You huff, you puff, you sweat, and you groan for what seems like an eternity. You step on that scale the next morning to see that it only made a .2 difference in our weight. You throw your head back in frustration thinking, how? I worked out for a full hour yesterday! Discouraged by your little results, before you know it, you’ve decided to bag the whole idea of losing those last 5 pounds and head to your freezer for some ice cream. While making the choice to get more healthy and lose some unwanted weight, people tend to forget that an important key to weight loss and having more knowledge about it in the first place. For instance, when a woman sets out to lose 5-10 pounds, her usual first goal is to start eating better. As she begins to eat better, she will find that that the first few pounds drop off rather quickly. Delighted by her results, she decides to keep what she’s doing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Problem is, our bodies are amazing at adapting. After a week or 2, the woman will begin to notice a decrease in her weight loss. She may even hit a plateau. Which means that even though she is still eating healthy, she will lose little to no weight. That is when people then decide to add in exercise. Depending on your activity level to begin with, you might only exercise by walking, and then gradually work up to jogging. One of the biggest ways to increase weight loss is cardio exercise. Cardio is short for cardiovascular, which refers to the heart. Cardiovascular exercise, is an exercise that raises your heart rate and keeps it elevated for a period of time. Another name for it is aerobic exercise. The kinds of exercise that are associated with cardiovascular workouts are things like jogging, fast walking, swimming, and biking where there is no break in the routine. So, back to the lady whose trying to lose weight. As she sees that her weight loss has plateaued, she will then more than likely introduce exercise into the mix. She might begin walking for 30 minutes, or even trying to jog 15 minutes out of the 30. By introducing cardio workouts into her weight loss plan, she will then begin to see a difference on her scale. But like stated above, our bodies do not like to change, and will quickly try to adapt itself to the new exercise. Like the woman, or you perhaps, are frustrated that once again, you worked out for a full hour and saw little results. But how do we really know how many calories each exercise is allowing us to burn? While we pour our heart and soul into a workout, we often feel that we should deservingly burn 1,000 calories! After all, you just worked like a mad woman. But what if it’s way less than you think? Could that be why your scale is moving so slowly? Like many Americans, I’m sure there are many times after a hard workout you ask yourself, how many calories did I just burn? Well, let’s find the answer.
Although countless websites offer calories burned calculators, they are not always accurate. If a site only asks you to type in your weight and how many minutes you did a particular activity, more than likely it’s not correct. An older woman and I may be the same weight and do the same exact exercise for precisely one hour, however, because of our age difference, I am more likely to burn more calories because my heart rate can handle going higher, and thus burning more. Upon getting myself a heart rate monitor several weeks ago(read my reviews page for details), I was excited to see that it gave an estimation of calories burned. I trust this to be pretty accurate because my monitor requires my age, gender, height, and weight. While being able to consistently monitor my heart rate for an entire workout, I believe it is safe to say that my calories burned is accurate, give or take a few. So back to the burning (sorry I just had to say that) question: How many calories did I just burn? I decided to perform a series of workout tests. I did 6 of the top cardiovascular workouts for 1 hour and recorded down my calories burned based on my heart rate monitor. Here are the results:
This was actually a fun test to do because I have always wanted to see which exercise burns the most calories. While 3 of them are all in the 400’s, running is the dominate winner. Keep in mind that these results are for my particular age, weight, height, etc. However, as in any case, if someone else were to perform this test, their numbers for each specific exercise might be different from mine, but the ranking of most calories burned to the least would be about the same. I realize that not everyone can go out and purchase a heart rate monitor, so here are a list of calories burned calculator sites that I believe are close to accurate:
*Although the above site only asks for weight, it’s results have been close to that of my heart rate monitor.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/tools/calories-burned <—–this one is great!
So if you’ve been frustrated by your small results from your exercise, try figuring out what type of exercise can get you the maximum calories burned. Just remember to not over do it, and listen to your body. While losing a few pounds might be beneficial to your overall health, never go beyond what is best for you, not someone else. God wants us to take care of our bodies so we can continue in our service for him. So how many calories did you just burn? Go find the answer!
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