Wednesday, November 28

I rode on it for an hour... NSV ...and a question

Ok, I know I'm a bit of a sicko and could have come up with a less provoking title..but.. naaaaaaah. :)

So, I went to the gym tonight as planned and thought I would do cardio for a half hour and then strength train on the nautilus equipment. I don't know what came over me but when I got on the elliptical and manually entered in how long I wanted to be on it.. I hit the little up arrows and when I saw my normal "30" I kept going.. 35... up, up.. 40.. 45. I have to admit when I saw that number I hesitated a little. But I then I said to myself, I did 35 the other day, why can't I do 45? And THEN I continued upping it until I got to 60 freakin' minutes! I pretty much negative talked myself thru the whole session. Instead of saying I could do it, I said "I think I can't, I think I can't". Remind me never to quit my job and become a motivational anything. 30 minutes in I said to myself, 'self, you've gotta be freakin' kidding. You've got 30 minutes MORE of this AND you're staring at stupid sports center on tv because your blind ass didn't notice ESPN was on the tv in front of my elliptical BEFORE you started.' I hate that. I don't know how or why but I kept going. And I kept looking over at the other tv screens while I listened to the tv on my mp3. The people next to me kept thinking I was looking at them. I know this because I kept getting funny looks from them out of the corner of my eye. Anyhoo... The last 15 I just about died but then the now so tiny Ricky Lake was on talking about her lifelong struggle with weight and OMG, maybe I haven't seen her in a while but she looks FANTASTIC. She started out as a size 24 (well who starts there?) and now after diet and exercise is a size 2 and weighs 120 something.. The story was interesting and inspiring at the very least. I mean, I have about 40 something pounds to lose before hit my goal but that's not impossible and some people would KILL to have only that much to lose. Guess in a weird way, even though it's a struggle, it's a blessing. Anyway, my point in mentioning that is good ol' Ricky was a good ol' distraction and while watching/listening to her story, I was able to finish up and barely notice :)

My question is... how do I count my activity points. My heart rate was above 150 the entire time. Is that high activity or moderate activity? HELP.

4 comments:

Candace MacPherson said...

Low level is 55-65% of maximum HR. You can do this for long periods of time
Intermediate is 65-85% and should be done in 30-40 minute work-outs.
High intensity - can only do 20 mins and feel like you're going to puke (Corrine at PhitNPhat says that).

Unknown said...

You can always go to fitday.com and enter your weight and activity and get the calories burned (average) - I always add 1 point for every 100 calories. I think the best thing to do is be honest with yourself......if you were wiped out and busted butt then it was high intensity - if you didn't think you were going to throw up afterwards than probably moderate to high......just my 2 cents though.

More than AP's you should be tooting your horn sister - an hour is awesome.......you should do some research on HIIT Training (Corrine at PhitNPhat turned me on to it)......it is about 25 minutes with 12 spurts of sprint like activity. I do it on the elliptical, takes about 25 minutes but I feel like a rockstar afterwards - I swear I feel the same after HIIT as I do after an hour long INTENSE spin class......it really is great and time saving!

Sonya said...

If I question what type of activity level I do, I always low ball it.

IT was only recently when I started running that I knew what high activity was for me. After a run, I can't talk even if I wanted to! lol...

Good for you for pushing yourself (even if you hated yourself for doing so). Ricky would be proud ;-)

Hortencia said...

Thanks for asking the question. I was thinking the same thing yesterday after my boot camp class. I felt like I was going to die and give up. When I checked the high-intensity point value it was 11 and medium was 5 points.

Doing what Steph says, I went to SparkPeople and input my exercise as Circuit Training and it says that I burned 768 calories so I guess I should go with 5 points.