Heart Rate Monitors & fitness plan

Hi Everyone,

I met with my nutritionist today and she told me that I should invest in a heart rate monitor to track my exercise.  She said that I should get my heart rate to 134-144 beats per minute to burn fat and that I am likely getting it higher than that and thus, not burning as much fat.  Can anyone recommend one?  I do not mind spending money on a good monitor -- I just want something that will last me a good while and that is reliable.

Also, I have been trying a new fitness plan and would like advice about my weight loss fitness plan.  I think that I should get a trainer though money is a little tight these days.  For now, I joined a gym so that I can take group classes, as I was previously working in my apartment's gym only (was doing 3 hours of weights and 6 hours of elliptical). 

Now, I exercise 6 days a week doing a variety of things.  I do weights for about 4 hours a week (spread across 6 days) and 2.75 hours of pilates/abs sculpting.  In terms of cardio, I do 2.5 hours of kickboxing, 1 hour of belly dancing, 1 hour of water aerobics, and 2 hours of jazzercise.

Would appreciate any advice.  My nutritionist recommended Polar monitors but a specific brand would be helpful.  Also, if anyone knows of chain stores that carry them (as opposed to buying them online), I'd like to get one this weekend so would appreciate that advice too.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can provide!

 Your workout plan sounds - well, perfect, really. You're doing a variety of things, enough resistance training, and switching between various training modes through the week; I see very little or no room for improvement.

 It's possible that adding some steady state cardio like walking, spin class, treadmill or elliptical could be useful for you in terms of increasing your calories burned, but in terms of cardio conditioning and health, you're already getting a healthy range of activity, more weights wouldn't do you any good, and I would think that as long as your current routine still feels like you're enjoying yourself there's very little need to change anything. Because frankly, any change has very little chance of being an improvement on what you're already doing.

 (Yes, you could start interval training. But the point of interval training is to bring your heart rate up very high, cool down a bit, and do it again. Which is what happens naturally during kickboxing class anyway, so I doubt you'd see any significant improvement in your results. Might see a slightly faster increase in your VoMax, but I'm not convinced you'd really notice the difference without a lab test.)

http://www.polarusa.com - any model will probably do, but the forum regulars here swear by the F6 and up as the best investment.

 Only thing I'd really suggest that you implement in addition to what you're already doing is to start a training log, so you can track your improvements. Helps to keep your motivation up when you can look back at where you were a couple months ago and see how far you've come ;)

I just received my polar F6 in the mail yesterday! It's totally amazing! I'd go with that if you can do it! It fits so well and I don't even notice it! Good luck!

Does F6 have one of those belts?  it doesn't look like it...

Get a Polar F6.  You can get them at any major sporting goods store, and they are the best for heart rate monitoring.  You set all the features, and it keeps a diary of everything, including calories and percentage of fat burned.  The box may look small, but the heart rate band that you wear around your chest is in there.

Polar 11!!!! With chest strap, as the most accurate style... The Polar 11 has extra fitness testing that really is reassuring!!!!

My Nutritionist told me to get one, too, lol!!!

I'm going to 2nd the F11 too.  I've ahd mine for several years and no problems.  The F4 and F6 are both very reliable as well, but I think the F11 has a few more bells and whistles, like the fitness test.  You can also use their website polarpersonaltrainer.com  to record you r data with an uplink or manually enter it to track your progress.

As far as the "fat burning zone" vs cardio I'm not a big fan of this theory -- for reasons why ( I'm too lazy to retype it all out again -- go to the fitness forum first page and the "getting started thread" towards the bottom is a list of threads on target heart rate for fitness vs fat zone.