Heart Rate Monitor Question

laurynbennardo

I just got a heart rate monitor from walmart and used it for the first time today. It gave me a much higher calorie burn then the tredmil I was using and I am kind of confused as to which one to use. I know that heart rate monitors are supposed to give a more accurate calculation but I am not sure how accurate mine is since it only cost $20. The tredmil said I burned 700 cals jogging for 60 min, but the heart rate monitor said I burned over 1,000. The brand is "sport line s7 7-function ecg heart rate watch".

DizzieLittleLifter

Does it have a chest strap?

perrim

that would be my question too. The ones without the chest strap are not accurate because they don't continuously monitor your heart rate.

The amount of calories you burn depends a lot on how much you weigh. If you're heavier, you will burn more calories. If the treadmill you're using does not have you enter in your weight, then it's probably assuming you weigh 150 pounds and using that as a guideline to calculate calories burned.

All that said, over 1000 calories for 60 minutes on a treadmill does sound kind of high.

rbc_racing

From my research all HRM's use different formulas to calculate calories burned, some figure higher intentionally to make you think you've done more than you actually have and make you happy with your watch, I think. I have a garmin forerunner 405 and after a 5 mile run I downloaded everything to the computer and it showed I burned 579 calories. I plugged the time into MFP and it said I burned 751 cal, I found the formula Timex uses in their HRM's and it came up with 1060 cal for the same exercise numbers , I'm gonna go with the garmin because it actually uses HR, weight, distance and time to calculate the calories. I found a chart that actually breaks calories burned per minute based on you ave HR, I am using that from now on for all of my calorie figures, I made an excel sheet with it that I just put my time in at the HR in the chart and it gives me the true cal burned. In the end I would rather be wrong on the low side than be wrong on the high side and not truely know what my cal intake should be for the day. If I went with the timex I could potentially be overeating by 500 calories a day and adding a pound a week.