Monitors

Cndngirl
Cndngirl Posts: 15 Member
edited February 24 in Health and Weight Loss
I've heard a few people mention something about monitors that they wear that tracks their heart rate, calories burned, etc.

Can anyone elaborate more on these and suggestions on which ones are better than others? I'm looking for an accurate way to log calories burned/activities.

Replies

  • missylectro
    missylectro Posts: 448 Member
    In. I want to know about Heart Rate Monitors as well.
  • Kel1677
    Kel1677 Posts: 76 Member
    I have a fitbit flex but curious about heart rate monitors
  • Cndngirl
    Cndngirl Posts: 15 Member
    I don't know anything about them really. Besides which ones are better than others, can anyone tell me what they do exactly. Pros? Cons?
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    Heart rate monitors measure your heart beat over time. They will display a value like 160 meaning that your heart is beating at 160 beats per minute or bpm.

    If the heart rate monitor has settings where you can tell it your height, weight and maximum heartrate then it can estimate how many calories you are burning. This is an estimate though, not a measurement. The measurement is your heartrate and your heartrate correlates to your calorie burn. The idea is for example that if you held a heartrate of 150 bpm for 1 hour and you weight 180 pounds then you burn 700 calories for example.

    Thing is your heartrate only correlates to calorie burn in your aerobic range which is a narrow band where your heart is beating quite fast but not too fast. My aerobic range is about 122 to 165 bpm. Outside of this range it isn't accurate at all.

    If you were to put on a heart rate monitor and try to use it to estimate your calories burned for the entire day it would fail at that miserably.

    Heart rate monitors are really useful for one thing and one thing only, staying in a particular range of heartbeats to know that you are exercising hard but at a sustainable difficulty so you can keep going. This might be important for athletes training for something but its pretty overkill for everyone else imo.
  • evileen99
    evileen99 Posts: 1,564 Member
    Well, the most accurate one is the BodyMedia Fit. It has been studied and correlates well with the gold standard of metabolic testing (body box.) It looks at skin temperature, heat flux (how fast heat is leaving your body), sweat production, acceleration, and one more thing I can't remember. The basic model is $99. A lot of people don't like it because you wear it on your arm and it's visible. Others complain about having to buy a subscription to see the numbers ($60 a year), but you can buy an external display device ($25, goes on sale for $15 a couple of times a year) that will show you real time numbers. Or they have a model that will link to you smartphone and show your numbers; it costs a little more.

    The BodyMedia and the FitBit models are less accurate than heart rate monitors for cycling, so if that's your major form of exercise, a heart rate monitor might be better for you.
  • cantfail
    cantfail Posts: 169 Member
    A good HRM has a wrist watch type display and a chest strap transmitter. You wear the chest strap next to your skin while you workout and your heart rate registers on the wrist watch. Many take the basic info that you input (age, weight, sex...) and your heart rate to estimate the number of calories you burn during your workout.

    You can find them at any sporting goods store or Amazon and there are several brands. Some of them can be really fancy and sport specific and therefore expensive. I don't think you can go wrong with Polar. Most gym cardio equipment will read a Polar transmitter so your heart rate constantly displays on the machine without having to grab on to the machine.
  • yopeeps025
    yopeeps025 Posts: 8,680 Member
    Heart rate monitors measure your heart beat over time. They will display a value like 160 meaning that your heart is beating at 160 beats per minute or bpm.

    If the heart rate monitor has settings where you can tell it your height, weight and maximum heartrate then it can estimate how many calories you are burning. This is an estimate though, not a measurement. The measurement is your heartrate and your heartrate correlates to your calorie burn. The idea is for example that if you held a heartrate of 150 bpm for 1 hour and you weight 180 pounds then you burn 700 calories for example.

    Thing is your heartrate only correlates to calorie burn in your aerobic range which is a narrow band where your heart is beating quite fast but not too fast. My aerobic range is about 122 to 165 bpm. Outside of this range it isn't accurate at all.

    If you were to put on a heart rate monitor and try to use it to estimate your calories burned for the entire day it would fail at that miserably.

    Heart rate monitors are really useful for one thing and one thing only, staying in a particular range of heartbeats to know that you are exercising hard but at a sustainable difficulty so you can keep going. This might be important for athletes training for something but its pretty overkill for everyone else imo.

    I tried that whole day HRM wear. It say around 3300 calories and I did not exercise that day. That was the last day I wore that.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    A good HRM has a wrist watch type display and a chest strap transmitter. You wear the chest strap next to your skin while you workout and your heart rate registers on the wrist watch. Many take the basic info that you input (age, weight, sex...) and your heart rate to estimate the number of calories you burn during your workout.

    You can find them at any sporting goods store or Amazon and there are several brands. Some of them can be really fancy and sport specific and therefore expensive. I don't think you can go wrong with Polar. Most gym cardio equipment will read a Polar transmitter so your heart rate constantly displays on the machine without having to grab on to the machine.

    This is the style I have, I believe mine is a Polar F4. I don't find it to be all that accurate to be honest and as I stated before you have to take into account that they are only accurate in a narrow range of heartrate in terms of estimating calories AND they include your RMR so you would have to subtract that out to get your exercise burn.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    Heart rate monitors measure your heart beat over time. They will display a value like 160 meaning that your heart is beating at 160 beats per minute or bpm.

    If the heart rate monitor has settings where you can tell it your height, weight and maximum heartrate then it can estimate how many calories you are burning. This is an estimate though, not a measurement. The measurement is your heartrate and your heartrate correlates to your calorie burn. The idea is for example that if you held a heartrate of 150 bpm for 1 hour and you weight 180 pounds then you burn 700 calories for example.

    Thing is your heartrate only correlates to calorie burn in your aerobic range which is a narrow band where your heart is beating quite fast but not too fast. My aerobic range is about 122 to 165 bpm. Outside of this range it isn't accurate at all.

    If you were to put on a heart rate monitor and try to use it to estimate your calories burned for the entire day it would fail at that miserably.

    Heart rate monitors are really useful for one thing and one thing only, staying in a particular range of heartbeats to know that you are exercising hard but at a sustainable difficulty so you can keep going. This might be important for athletes training for something but its pretty overkill for everyone else imo.

    I tried that whole day HRM wear. It say around 3300 calories and I did not exercise that day. That was the last day I wore that.

    Yeah HRM's vastly overestimate caloric burn if you are below a narrow band of aerobic range that you get from cardio exercise. If you wear it while just walking around or sitting it will claim you are burning much MUCH more than you actually are.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    People have explained it well. I have a Polar FT 7, which has been accurate as to calories burned for steady state cardio. It's not accurate for anything else. If my heartbeat is under about 120, I don't count the calories, and I tried it with weight lifting for awhile but it is not accurate.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    People have explained it well. I have a Polar FT 7, which has been accurate as to calories burned for steady state cardio. It's not accurate for anything else. If my heartbeat is under about 120, I don't count the calories, and I tried it with weight lifting for awhile but it is not accurate.

    This is another good point. HRMs basically only possibly accurate for steadystate cardio in a tight band of heart rate. Not good for weight lifting, not good outside of that range.
  • Cndngirl
    Cndngirl Posts: 15 Member
    Thank you, everyone, for the advice and tips! I was under the impression that they were an accurate way to count calories burned. I may look into them down the road but not something that I need right now.
  • Hornsby
    Hornsby Posts: 10,321 Member
    Heart rate monitors measure your heart beat over time. They will display a value like 160 meaning that your heart is beating at 160 beats per minute or bpm.

    If the heart rate monitor has settings where you can tell it your height, weight and maximum heartrate then it can estimate how many calories you are burning. This is an estimate though, not a measurement. The measurement is your heartrate and your heartrate correlates to your calorie burn. The idea is for example that if you held a heartrate of 150 bpm for 1 hour and you weight 180 pounds then you burn 700 calories for example.

    Thing is your heartrate only correlates to calorie burn in your aerobic range which is a narrow band where your heart is beating quite fast but not too fast. My aerobic range is about 122 to 165 bpm. Outside of this range it isn't accurate at all.

    If you were to put on a heart rate monitor and try to use it to estimate your calories burned for the entire day it would fail at that miserably.

    Heart rate monitors are really useful for one thing and one thing only, staying in a particular range of heartbeats to know that you are exercising hard but at a sustainable difficulty so you can keep going. This might be important for athletes training for something but its pretty overkill for everyone else imo.

    I tried that whole day HRM wear. It say around 3300 calories and I did not exercise that day. That was the last day I wore that.
    "But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”


    ― Albert Einstein
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    Thank you, everyone, for the advice and tips! I was under the impression that they were an accurate way to count calories burned. I may look into them down the road but not something that I need right now.

    Well they are the most practical way to get an estimate of calories burned specifically during steady state cardio but that is about it.

    I do not consider them necessary pieces of equipment for weight loss really. Just a toy to help with motivation.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories