Calorie expenditure in a hot environment

curiousgemfit

Hi all,
I have signed up for a hot yoga beginner class (1 hour long), and plan to wear my heart rate monitor to see the number of calories burnt.

But my friend told me that you cannot use a heart rate monitor to estimate calories in any type of "hot yoga" class. She added that even though heart rate is increased due to thermal stress, calorie expenditure does not increase.
Is this right?

So I have a question for all you "Hot Yogis" out there:
How do you calculate how much calories you burnt in a 1 hour session?

Thanks ! Appreciate all the advice.

gklofstad

Did no one respond to this post? I've always been miffed about Bikram Yoga not being listed as an exercise option in the myfitnesspal list. After a lot of research online, I came to the conclusion that each class probably burns about 300 to 350 calories for someone my size (about 130 lbs). Here's a good article:

This calorie range has been mostly confirmed since I've been using my Garmin Vivofit HR monitor during class for the past several months. My Garmin reports a wide variety of total calories burned, though--anywhere from 250 to 650, with an average probably around 350.

Also, I go to 90-minute classes.

gklofstad

Article didn't come through. Copy this URL:

http://www.cpr.org/news/story/why-hot-yoga-might-not-burn-many-calories-you-thought