My 1st workout with Polar 4 Heart Rate Monitor

lambertj

Well, I just got home from my first work out with my Polar 4 Heart Rate Monitor and wanted to type this up quickly since others were questioning how I made out.

First off, i'm 5' 4", 134 lbs, 46 years young. I did the stairmaster on the setting "rolling hills", level 8 for 25 minutes. According to the stairmaster reading, the distance is 2.30 miles. The stairmaster registered 199 calories burned however, my HRM registered 231 calories burned (YAY!).

I then stopped and restarted the HRM and got on the treadmill, and walked for ten minutes at 3.6 mph at a 1.0 incline and then jogged for 33 minutes at 4.3 mph (changed the incline from 1.0 to 0 about 10 minutes into the jogging). Treadmill registered a total of 2.70 miles at 187 calories, however, the HRM registered 383 calories burned (another YAY).

I've been doing this type of workout now for awhile and was just entering 100 calories per 1 mile, however the HRM is saying i'm burning more than that. It did also show that I am exercising above my heart rate range the majority of the time, staying in range only 12 minutes out of the 65 or so minutes.

bulletproofkasper

Good work !!!

I love my HRM i wear it every workout and i'm hardly ever in my target heart rate zone i seem to always be higher lol

lambertj

Thanks! I'm still so surprised, pleasantly surprised!

ahavoc

I have a timex hrm, and I know that the algorithm it uses doesn't subtract what i would burn if I didn't do anything, so what I did was sit down with my heart rate monitor going for an hour and I watched tv. Turns out that in an hour I burn 120 calories just existing for an hour. For me, that's 2 calories per minute. So if I work out for 45 minutes and my hrm says I burned 400 calories, I subtract 90, (45 minutes x 2 calories per minute), and I log in 310 calories here on MFP. I think it's more accurate.

You might want to do the same thing. Sit for an hour watching tv, with your heart monitor running and see what you burn in an hour, and use that to figure out the base to subtract.

lambertj

Good idea, hopefully I can find some time to relax for an hour this weekend.

lambertj

I tested calories burned doing nothing yesterday for an hour (had a terrible headache so just laid down with HRM on). After an hour of no activity the HRM showed I burned 100 calories which means that if I exercise for an hour and get a reading of 614, in actuality i'm burning only an additional 514. Therefore, when eating exercise calories back I need to keep that in mind and not eat the 100 I burn just by living.

dad106

I have a timex hrm, and I know that the algorithm it uses doesn't subtract what i would burn if I didn't do anything, so what I did was sit down with my heart rate monitor going for an hour and I watched tv. Turns out that in an hour I burn 120 calories just existing for an hour. For me, that's 2 calories per minute. So if I work out for 45 minutes and my hrm says I burned 400 calories, I subtract 90, (45 minutes x 2 calories per minute), and I log in 310 calories here on MFP. I think it's more accurate.

You might want to do the same thing. Sit for an hour watching tv, with your heart monitor running and see what you burn in an hour, and use that to figure out the base to subtract.

This method is not accurate at all as HRM's are made for being worn at rest. Plus Timex is notoriously inaccurate for calories burned anyway... so I'd rethink this idea.

OP:
Don't listen to that poster... what she is telling you is wrong. If you want to figure out how many calories you burn an hour take your BMR divided by 24 and that will tell you what you burn in an hour.

Personally I never used that method with my FT7 and lost the weight just fine.