I bought a MIO Heart Rate Monitor ($37) to keep track of my calories burned and my heart bpm. I have a hard time sometimes trying to get it to read my pulse. . .i know I have one. I’ll read up on it again to make sure I’m not doing something wrong. Now, I did get a reading yesterday morning (after several tries) and it had 180bpm and 94% was beside it. Is the 94% telling me I’m working that hard? Because I’ve read where you should try to keep your efforts or whatever around 70-80%. Well, all I did was walk. As per the suggestions on the site, I used the Leslie Sansone 2 mile express walk DVD. And I didn’t really even break a sweat. It was fun though. I timed myself also. I walked 32 minutes. My next question is, is it more accurate to keep track of the time that you are intensely working out. . .like during the video. . .or should I also count the 5-10min afterwards where I do crunches and stretch? I only have a maximum of 35 minutes to workout and that includes the stretching and crunches. But I rather do it in the mornings because everybody else is asleep and not interrupting me, and i'm pretty tired in the PM. Also, how accurate are these heart rate monitor watches? I plugged in numbers on the MIO watch website and the FitDay website and they all say I’ve burned a different amount of calories. I’m thinking the watch is better since it takes your weight, height, and heart beat in consideration.

My Heart Rate monitor read 239bpm (or something) this morning right after i worked out and the % was blank. And i checked it again during my stretching and it read 68bpm with 35%. how do i know if this is good or bad? does this sound accurate?

Amy

The heart rates should be accurate.

The percentages are percentage of your maximum heart rate. They're generally inaccurate. If you feel like you're not working hard don't let the HRM tell you that you are.

Maria,
Thanks for the reply. I'll just exercise according to how i feel. I mean, i know my body best right. I think i'm going to take this HRM watch back and get another one because i can't seem to get my HR from it. I mean, how hard is it to put my fingurs on the sensors for it to read my HR? i tried this morning till i almost exploded. Finally got a reading but I had been sitting there so long that my pulse was a lot slower. I need to know what it is as soon as i get done. i hope its a faulty watch and not me! LOL!

Amy