Using a Heart Rate Monitor to Help Manage Weight Loss

By Wayne Baker

(Note that this is general information and may not be appropriate for you, especially if you have any of several conditions including diabetes, coronary or arterial disease, digestive disorders, etc. You are responsible for your actions, Mark of Fitness, Inc. and Wayne Baker cannot accept responsibility for anything you do. Additionally, Mr. Baker is not medically trained, he bases his advice on his extensive readings and other information he has gathered on the subject, but should not be considered as either specific or expert advice. Speak with your doctor, coach or other person familiar with your situation to determine if this information is appropriate and likely to be effective for you, and never begin an exercise program without clearing it with your doctor.)

The MF-180 can help you to lose weight by giving you more information about what your body is doing. It can do this in several ways: first, it can help you to minimize or avoid the fatigue that undermines many exercise programs; second, it can provide you with good information about how many calories you are burning through exercise; third, the ability to track something can help to keep you involved in a program, so you don’t feel like nothing is happening; and there are other, more subtle things that a monitor can also help you with.

Let’s look at each of these individually. First, how does a monitor help you in avoiding fatigue? Fatigue usually occurs when a person exercises at high percentages of maximum heart rate (HRmax). Without going into the math involved, by keeping the exercise intensity below 80% of HRmax, most fatigue can be eliminated. A monitor, like the MF-180 can help you to stay below that level, and can remind you to pay attention to how intensely you’re exercising by sounding an alarm when you exercise too hard.

Exercise is a very personal thing, and using a chart to estimate calories burned can be terribly inaccurate. If we look at walking as an activity, you can burn as few as about 350 calories an hour while strolling, but if you racewalk rapidly, you can get that number up to 800 or 900 calories hourly. A good chart might break walking into easy, moderate and hard rates, but even these are just guesses and how do you know which category a given walk should be placed into? Using a monitor that calculates calories burned during exercise will give you a more accurate estimate than any other system because it is using actual data from you and your workout.

One of the best tools for keeping motivated as you’re trying to lose weight is an exercise log. It allows you to see and track your progress, even if it doesn’t show on the scale. For various reasons, your body may not lose weight for a week of two. This lack of weight loss (or even slight weight gain), but can be demoralizing. A log helps you to see that you’re doing the right things, and can help you to stay motivated. It’s worth the minute or so a day. It also lets you see how your ability to exercise has changed over time (usually improving, but if you’ve had an injury or other setback, you know where you had been). We’ve provided an exercise log (insert hyperlink on words “exercise log page”) page for you, which you can find in our resources section.

So, use a heart rate monitor to avoid overstressing the body, to quantify some of the benefits of exercise, and gather information for your exercise log. It’s a valuable and useful tool, and as you get into the habit of using it, you’ll come to love it.