Just throwing this out there

[SusieQusie]

I wish I was better educated on how to properly count calories and exercise effectively. I've read little snippets about the elliptical machine and it turns out that I'm burning about a 300 calories less than what most people are capable of. And that's when I'm swimming in sweat and panting like a St Bernard. I don't know how anyone could possibly burn 600 on that thing in just 40 minutes. That's crazy.

I mean, I'm doing well, generally. I've lost 10 lbs in about 2 weeks. I enjoy going to the gym. It makes me feel a lot better afterwards. My current job doesn't excite me too much. At least I'm motivated to achieve a goal when I'm exercising.

I also got this app that counts my calories for me. I use it constantly, and as far as I can tell, it's helping me. But really...I have no idea what I'm doing. Does anyone have any advice or reading material I should check out?

[Vetinari]

I've read little snippets about the elliptical machine and it turns out that I'm burning about a 300 calories less than what most people are capable of. And that's when I'm swimming in sweat and panting like a St Bernard. I don't know how anyone could possibly burn 600 on that thing in just 40 minutes. That's crazy.

How are you measuring your calorie usage when exercising? Is the calorie counting app you mention for that, or just for food? If you are just reading a monitor on the machine itself that assesses "how far you have gone" then it is not remotely accurate for you if you are not yet all that fit. For Christmas I got a gadget that monitors your heart rate during exercise which also advises you on whether you are in the best heart-rate range for fat burning or various other things, depending on how hard you want to work. I've found it very useful and in addition, whenever your heart-rate goes over 100bpm, it also counts calories for you. I know that when I go out to exercise, if I go the same distance as my husband (who is madly fit) that I burn an awful lot more calories than he does over the same distance.

My husband has various much better gadgets atached to his i-phone. He can plug in his weight and it will monitor where he has gone, what his heart-rate has been throughout, how many calories he has burned, and even how many steps he is taking per minute to try to ensure he is running in the most efficient way possible. If you have an i-phone, it's a fantastic tool.

I used this site for a while. Livestrong. It has a lot of up-to-date information, however obviously (as ever with the diet industry) some of the information is conflicting. It sounds as if you are doing pretty well at the moment anyway to me. 10lb in two weeks is good going. Fundamentally though, if you use calories in and calories burned as a basis, you will lose weight. I find that if I steer clear of sugar and white bread, I don't suffer from nearly as many cravings but it's important to find what works for you.

[SusieQusie]

Oh...so the machine numbers aren't accurate? My app will give me a calorie goal to meet and I can log how many minutes I've exercised and calories I've burned and it'll subtract that number from whatever I ate that day.

[Vetinari]

If it is number on the elliptical machine, then no it probably won't be accurate for you personally, though I guess there might be really good machines in some places that assess your pulse rate and so on. Most of the ones I have used though have generated the "calories used" purely on how many repeats you have done and obviously that doesn't take into account your personal weight and fitness level.

My app will give me a calorie goal to meet and I can log how many minutes I've exercised and calories I've burned and it'll subtract that number from whatever I ate that day.

Before I had the heart-rate monitor, I used to assess how many calories burned on Livestrong. There's a section for putting in your weight, and a section for how many calories you will have burned if you enter how long you were doing that form of exercise (it allows you to put in different rates as well if you are going faster or slower). The heart rate monitor is better though because I presume it is giving me a more accurate reading for me.

Actually, I don't know whether you have been struggling with weight for a while, but we have also invested in a scale that reads body fat as well as weight. Sometimes if I work out a lot, I don't lose any weight, which used to be very frustrating (and for years I tended to just give up because if the scale wasn't going down, then why bother?). Now I generally find that if I have exercised but haven't lost weight, I can still see that my body fat has gone down, presumably because I am replacing fat with muscle (muscle weighs more than fat). So I know even if I haven't lost weight, I am still getting thinner. Personally I find it much less demoralising.

[JenJen]

A while back I signed up with Spark People - it's a great site with lots of tools to aid with meal planning and burning calories, forums to get help and supports, articles about all types of health topics, and you can even make your own personal "Sparkpage" so you can link up with weight loss buddies. I'd really recommend it, it helped me a lot when it came to figuring out how many calories I needed to eat every day based on how much I was working out.

[polychrome]

Spark People is super awesome. Especially for dorky people who like message boards (...like me...). A huge database of articles, tools, motivations, and people.