Heart Rate Monitor

I know that when I started this blog I wasn't working out because I recently had sugery but now that I'm back into the swing of things I thought I'd post about my heart rate monitor.

I have the Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor and I love it! I went with this monitor per the suggestion of Tamara who had been using one.

I thought It'd be great to have a Body Bugg but those things are expensive and you have to subscribe to some sort of monthly plan! No way!

This monitor comes with a chest strap band and a sensor that snaps on to it. You wear the watch on your wrist and it calculates how many calories you are burning during a workout based on your age, weight, heart rate and a fitness test it has you do when you first use it.

This is a great investment if you're into working out. John got it for me for our two-year anniversary in October (what a sweet boyfriend!) and I had been using it a ton prior to my surgery in February.

Here are some main reasons I love it and reccomend it:

1. I have found that the Weight Watchers activiy point scale tends to be off. It's a good guideline and won't ruin things for you but I like more accuracy. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't sure if what I was going was "moderate" or "intense."

2. Cardio machines that show you calories burned are always wrong. Not horribly wrong but still wrong. I've found they show I've burned on average 75 more calories than I've actually burned.

3. It gives you motivation to keep going. If you've been working out 40 min. and see you're at 330 calories you get motivated to hit 400.

How do I calcuate activity points with it? I count one activity point for every 100 calories burned. Sometimes I'll round up, for instance if I burned 388 but if I burned 326 like yesterday I rounded down to three activity points.