Heart-rate monitor- anyone use one?

[carabos]

I'm thinking about calorie counting more rigorously than I'm currently doing. I don't have any weight to lose, but I want to lose at least half a stone to achieve my personal aesthetic.

I do a fitness class of some sort on average four times a week. I'm pretty sceptical about the claims made for calorie burning through exercise, so I've bought the monitor to understand my own physiology better.

Anyone else have one and have you found it helpful when counting calories?

I had the lloyds ones but I struggled with it. I want a fitbit but can't decide which one to go to!

I've got a polar fitness monitor which is great. It's the FT7, which wasn't cheap, but I needed it to make sure my heart rate stayed under a certain level when exercising as I've had issues in the past. It also auto loads (with an extra gadget) into their website which is semi-useful in seeing training load throughout the week.

What I really like about it though is that I can wear it in the swimming pool and monitor my heart rate there.

What I don't use is the calorie count on it. It does give one, but while I calorie count (using my fitness pal but with my own calculated TDEE goal) I don't use my exercise to offset my eating. This was mainly from advice on the /r/xxfitness group on Reddit. They're suggested way of calculating TDEE includes your activity level and trying to calculate calories burned for any particular exercise session is generally a bit ropey.

So, I think if you need to monitor your heart rate for whatever reason, a good heart rate monitor is worth the money and I'd highly recommend looking at polar. If you're just using it for calorie counting purposes, I'm not sure how much added value that would actually give, because I simply don't use mine for that.

That probably doesn't help much :)