I bought a heart rate monitor yesterday and just used it while doing Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. It said in about 20 min I only burned 32 calories. I put my all in those workouts. My heart pumps fast and I sweat a lot. It feels like I should be burning way more. I'm very discouraged by this. I was hoping to be burning at least 150 since I also take long brisk walks. Anyone else have similar results while doing this workout?

Does your heart rate monitor monitor your heart rate via a chest strap? They are the most reliable but sometimes you might have issues with the strap sending signals to the monitor. Also make sure your age and weight are inputted correctly.

It's a watch with no strap and it only asked for age and gender. I think I may have been using it wrong so I'm going to try again today. If it doesn't seem right I will probably take it back.

Definitely get one with a chest strap. Otherwise it's not continually monitoring.

Yeah, you can't really trust the ones that don't have a chest strap. They are highly inaccurate.

Thank you! I think I got the hang of the one I have but now I'm not even sure if it's accurate. I continually check my heart rate but still, not sure if it's right. I'll keep an eye out for the chest strap kind.

Just an FYI the chest strap ones are much more expensive but completely worth it. I love my heart rate monitor it is one of the best fitness related purchases I have ever made.

It keeps me going by letting me know when I am not working hard enough and when I am working too hard. I got it because my doctor recommended it as a way to keep myself from overheating. I get heatstroke and exhaustion very easily and by keeping my heart rate under a certain # of beats per minute I can seriously limit the chances of pushing to far.

Thanks for that input. I hope to be able to afford one especially since they come so highly recommended.

I also love my heart rate monitor. I tried the one without the chest strap first and that just didn't seem accurate. I ended up buying the Polar FT40 and use everytime I work out including when I do yoga. I think it's pretty accurate and when I talk to my trainer about it she seems to think it is accurate as well. I hope that when you get yours you love it too!

My heart rate monitor watch is incredibly accurate and it doesn't have a chest strap. However, like someone mentioned, it doesn't continually track my HR, in order to know what mine is I have to press an hold a button. But I don't use mine for workouts. I was born with a tachycardic heart so I wear mine to keep an eye my HR. When I've been in the ER for my heart I like to check my watch compared to their monitor and it's usually always within a beat or two.

When I asked my doctor about the heart monitors at the gym after a couple months of working out and my heart rate staying at the "too high" level, she told me that because of my size now compared to my size before weight gain was so big that my heart rate would continue to be extremely high during any exercise until I had lost a significant amount of weight. She also said that my workout should be for my overall well-being not just weight loss, and it was not good to try and monitor how many calories I am burning in a workout because it would be a temptation to splurge if it started feeling like I was doing good and a discouragement if the calories didn't feel like they were worth the exertion. Anyway, at that I decided to not pay attention to the gym's monitors anymore and never even considered buying one. I wonder if other's who have a lot of pounds to lose have gotten similar advise from their doctors concerning heart monitors.

And it's interesting to me that this thread started with "abetterme' being discouraged by calories lost not seaming equal to the exertion. I tried entering my workouts and heart rate into some workout app on my phone and it basically figured I only burn 450-500 calories during a 65 minute workout on the elliptical that is hard for me, (like keeping my asthma inhaler on me and going through two 24 ounce bottles of water, dripping sweat.) That is discouraging to me, so I'm inclined to take my doctors advise and steer away from monitoring my heart rate until I am closer to just obese instead of morbidly obese and now I am scared to ever start monitoring how many calories I am burning.