Best Fitness tracker for heart rate and calories?

Healthy4lyfe419

Hey guys! I'm looking to invest in a good quality but not too expensive fitness tracker. I'm mainly looking for one that is the most accurate in counting calories burned and heart rate as I am trying to lose some weight.

MeanderingMammal

What sort of activities do you do?

Shadowfox429

I really liked the Polar. I have the FT 7.

It’s affordable, waterproof, and comes with a chest strap to accurately measure HR. I found the caloric burn to be close to accurate for steady cardio. Calorie trackers cannot accurately measure during lifting, as the heart rate spikes too quickly and stays elevated even when you are not moving.
I used my Polar for walking, swimming, biking, and running. It’s also served as a very durable watch. I’ve had it for at least 5 years and still working great! Never even changed the battery

Healthy4lyfe419

@MeanderingMammal I do cardio about 5 days of the week and alternate between running, elliptical and swimming and then I strength train twice a week

Healthy4lyfe419

@Shadowfox429 is it okay to wear the chest strap the whole day?

Shadowfox429

I wouldn’t use that as a calorie estimate unless you were running or walking all day.
Calorie trackers are made to estimate caloric burn based off your HR in steady cardio.
Best way to measure your caloric burn at rest is by a simple equation:
795+(7.18 x body weight in kg)
This is the amount of calories your body would need if you were in a coma.

Then based off your BMI, you can estimate he daily burn by multiplying by these numbers:
BMI 18-25
No work out days: 1.6
Active workout days: 1.8
Strenuous work day: 2.0

These numbers work if you are under 35 years old. If you are over 35, subtract .2 from the multiplier numbers.

This will give a close estimate of your daily burn (according to the book “New Rules Of Lifting”).

Shadowfox429

So with that formula,

My resting is 1228.
Times by 1.6

My daily burn on a nonactive day is about 1970 calories.

MeanderingMammal

Healthy4lyfe419 wrote: »

@MeanderingMammal I do cardio about 5 days of the week and alternate between running, elliptical and swimming and then I strength train twice a week

So that creates some challenges in identifying an appropriate tool for you.

For running and swimming, distance is a better indicator than HR for calorie estimation. So that means either a GPS, or a high end movement tracker that can account for swimming strokes.

Elliptical is extremely difficult to forecast, with no measure consistently reliable.

If you want something that'll give you an all day measure then you need something with a pedometer functionality.

So that's where we get to your budget, which really dictates what works for you.

With all that in mind I'll explicitly disagree with the recommendation for a simple HRM. It absolutely will not do what you want.

Subject to your budget is suggest a Garmin VivoActive, as a decent entry level device. There is no real need to go more up market.