Calculating calories burned during cardio - Help!

jcohen427

I've recently begun a new training regimen and am required to track the calories I burn during my cardio sessions. I'm not looking to spend a ton of money, nor am I interested in some high-tech piece of equipment to track my sleep and all sorts of other patterns. Simply need to ensure I'm hitting my weekly calorie burn goal during cardio. So far I've seen great reviews on Polar watches but it seems I need to purchase the watch AND the chest strap? If anyone has any insight or experiences to share I would greatly appreciate it!

RosieWest8

If you're just wanting a decent estimate of how many calories you're burning...then yes - a Polar watch is the way to go....the one I bought was the watch + chest strap (they should come together) and it was like $40.

I don't know the exact model of mine...but it didn't give me any fancy numbers, it would give me my minimum heart rate, maximum heart rate and average heart rate for the duration of my workout. I would take the average heart rate that I got and use this website: http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.shtml ---- or you might find a better website or formula.

Plug in the info and it will give an estimate of calories burned. There is a link to another calculation if you know your VO2max...but that was not something I was interested in. This won't be an exact estimate...but it's good enough. It was certainly more accurate than the caloric burns that MFP has for many things.