The thing I love about the gym, aside from the climate-controlled environment, has to be consistency in calorie counting. Any machine has the ability to magically deduce the exact number of calories you burn during any workout. Today I burned 298 calories during a 2 mile run.Machines are consistent with numbers. For the last five years, the treadmill has always registered the same number when I run at a certain speed for a certain amount of time.
And I would think, after years of conditioning, my body's ability to burn calories would have changed by now. (It actually should and the calorie count should be different).
In a recent NY Times Fitness and Nutrition Article, Gina Kolata raises a similar question. The title appropriately captures the central message: "Putting Very Little Weight in Calorie Counting Methods."
Honestly, how much weight can we place in those calorie counts, when the counts are determined for the "average" person? Who exactly is this person? And how can you account for gender, muscle mass, age, diet, resting heart rate, an individual's typical activity level, among other factors that would further vary and complicate the big red number that displays on the dash?
In a quantitative society that measures everything from waistlines to portion sizes to bust sizes- I suppose we need a number to measure fitness. But we must not take the number to mean everything, it's just a baseline.
I am guilty of using the number to gauge how effective my workout is. But I have become more attuned to using my heart and sweat rate to assess if my gym time was used effectively. So, if I am drenched and my heart is really beating, I know it's a good day in the gym. And it does not take a fancy computer to determine that.
So, next time you think of rationalizing the 300-calorie scrumptious artery-clogging cookie because you burned 350 calories on the elliptical or treadmill, you may want to think twice (or just cut the cookie in half)- your heart will thank you later.
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Image: "Treadmill." http://www.exe-direct.co.uk/images/Running_Machine_Fan.jpg
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2 comments:
Good insight (!) on "listening" to your heart and sweat rates when exercising: our metabolisms are non-linear (we continue to burn calories after we exercise), so linear indicators like calorie counting and calories burned using machines are of little use to our fitness efforts.
Not only do I love the spiffy machines that count everything for you, but I love my new iPod thingy that I stick underneath the sole of my shoe (it has a special place for it), and it counts the number of steps I make, miles I run, calories I burn!! And it also switches to certain playlists depending on what workout I chose, omg it's amazing.
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