Hi Greg-
I couldn't get that to paste correctly.
I was getting so frustrated with my slow weight loss, so I wanted to see how much I was consuming vs. how much I was expending. I don't eat a lot, and not a lot of junk (I don't like chips, donuts, ice-cream, etc. and I'm not a binger type that will pull out something and just eat it all), but my downfall is
soda (2/day).
Anyway, I found that I was consuming, on average, 1000-1200/day, but expending about 600 calories in the water for a workout. And actually I was also running, doing p90X, etc. So on some days I was actually expending more than I was consuming.
I figured out my exact calories by getting a HR monitor that also counts calories burned. This showed me that my treadmill is WAY off. It says I burn more than I do.
Anyway, my point to all of this, is that while those types of websites are helpful to a degree, the best way to figure out your calories burned is to get a monitor that will do yours for you.
If you want to know which one I got you can PM me :D
PS Since January, I have seen a nutritionist, who told me that I don't eat nearly enough. She told me that she was amazed I could function at all, and that my body was starving and storing fat. Nice! I'm working on eating more, but it's hard to do when I've told myself for so long, "don't eat this, don't eat that." The battle rages on with 20 lbs to go :blah:
The following has been proven to be the most effective exercise for weight loss:
- sit in a sturdy chair and position yourself close to the dinner table
- with strong arm movements push yourself away from the table, simultaneously closing your mouth.
- repeat daily
Cute, but I disagree completely.
+1
I recently lost some weight and found the same type of thing your nutritionist pointed out (at least I think so). I set my diet up so that I'd lose about a pound a week. Well, in the fall, we started to build up the yardage in the pool. Although I was using a tool to calculate calories burned from swimming, I was initially not using it to increase what I was eating. As a result, I ended up a couple of weeks in a row with significant caloric deficits.
I noticed that I felt lethargic, particularly towards the end of practices. I also noticed that my weight was not going down at all. So I made a conscious effort to eat more (i.e., to come closer to the pound a week goal). I got more energy and actually started to see more weight loss. Of course, everyone's different, but I think that if you eat too little, you slow your metabolism down and do not lose the weight.
And to get it back to the OP topic, one thing I've found is that there is a huge discrepancy among calculators about how many calories you burn swimming. I've seen some that will distinguish between freestyle moderate versus vigorous versus 50 yards per minute, versus 75 yards per minute--each of which will give you a different calorie burned number. And each of which strikes me as somewhat subjective. After all, it would seem to me that someone who can easily hold 75 yards per minute is burning fewer calories than someone who is sprinting all out for that 75 yards in a minute.
jbs- I agree. That's why the HR monitor was great. You enter your ht, wt, age, gender, etc. It is specific for you. It also told me what zone I was in using my HR. I found out that my HR goes really high when I swim, but quickly comes down to a very healthy number :)
Because I'm a number nerd, I wrote down my calories/HR in a book. Here are some random entries from Jan-March when I got sick of writing it down!
2/19 swam 3:45 min burned 1400 (119-171)
2/22 swam 1:11 min burned 625 (139-181)
*interestingly on 2/24 I had a migraine and in 42 min I burned 378 but my HR was sky high (up to 209 with resting 148)
3/3 swam about 3:15 burned 1274 (over 3 practices) HR 129-172
3/5 swam 2:38 burned 885 HR 124-210 (at WCM Training Camp)
2/10 swam 26 min burned 165 HR 121-148 (I think I just swam ez)
Anyway, :blah:, but it's fun to see. It makes sense why I wasn't losing wt, if I wasn't even close to consuming enough calories.
Karen--could you post or PM me the type of HR monitor you use for swimming? I use a Garmin system with HR monitor for running, and I always am interested in looking through all the data afterward.
Cute, but I disagree completely.
Yea, I get that alot.
Seriously, it appears that proper nutrition is 60%-70% of the nutrition/exercise equation in weight reduction. That means eating healthy and eating less. A good way to go is to establish your current caloric intake and reduce not more than 10%.
Exercise is important but swimming is not the most effective activity for weight reduction. If one's goal is strictly weight reduction then there are more effective modes. We all see great swimmers at the pool who are overweight. I don't think that there are great overweight runners.
Theoretically, one could keep caloric intake stable and exercise more. The problem with that for adults is that we usually have busy lives and many constraints that prevent that. Also, as we get older our bodies can only take a certain amount of training.
Alot of people say they want to reduce weight but are not willing to pay the price. That's me. I weigh about 94kg. (about 207lbs.) at 1.88m. (6"2). I would like to weigh 90kg. but do not have the nutritional discipline to achieve the goal.
Former Member
Attached is a spreadsheet I'd been toying with. I had intended to include a significantly greater number of exercises, but never got around to it (as is often the case with my little projects).
...Not that it would be any more helpful than the multitude of free online calculators out there.
Who's got an endless pool and a metabolic cart they don't mind getting wet?
The HR monitor I got was a Polar F90. It's a pink watch w/black strap. Someone on another site suggested it, and it was perfect for my needs. I'm sure they have a comparable model in something other than pink!
I got it at www.heartratemonitorsusa.com. I shopped around on several different sites and they were the cheapest, no tax, no shipping, and I got it in 2 days :)
This site has all different brands and models.
Tim- my hubby has a Garmin too that does everything but the laundry! He really likes it for when he runs because we live in a very hilly area and he likes to see the amount of effort expended, etc. I'm not that fancy.
Flurpo- I agree, swimming does not help me lose wt. I can maintain it great, but I need to run to lose wt. The only way I lose wt swimming is if I kick up my yardage to over 7000 yds. I can't do that with four kids (the month of March excepted when I do March Madness!). I think my body has adapted quite well to 'aquatic expenditure' in 30 years of swimming, so it doesn't really think swimming is 'exercise'. Running, that's another story!
Joshua- I remember reading an article in a Tri magazine where some guy was complaining because overweight females were beating him in the pool. He was a runner. He didn't get the difference in the two sports. The editor told the guy that "maybe she's just a better swimmer than you," and left it at that. I laughed.
I also find that I lose weight when working on my diet and running. Not so much with swimming, as I think it stimulates my appetite more and I'm so much more effective in the water.
One thing on your diet - I find I can't lose weight if my overall calorie count is too low and especially if my fat intake is too low. If I add a bit of olive oil and some nuts into my diet, my body seems to believe it's not in a famine and will regulate better. It's something to consider and try - I fully believe that we are all a bit different and your body likely has it's own ideal mix of food.
