What Al Taught Me....

Yesterday I was asked if I used my heart rate monitor anymore. The answer is definitely YES! I love that thing. I named him (well, actually a friend of mine named him) Fat Albert and I call him Al for short. Al is the best friend a girl could have because no matter what, he will not lie to me. He teaches me more about how my body burns calories than any article I could read. Because you take your resting heart rate and you do a little thing called OZone (where you measure how your heart reacts at certain levels of activity) to give you a fitness score, it is one of the more accurate ways to measure your calories burned for YOU. Here are a couple of things that I have learned from Al.

1. I DO NOT burn 600-800 calories in a one hour spin class. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble but according to my buddy Al, I only burn 300-400 (a little over 400 if they class is really good). Now, this does vary by person and your weight and stuff does matter, but I cringe every time I hear my instructor say that we are burning between 600 and 800 calories. As a matter of fact, the more in shape you are, the less work your heart does so the less calories you burn for the same work. I know she is saying that as motivation but I hope that no one uses it to eat extra treats.

2. The treadmill's calories are not accurate. I think that most people know that but just in case. It is sort of funny because when you start exercising, the calories are close, about 15 mins in they start to vary from each other and by the end of a one hour session my heart rate monitor says I have burned a full 50 extra calories. So, depending on how long you work out, your calories may be off one way or the other.

3. I really don't get a good benefit from walking until after 10-12 mins. The first few minutes my heart rate is not much more than it would normally be with me walking around. After that time though it starts to pick up and I seem to get into a mode where it will hover a little elevated for the remainder of the workout. So, I try to never do less than 20 mins.

4. Just because you sweat, doesn't mean you are burning more calories. I used to use that as an indicator....not a very accurate one or concrete one but I used to love to go to spin classes because I sweat more in them so I felt like I was working out harder. Now, while there is no doubt a benefit to sweating out toxins, if you are just looking at burning calories, I actually burn more calories walking (at a 3.8pace) on the treadmill in the "interval mode". It is 2 mins with no incline and then 2 mins with a 3 incline. I burn over 500 calories doing that (as opposed to my 300-400 in spin) but I don't sweat nearly as much as I do in spin class....sometimes I barely sweat.

5. You can't cheat. There is no way to burn calories without actually doing the work. I used to just say I was going to do 20 mins of biking at the gym and think that I was still doing well...the truth is that while this might be good for my leg muscles, it did very little to raise my heart rate at all.

6. Lifting weights elevates your heart rate more than you think. I used to think that because I didn't sweat that much (though I did with a person trainer but not really on my own) with lifting, that meant that I wasn't really working out (see #4). Turns out that I was completely wrong. I have started to notice that I burn a good amount of calories when lifting weights and my heart rate seems to ebb and flow with the lifting.

7. I can tell when something is off....like the post a did last week where my heart rate was really elevated when I had barely done anything. It was an isolated incident but had it not been, I might have discovered something that I wouldn't have otherwise.

I highly recommend that anyone who is going to use calories that you burn through exercise as part of your weight loss plan, gets a HRM. (for WW you get to add in Activity points based on every 100 cals burned but they do not replace 1 for 1 the calories you eat. I think that this is a good way to go about it because it teaches you not to use exercise for a crutch to eat whatever you want.)