Calories Burned

I have been going along on this weight loss journey counting my calories and exercising. I have just been going with what Lose It! or my treadmill tells me I am burning, and not really thinking much of it. Well the other day I decided to strap on my heart rate monitor and crunch some numbers.

Running - I run at 5 mph on the treadmill, so not killing it by any means, but I get it done. The other day I ran for 40 minutes. According to Lose It! I burned 416 calories. My treadmill had me at 417 after a 5 minute cool down. So those have been pretty close all along. According to my heart rate monitor, an Iron Man, my average heart rate was 157 for the 40 minutes of exercise (I did not include the cool down) and the calories burned was 740-something! Wow. That was a big difference so I decided to use EBSCalc on the iPod touch which has a calorie burned calculator. According to that I had burned like 640-something.

It sort of makes sense to me, I do have a ridiculously high heart rate so any calculations based on that might be off a little. Those calculators also take my age and weight into consideration and my treadmill, not so much. So it got me thinking - how many calories am I really burning during the 30 Day Shred? So this morning I used my heart rate monitor again.

The Shred - A 25 minute circuit training video by Jillian Michaels. I am currently at Level 3 and it kicks my butt pretty good. According to Lose It! 25 minutes of circuit training burns 261 calories (267 calories at the beginning of the year!). According to my heart rate monitor my average heart rate was 137 and I burned 360 calories. And EBSCalc tallied my calories burned at 320.

So I am still tracking my calories with Lose It! and will be sticking with their ideas of calories burned. I figure that it has worked so far, 13 pounds this year and nearly 40 total! Also, I am sure that I underestimate some food choices so it all comes out in the end. It has been an interesting little experiment, teaching me a little more about exercise every day!

Feeling Overwhelmed

I don't know if it is a result of being trapped inside by the cold or what but I have been feeling alone lately. I love where we live but I am sad that I am not closer to either my parents or my sisters. We moved away from our friends, not by a lot but by enough. And I am sure it is just the weather because people always stay in more when the weather sucks, and it sure has sucked this month.

I love my family and I wouldn't trade what I have for anything. I feel very blessed in my life. I do wish that we had more friends in the stage of life we are. It is hard to try to balance family life and still hang out with our friends, sans kids. If we had a babysitter it would be easier but how do you find a babysitter? I mean seriously, how? I had a number, but Chuck had to go and throw it away so now I am back to square one.

And Chuck traveling just makes it that much harder. Trying to make it work out with two kids all day and night, no break, it is exhausting. I finally figured it out tonight the worst part; putting James to bed is usually my down time, I don't have to worry about Amelia, the house, the cat, anything. I just nurse James and close my eyes and relax. I don't have that now. I either nurse James while Amelia runs rampant and naked through the house, or while reading Amelia books. I really miss my time with James.

Amelia also has been trying every last nerve I have. I realized tonight that I really need to learn some patience and anger management. It is very frustrating trying to manage dinner with no help. Not just making it, but eating it as well. I have mastered making it with the help of a little tv time and the walker, but eating it, that is another story. Amelia still gets distracted when eating if she is not getting a lot of attention so when I have to feed James she sort of loses the plot. And then if I focus on Amelia, James ends up throwing his food everywhere. I swear after a meal it looks like a bomb went off in a supermarket.