Calculating Complications

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I am convinced that exercise equipment manufacturers have colluded with the Surgeon General while health websites are colluding with fitness trainers. Here is my reasoning:

For my first block of walking the treadmill – which took into account my distance, pace and weight – clocked my calories burned at 666. Not too bad I’m thinking. Then, I also used a heart-monitor watch which took into account the time and average heart rate. It clocked me at a whopping 952 calories! Now I’m thinking, either this treadmill is out of date or my watch is too flattering. The watch is missing my weight and pace, but the treadmill has no idea how hard my heart is working (I was averaging 138 bpm).

Then, I decided to see what the internet had to say. Most only calculate based on your weight, some with height for BMI (probably assuming you don’t have your heart-rate on hand to enter) and, in general, the average was about 480 calories. That 186 lower than the treadmill which itself is 286 calories lower than my heart monitor.

So, either the internet wants you to think you can’t do it alone so please purchase our advertisements – or, the exercise equipment wants you to think you’re doing just fine and any exercise is good exercise.

Of course this is only half of day 1, so on the overly attractive side of my watch I could pump out 1900 calories (ridiculous), or the treadmill’s 1300 calories (pretty high), or the modest 960 calories on the internet.

I’ve decided to take the middle choice – the treadmill. I like the idea that my watch changes to my heart (in fact at lower heart rates I averaged less calories than the treadmill, but after I clocked 138 bpm it sky-rocketed) but it seems obscene that I could burn more than I’m eating.

In other news, I’ve weighed in, taped up and added together:

Weight: 165lbs, Target: 145lbs

Gut: 36.75”

Calories Consumed: 815 (so far!)

Calories Burned: 666 (so far!)

Weight Lifted: ?? (see below!)

Even though 20 pounds is a modest goal, that includes the weight I expect to gain from body-building. Everyday I only intend to do two exercises: Tu-Th-Sa bench press and bicep curls; M-W-F pull downs and lower back extensions. As you can tell, I only really care about my upper body muscle – that’s because I’ve got tree trunks for legs and the only thing they need to do is walk off the weight. So I’m keeping track of my gut which is the real measure of my success – even if I stayed at 165lbs, if my gut dropped 8” that would be phenomenal.

Finally, I am having a hard time figuring out this all-in-one gym we have in my apartment building. It has these ambiguous numbers of 1-9 for the weight. I used a 5 for bench press and this felt pretty good, but am I to assume this means 50 pounds? Can’t be! But does 5 = 100 pounds? Sounds more right for my experience but makes no sense how they determined this. I’ll be assuming 5 = 100 pounds (1=20, etc.) and make up some fun way to equate what this means later.

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