The Exercise Motivation Thread - 2016

[tammat]

I didn't train yesterday. I know!!!! The gymnastics club where my two girls go asked me if I would be a helper for 1/2 an hour on Monday nights. Last night was my third Monday. I've been staying for the two hour session because it's really interesting and I'm blown away by what the girls can do. Of Course I've been dying to have a go at some things so last night I had a go on the beam and I did their strength training with them. So technically I did some exercise My calves are sore today fro being on tippy toes
Today I did my back and shoulders. I've had low energy all day so I've eaten a few more carbs.

 

[catlover19]

I just pushed a stroller for 20 minutes threw a snowy mess and then shoveled the driveway and walkway which took about 25 minutes. I'm not done shoveling yet but my son kept taking his mittens off and trying to run after the sidewalk plow so we came inside. I still need to do behind the house but it's not a big deal if I don't get to that yet because I don't go back there too often.

 

[jtbo]

I visited at grocery store with bicycle, 24 minutes and 40 seconds is what I got out from heart rate monitor, but I forgot to start it right away when I left from shop so I lost 200 meters and little time from that, it is just little ride to keep body thinking that this guy is moving around.

Most of the day I have been working on my spreadsheet, I put some colors on heart rate page:

training_zones.png

• jtbo
• Feb 16, 2016

Then I made my diary table to change heart rate zone color when heart rate is in certain zone, so that it corresponds to heart rate page's zone colors and now it is easy to know on what zone I did my riding:

diary.png

• jtbo
• Feb 16, 2016

That is column N for heart rate and green color means it was Aerobic zone, called [COLOR=#GREEN]Zone 3[/COLOR], average heart rate was 140bpm, of course part of the ride I was at higher zone, up to 160bpm which is at Anaerobic zone [COLOR=#YELLOW]Zone 4[/COLOR].

There is lot of weight loss supporting features too.
At Column U is my daily energy deficit, yellow for bit too much deficit, green for OK deficit and red if there is no deficit. I like conditional formatting of Excel, but I find that I could use more than 3 formatting conditions and 3 is limit in my version of Excel. Also there could be more of color choices.

Column W calculates then if I'm staying in limits of what energy I can get from my body fat, it also helps a bit of estimating how much exercise and how much eating I have to do.

There is still lot to do to that workbook until it is even nearly at reliable state, then need to make it more beautiful and more usable, also I need to add lot of references and gender selection etc. etc. However I wish that some day I manage to get it such that it might be useful for someone else too.

There are two body fat percentages for example, another from BMI and another from body composure scale, between morning and evening weight ins there are always differences and level of hydration affects scale too, so it is very much of a guess what body fat percentage really is, I try to use values that give me safety margin, so it is not necessarily so bad thing to get eat bit too little for example.

Then again, my weight has been flat lining for quite some time now.

Oh and wonderfully mix finnish and english all the time, I mix those two languages even when I'm thinking of something, I actually prefer english even I'm not that good with all the rules of the language.

Well, getting all those numbers in is something that has been helping me with getting motivated to exercise, it kind of makes me want to do better, my training partner is a spreadsheet, how wonderful image that portrays from me

 

[tammat]

JTbo you rock i have a diary that I write everything down in. It's actually good to look back on past years and see how far you have come. You are doing great.
Today I did my legs. I delayed starting by 1 1/2hrs. It's always unpleasant I did get a compliment on my legs last night though and that made me feel very happy indeed. These things take time but it's worth the wait.

 

[catlover19]

I received my tracker in the mail finally so I can start tracking my activity and calories burned. When I synced it this morning to check my sleep from last night, it said I had already taken over 300 steps this morning and it's only 7:25 am.

 

[jtbo]

I received my tracker in the mail finally so I can start tracking my activity and calories burned. When I synced it this morning to check my sleep from last night, it said I had already taken over 300 steps this morning and it's only 7:25 am.

I read someone who got really lot of steps from just typing at the computer, it turned out she had arm selection set wrong way around in her tracker. I don't know if there is such selection with all activity trackers, but what I read was Polar M400 gps watch that also has activity tracker function in it.

There was something about left and right not being too clear and more dominant / less dominant arm being better description, but I don't have experience of that yet, maybe by end of week or early next week when unit I ordered should arrive.

 

[Winchester]

I received my tracker in the mail finally so I can start tracking my activity and calories burned. When I synced it this morning to check my sleep from last night, it said I had already taken over 300 steps this morning and it's only 7:25 am.

You'd be surprised how many steps you take, just walking around the house, doing your cleaning, feeding the kids, everything. It's amazing sometimes. I don't know what time you get up in the morning and what all you do, but we take more steps in doing housework and such than we realize. I've been out of bed since 4:45 this morning and my Fitbit has logged in almost 1,400 steps so far and it's 8:30 a.m. here.

Did you calibrate your tracker? If not, you should do so as that will things more balanced. 

As for the sleep, I don't follow that because there are times when my Fitbit has me awake over 30 times a night....and I know that's not correct. I'm a relatively poor sleeper, I get that, But I don't trust the Fitbit for sleep. In fact, one night, I wasn't even wearing it and the next morning it said that I was awake 20-some times. 

My Fitbit is off by more than 1/4 of a mile. I can do 2-1/2 miles on the treadmill and even my iPod will say that I've gone about 2-1/2 miles. According to my Fitbit, though, I've walked just a little over 2 miles, so it's not tracking all of my exercise. My Fitbit Charge also keeps track of stairs, which is nice because our washer/dryer are in the basement and I'm going down and up the stairs many, many times a day.

I'm really glad you have your tracker. I think you'll find yourself walking about the house to get your steps in! 

 Have fun with it!

 

[catlover19]

Mine is basic, it doesn't have that option. I only paid $30 from Groupon. I really want a fitbit though.

 

[catlover19]

I don't know how many steps is normal but it says I've done 3602 steps and it's 9:19 am. It said 600 steps 50 minutes ago but I was really active for that 50 minutes. I had to chase my kids around getting their snow suits on, walked the girl I babysit to school and then shoveled the snow. I'm not sure if that's right or it isn't counting properly.

 

[jtbo]

I don't know how many steps is normal but it says I've done 3602 steps and it's 9:19 am. It said 600 steps 50 minutes ago but I was really active for that 50 minutes. I had to chase my kids around getting their snow suits on, walked the girl I babysit to school and then shoveled the snow. I'm not sure if that's right or it isn't counting properly.

They are always more or less wrong about absolute number of steps, but I think it is more about comparing your day to other days that counts.

Device recognizes step as hand moves and stops move hand one way and other way and there is one step, device don't know if your feet did move, so for example using brush to clean clothing counts as huge number of steps.

You then just have to estimate your daily activities and if there are such activities that might cause extra steps to be counted in.

Which arm you wear device is then probably best to be chose so that it is more inactive arm as then it would be more true to real steps, but then again if you wear it in arm you use more when doing chores, it shows more steps but also reveals more differences in day to day comparison as all other activity is included where you don't use your legs.

It is more or less that way, it is not very precise, but more of roughly there.

There is something interesting related to accuracy of activity trackers, I'm interested to see what study tells, but need to read that bit later:
http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2014/06/09/fitnessbands


About calorie estimates, I did ride today 56 minutes and 26 seconds with bike, average heart rate was 141, which is 79% of my maximum, althought instead of 178bpm I could reach only 162bpm because I did run out of air, sometimes I get to 170, but rarely.
My 30 euro heart rate monitor shows me 733 calories, my sports tracker software that uses GPS, shows 593 calories.
Net calories calculated from heart rate monitor are 647 calories, also sports tracker's calories are 593 net calories, there is difference of .54 calories, yet both are somewhat estimated, I'm sure that when Polar arrives it gives yet again different numbers.

Only good accuracy comes from those scientific machines that measure air intake, power produced etc. So accuracy is somewhere there, but I think that at least heart rate monitor seem to be quite constant and comparing day to day is perhaps quite accurate.

But what is accurate is that these things motivate to move, you get to want better numbers for next day and I think that is why these gadgets rock, instead of getting absolutely accuracy.

 

[jtbo]

This is today's ride how it looks in Strava, GPS altitude is so random, that estimated power output graph is jumping up and down, maximum power is completely unreliable, but maybe it all averages out.

strava_HIIT_route.png

• jtbo
• Feb 17, 2016

I just kept running out of air, heart rate was not getting to highest where it should reach, could not really do much faster than that. Compared to some other days that was pathetic really, but that is how it goes some days. I wonder if I have exercise triggered Asthma instead of normal version as there is no any kind of attacks, but I just run out of air and it does not take a lot some days to get heart rate above 150.

 

[kittens mom]

The only good thing I can report is that 2 and 1/2 months after Kitten's death I have stopped eating my emotions.  The carb sugar cravings got up and walked out the door. I have remembered to take my medication for arthritis.

My concentration sucks. But I've been getting 15 minutes with my 5lb dumb bells every day. Sounds so lame. I used to exercise an hour and half daily. Very rarely taking a day off because I felt that working outside had been sufficient.

I looked in my shopping cart this week and put a ton of junk BACK. 

 

[tammat]

The only good thing I can report is that 2 and 1/2 months after Kitten's death I have stopped eating my emotions.  The carb sugar cravings got up and walked out the door. I have remembered to take my medication for arthritis.
My concentration sucks. But I've been getting 15 minutes with my 5lb dumb bells every day. Sounds so lame. I used to exercise an hour and half daily. Very rarely taking a day off because I felt that working outside had been sufficient.
I looked in my shopping cart this week and put a ton of junk BACK. 

 

[Norachan]

You guys are all so meticulous about your exercise schedules! I just check the time when I leave the house and when I get back and take a rough guess at how much I've done.

I had kind of an easy day yesterday as the house really needed cleaning. So just a few hours of housework, about an hour walk and half an hour on my bike.

 

[tammat]

Rohan is away so today I did cardio with his fill in Karlee. I have trained with her before and she is very nice but I didn't feel that she pushed me hard enough. Rohan gave her the heads up and today she pushed me until I bled. Na not really that just sounds dramatic :lol3: I had a really awesome workout. It was 9am start so I didn't want to eat my usual breakfast of meat,vegetables and egg so I ate a quest protein bar. That was wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyways it stayed in my tummy :lol3: I had a good nap this afternoon and now my legs are pretty sore after leg day yesterday and jumping around this morning
Keep going everybody. You are terrific

 

[Winchester]

3 miles walking during my lunch break today.

 

[catlover19]

I set my goal to 10,000 steps to start out with and made it both days so far. It seems like an awful lot of calories burnt though.

Screenshot_2016-02-18-19-38-05.png

• catlover19
• Feb 18, 2016

Screenshot_2016-02-18-19-38-12.png

• catlover19
• Feb 18, 2016

 

[jtbo]

I set my goal to 10,000 steps to start out with and made it both days so far. It seems like an awful lot of calories burnt though.

Screenshot_2016-02-18-19-38-05.png

• catlover19
• Feb 18, 2016

Screenshot_2016-02-18-19-38-12.png

• catlover19
• Feb 18, 2016

You could try to see if you get anything similar from this calculator.
http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/walking-calorie-burn-calculator.shtml

Maybe that is gross calories that your device is reporting, that is what my HRM reports too, so that BMR is in it too, BMR might be somewhere around 70 calories per hour for you, so if it took 2 hours 38 minutes to take those steps BMR for that time would be something around 184 calories (2,63 * 70 calories) that would need to be subtracted from calories you are seeing from device, to get calories you did burn by walking, so it would be 583 calories.

Is that 583 calories then correct, that would be 221 calories per hour, for me that seems still bit high?

For 767 calories it would be around 291 calories per hour.

This link has some examples of how much different kind of walking burns calories, you can adjust weight to match there so it gives corrected calories, it also has quite lot of different kind of walking types to help estimate what might be what you have been doing and it might help you estimate if those calories per hour from your devices reported calories would be close to real or if they are really off:
http://calorielab.com/burned/?mo=se&gr=17&ti=walking&q=&wt=150&un=lb&kg=68

When you figure out roughly how much off claimed calories are, you can then use some multiplier to correct, for example divide calories by 2 if that would look more realistic value. With more experience you can then get feel of how much you need to adjust to get better estimate of real calories burned.

When I subtract BMR from calories my HRM tells me it seems to be quite close to that calorielab numbers, so I guess those are someplace near there values for burned net calories.

Hopefully that helps you to find out how to get correct number of calories.

 

[Norachan]

2 hours of walking and an hour of lumberjacking yesterday.

 

[catlover19]

You could try to see if you get anything similar from this calculator.
http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/walking-calorie-burn-calculator.shtml

Maybe that is gross calories that your device is reporting, that is what my HRM reports too, so that BMR is in it too, BMR might be somewhere around 70 calories per hour for you, so if it took 2 hours 38 minutes to take those steps BMR for that time would be something around 184 calories (2,63 * 70 calories) that would need to be subtracted from calories you are seeing from device, to get calories you did burn by walking, so it would be 583 calories.

Is that 583 calories then correct, that would be 221 calories per hour, for me that seems still bit high?

For 767 calories it would be around 291 calories per hour.

This link has some examples of how much different kind of walking burns calories, you can adjust weight to match there so it gives corrected calories, it also has quite lot of different kind of walking types to help estimate what might be what you have been doing and it might help you estimate if those calories per hour from your devices reported calories would be close to real or if they are really off:
http://calorielab.com/burned/?mo=se&gr=17&ti=walking&q=&wt=150&un=lb&kg=68

When you figure out roughly how much off claimed calories are, you can then use some multiplier to correct, for example divide calories by 2 if that would look more realistic value. With more experience you can then get feel of how much you need to adjust to get better estimate of real calories burned.

When I subtract BMR from calories my HRM tells me it seems to be quite close to that calorielab numbers, so I guess those are someplace near there values for burned net calories.

Hopefully that helps you to find out how to get correct number of calories.

That calculator is pretty close actually. I was active for 2:38 but this is the amount of steps for almost a whole day so it's counting the whole days calories burnt. The active time was just time I spent out walking with my kids and shopping tonight.