Treadmills Lie! One of my favorite cardio workouts is walking on the treadmill at a very steep incline with a pace just under a jog. The speed is somewhere around 4.2 - 4.5 mph. The onboard computer on the treadmill asks for my weight and then calculates an estimated calories per hour burned. On my typical settings of incline 14.3 and speed 4.3 the treadmill tells me I'll burn 1240 calories per hour, so that's 620 in 1/2 an hour. Not even close. I wore my BodyBugg along with the digital watch display for the first time yesterday and in the 1st 1/2 hour of cardio I burned about 256 calories. That's just over 40% of what the treadmill estimates. For the sake of my argument I'm gonna assume the BodyBugg is more or less correct (90% accurate is what BodyBugg claims). The treadmill takes the number it assumes you'll burn in an hour and then divides it equally over each minute during the workout. So basically it tells you that you're burning 20 calories per minute. In reality, for the first few minutes you're burning much, much less. As time goes and your workout continues you burn more and more calories per minute, but never catch up to the estimate from the treadmill. Another observation via the BodyBugg was that hours after my workout was over, I was still burning considerably more calories per minute than before the workout. Does this extremely long cool down period of increased burn post workout add up to the #'s from the treadmill? I think it's close. I'll try to track it more carefully over the next few days and see. A great thing about having the digital display for the BodyBugg was that I saw I wasn't near the burn #'s I wanted, so I altered my cardio after the workout and was able to get near what I wanted while at the gym (not counting the extra burn during cool down). So ultimately I haven't been burning quite as much on the treadmill doing my uphill walking. Maybe it all adds up during the day to close to what I thought. I will alter my cardio some, adding more intervals/HIIT on the treadmill, more sessions on the elliptical, and especially a lot of spinning once my new bike arrives, thus more cardio time over all, . I still like my uphill walking though. I stay aerobic, my heart rate doesn't get too high, and my knees never hurt.
Our workout today consisted of 30 minutes on the treadmill to begin. We trained shoulders, starting with 3 sets of hammer strength military presses, 3 sets of side lateral raises, 3 sets of upright rows, and finally 3 sets of rear delts. Back to the treadmill for 20 minutes of intervals, jog speed of 4.5-5.0 mph, and run speed of 8.0 mph. Walk a minute, run a minute. I finished up with 5 more minutes on the elliptical trainer before calling it quits and heading home to eat.
For breakfast I had a chocolate chip scone, facon, a banana, and a slice of bread. Lunch was vegetable beef soup and 2 serving of cauliflower with cheese sauce. My afternoon snack was a white chocolate chunk cookie with 2 tsp's of almond butter. Dinner was a sloppy Joe and 2 servings of cauliflower with cheese sauce. Dessert was a fudge brownie with 2 tsp's of almond butter. Kim made a very low calorie tuna salad (using some sorta fake mayo) and we each had 1/2 of a tuna salad sandwich.
We watched the first episode of "The Biggest Loser" last night. I still wish they'd change to format of the show and let all of the contestants stay and train the entire 6 months. The could compete for $/prizes each week and all have an opportunity to win in the end. Instead the weakest/sickest contestants who need to be there the most get sent home first. And as much as I like the show, someone needs to tell Bob & Jillian they are not therapists, they are trainers. Quit psychoanalyzing each person and trying to make the scream/cry. Just shut up and train them. I LOVE the shameless promotions during the show though. So subtle.
BodyBugg Info
Calories In - 1601
Calories Burned - 3821
Calorie Deficit - 2200
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