestimated my caloried burn....it's good to get the HRM to be sure you have an accurate count of actual calories burned.

As far as fat calories vs overall caloires...I have no idea. A calorie burned is a calorie burned in my book! :laugh:

Laceylala

Do a search on the forums for HRMs and find a post by Azdak. He wrote a really good post about HRMs and their uses.

I believe that at the end of the day the terms "fat cals" and "cardio cals" on the HRMs and the various heart rates attributed to them are not valid and should be ignored. Just go for a higher heart rate than normal because you aren't going to burn less fat cals working harder than you would if you stay at that lower "fat burning" rate.

elzettel

I really like my Polar HRM. MFP and my elliptical were overestimating my calories burned so I was happy to get something a little more accurate. You do burn more calories at a higher intensity however you burn more fat calories in the target fat burning zone. This article does a pretty good job of explaining what I mean.

http://exercise.about.com/cs/cardioworkouts/l/aa022601a.htm

Both high and low intensity workouts are important to your overall physical health. Hope this helps.

Laceylala

I found it:

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

clcastro34

wow all of the information you guys gave me was extremely helpful thank you so so much!