Calorie Burner: 3 hrs of dance lessons followed by 2.5 hours of social dancing

omgee.
my feet hurt!!

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I am part of a West Coast Swing community of social dancers.

This evening I was fortunate to have a one hour private lesson, followed by 2x 45 minute lessons where I was the demonstration partner (for the first time ever!), followed by another 2.5 hours of social dancing. It was not quite on the level of World's Largest Disco calorie burning, but from 6pm-11:30pm, I burned about 1081 calories doing all of that.

You know that you've burned a lot of calories in a short span of time when you sort of "hit the wall" and then you'll pretty much eat whatever's put in front of you. I ate a leftover half-sandwich from the food trays that were put out and a handful of truffle candies, then a slice of bread and peanut butter (and a Tylenol) when I got home.

Knee Pain / Weakness (program)

This is a little post to capture a wonderful site I finally ferreted out after searching for help with my knee issue which my doctor had said was likely "something patella something" (I can't recall).

I found helpful information at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/chondromalaciapatella.html

I found very good knee cap exercises at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-cap-exercises.html

General leg strengthening to benefit the knee at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-strengthening-exercises.html

Awesome knee and supporting muscle stretches shown at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-stretches.html

Calorie Burn: treadmill walking & leg extensions (plus an epiphany!)

Living in Southwestern Ontario between 3 great lakes has brought a lot of windy, snow and generally messy winter conditions. After a long day at work, whether I was tired out from a busy day, or tired out from lack of being busy, going out into the winter weather was enough to make me want to get home as soon as possible for a hot chocolate and my Hello Kitty pj pants.

This afternoon at work, I looked out our windows to watch the driving snow and the university students forging ahead from building to building. Again I visualized how nice a hot chocolate and my comfy pj pants would feel once I got home. As usual, since I've been paying for a gym membership every month and not going, I briefly considered whether I should go to the gym or not.

Since last summer, I noticed my knees feeling less stable, or weak even when climbing up onto a curb or getting up out of a chair, or my car. My doctor told me that it was likely just that I needed to strengthen the ligaments which hold the Patella (knee cap) in its place (sitting in grooves which it slides along). She recommended leg extensions.

As someone who has been learning to dance for the last 3 years with a promising future of enjoying it immensely, my knee strength is important to me. It's also important to me that I don't groan when I get up out of a chair or climb up a curb. I should be bounding up and down stairs, not leaning on the handrails for support.

I also mentioned in my last post that I've been considering running. I certainly can't run if my knees are going to be at risk, so I have new reasons to be considering the gym and what I can do there to improve my life by facilitating the physical ability to continue exploring these new activities.

While I was visualizing stepping out into the cold, wintery late afternoon, I fast-forwarded to the summer and visualized myself heading out into the warm sunny weather when it would be much easier to get to the gym.

That's when my thoughts shifted.

What's worse: going to the gym even though it's cold and windy out and I just want to go home and be warm and cozy, or heading out to enjoy a hot summer day feeling overweight and not being able to wear the things I want to wear like my favorite leopard print maxi dress, or all the other flattering dresses I've collected over years of thrift-store shopping?


I went to the gym tonight.

As soon as I climbed up on that treadmill, I felt successful and proud that I was able to push myself and overcome thoughts of immediate gratification. I had a vigorous 25 minute walk on the treadmill at a 1% incline listening to awesome tunes and then did 3 sets of 10 leg extensions using very low weight just so that I could work on my knees and not worry about trying to build muscle.

I enjoyed 7.5 minutes on the Hydromassage bed and then headed home where I had a healthy dinner and good conversation with my best friend while it was baking in the oven.

Calories burned in my 45 minutes of walking and leg extensions at the gym: 230

 I'm not really sure what that V shape portion of the graph is all about, there was no sudden decline in activity, I'm wondering if it was just an anomaly or something. I will pay closer attention to the clock when I go to do leg extensions so I can easily pick them out in the graph.

Flirting With The Impossible

I'm interrupting my youtubing to document the seed of a thought I've begun flirting with.

running.


Never in my LIFE have I been a runner. When I was growing up, we didn't have access to treadmills until the day I joined a gym. Even then, running on the treadmill was out of the question for a few reasons:

1. I already sweat a lot just walking briskly on a treadmill. I can't imagine how drenched and gross I would look and feel by running.
2. My junk in the trunk would be bouncing at such a momentum that I would look like a 1940's jalopy running full tilt at a giant bump on a dirt road with the back end barely hanging on.
3. My bosom (which I consider one of the few things I am happy with) would be bouncing so much that it may attract attention, or become so used to bouncing that all the ligaments would stretch out and I'd end up having my very nice bosom turning into something which hangs low and moves to and fro.

This would be the most common type of gym activity which would be the furthest out of my comfort zone, but which may bring me the physical appearance I want in the shortest span of time.

How did this seed form? My friend LG has been a dedicated runner, especially over the last year and has done admirably with her health and achieved her personal goals for physique with running.

And a girl I play World of Warcraft with posted on her Facebook wall that a year ago she was 27 lbs heavier and when I asked what she had done differently, she said she took up running on the treadmill.

So, I've begun considering the idea and not immediately dismissing it like in the past.

To document something I may or may not do, I thought I would collect some of the resources now in case I need to look back on them.

Running Form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hjpDs_Fq8
Treadmill running program for beginners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2LL8f65x-Y
http://www.mytreadmilltrainer.com/

Calorie Burn: 1.5 hours of cleaning my 2-bedroom apartment

I have company coming today and it was the perfect time to give the apartment a once-over. I don't have a lot of things to dust and I don't have a lot of carpet to vacuum (which is unfortunate because I am a Dyson owner and there's nothing I love more when cleaning house than a good, cathartic vacuuming).

However, I have two cats that rough-house A LOT, so sometimes I'll be walking through an area and the air current from my walking past draws out some significantly large cat hair tumbleweeds (tumblefurs? I've invented a new word).

So, after doing my house cleaning, I promptly removed my Armband, plugged it in to find out how many calories that just burned:

300 calories!

See that flat spot in the middle? That's when my Dyson sucked up a pen and I had to find where it had lodged itself in the hose and remove it, which I did.


Housecleaning is well worth the good feeling it leaves me with when I've made everything fresh and sparkly, and makes me feel like I can have people over without concern for tumblefurs rolling by, AND I burned a good amount of calories!

Snack Revelation

Last Friday I weighed 1.5 lbs less than when I started tracking everything.

On Tuesday, I weighed 1.5 lbs more (back to original weight), however I weighed myself just a few days later, against my better judgement so I dismissed this as a water retention anomaly.

Today (Friday), I weighed 1.0 lb more than last week.


Mildly frustrated (because I am giving myself time to learn about my metabolism and habits etc.), I reviewed the amount of calories I racked up in the "Snack" category for the whole week, and this is how that looked:

So, given that I was creating a deficit every day of the week, according to my Armband, it seems that the snacks were adversely affecting whatever weight loss my body was trying to achieve.

This information was very sobering and I definitely reconsidered putting my hand in the jar of M&Ms at work. I only took 3.

In the week ahead, I am going to try and significantly reduce the amount of snacking I do, which is done primarily in the evenings after dinner, or in the morning at work, or in times of anxiety.

Calorie Burn: 1 hour of hoop practice in my apartment building

My mood wasn't the best today and I was definitely not motivated enough to get out and go to the gym.

However.

I did throw on some workout stuff and went down to the exercise room at 8:13 and enjoyed practicing some hoop dance and before I knew it an hour had gone by.

Calories burned = 283

I was feeling all pleased with myself when I had reviewed my food logging for the day and had come in at 1397 calories...unfortunately I quickly forgot the 42g chocolate bar and 1/8 cup of almonds I had before lunch.

This is where planning the meals and snacks ahead would have helped.
It also would have helped to put a cold pack in my lunch bag so that my lunch was sure not to have spoiled, forcing to me to hunt for a healthy lunch in the busiest hub of the university I work at and the food place with the shortest line and healthiest options won.

Calorie Burn: West Coast Swing workshop & dance

I belong to a West Coast Swing community in southwestern Ontario and attended a workshop and dance this afternoon which ran from about 2:10pm-6:10pm. I participated in the Intermediate lesson and sat out for the Beginner lesson that followed.

There was open dancing between 4:00-5:00 and then a little bit more dancing between 5:20 and 6:00. I chose not to dance as often since the majority of the music was Country/Western which makes me cringe.

Calories burned for this event = 554

In case you want to see what West Coast Swing looks like, and I highly recommend learning, check out Lucky Sipin and Shelly Saxena from Swing Niagara's Pro-Am Spotlight this past September 2012 (they're Torontonians):

Hoop-insanity

I might have to change the name of my blog to RachelInTheHoop instead of RachelAtTheGym because I'm having a lot of fun feeling challenged by learning to Hoop Dance!

I did a little 30 minute hoop session this morning, then the 2-3:30pm class, then when I realized I ate too many calories today than I am comfortable with, even though I had created a deficit, I went downstairs and hooped for 40-45 minutes for a total record-breaking calorie burning day of 880 calories!

However, hooping makes me ravenous, so of course when I got back up to my apartment all hot and sweaty and hungry again, I ate more (plain greek yogurt with coconut flavoring added)....and then I ate again later (my favorite snack of whole wheat toast, all natural crunchy peanut butter and no-sugar added blueberry jam).

To see what I've been up to for 4 weeks, check out this girl's video showing all the things I've learned:

Sleep Quality After Hooping

Last night I did some hoop dancing in the fitness room in my apartment building, for nearly an hour, while accomplishing 5 loads of laundry and a load in the dryer.

Hooping for that long leaves me feeling tired in that nice "I worked out alot" way and an hour of hooping goes by wicked fast!

As I anticipated, the amount of time I spent sleeping is the same, but man--I SLEPT LIKE A BABY!

Check out this morning's report from the BodyMedia Fit Armband:

Somewhere in there I had a somewhat nerve-wracking zombie dream featuring Chris Lloyd, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas and Glenn from Walking Dead as a mod-podge trio of unlikely heroes.  Clearly I was thinking of the return of Walking Dead this Sunday night!

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 4 Neat Stuff! (final installment of review)

I will add to this post over the next few days as I discover cool things about this whole system.


How Many Calories Did I Burn?


I live in an apartment building where the laundry room and a small exercise/weight room are directly across from each other. Since I've just taken up Hoop Dancing, I thought I would see how good a practice area the weight room would be if I was doing laundry at the same time. I hoop danced between 6:30 and 7:30pm wearing my armband.

After connecting the armband by USB and syncing the data with the Activity Manager, I was able to view this report:

By moving the sliders at the bottom to the period of time during which I was hooping, the report stretched out to show me how many calories I burned during that period.

Estimated Calorie Burn

The longer and more often that I wear the Armband, the more it gets to know my daily averages and can give me an estimated calorie burn for the day by hovering over the light blue portion of the bars that 'grow' horizontally as the day progresses and more calories are burned. Here's an example of what that looks like:

Useful Reports To Obssess Over

hahahaha, I love that title. It's so true, isn't it?!

In the Activity Manager, to the right of the Facebook icon is a link you can click to export data into an Excel file, or other variations if you like. I chose Excel, here's the result:

Here's the report. Although it was disappointing that a key calculation was totally left out, so I added the column and the calculations myself. You'll see those highlighted in purple:

BodyMedia Fit "FitCoach" Tips

Sometimes there will be a little "note bubble" appearing next to one of your Summary screen categories to praise you, give you some helpful tips about nutrition/exercise, or give you a heads-up about some of your data. Here is a screenshot of two FitCoach tips I opened:

Thank you FitCoach for pointing out that I ate too much chocolate yesterday. Give me a break, I'm a girl and it's "that time of the month" :)



FitCoach: You're more than just a number on the scale

FitCoach realizes that I haven't weighed myself in a week and its way of encouraging me to track my progress in other ways is to tell me that I can also measure my waist as seen in this tip:

To log a waist size, it was pretty simple to find:

Personal Bests

Any time I have a new personal best, I am notified! Check it out!

Import Heart Rate Monitoring (Garmin GPS)

In the dashboard of the Activity Manager, you can import heart rate information from a heart rate device!  I don't have a heart rate device though.

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 3 : My Troubleshooting

(for those who want to quickly flip to the different parts of this review, you can go to Part 1 or Part 2)


My Troubleshooting

• "Waiting" or "Linking" status at the bottom of the mobile app, while the armband is paired properly in the Bluetooth menu of cell phone :  yesterday I was referring to the BodyMedia Fit mobile app as I'll probably do many times a day with my new gadget and I noticed that it would not say "Linked" the way it should when it is communicating data. Without my user manuals handy, I reached over and pressed the grey button from outside my sleeve. I heard it make a noise, but the status didn't change. I went back into the Bluetooth menu of the phone, unpaired the device and then paired it again (requiring that I press the grey button to put it into the mode where it will pair with my phone). Once I did that, everything was fine and all the data was there and communicating properly.

• Installed the BodyMedia Fit Sync application on my laptop and wouldn't sync (accessed the file I had downloaded the other day over my home network and ran the installation on my laptop since I couldn't find it by logging on the BMF website)--tried to sync the armband on my laptop and nothing happened :  in this case, I am going to try again tomorrow and see if the same thing happens. I took the armband back over to my home computer and sync'd there without a problem.

• Logged my food for the day in MyFitnessPal and it wasn't updating immediately in BMF's Activity Manager: in this case, I just needed to be patient. When I clicked the arrow next to the Calories Consumed item in the Summary screen, at some point it populated with the calories that I had logged with MyFitnessPal, however it was not yet updating the total calories shown on the Summary. When I clicked the arrow to collapse that menu, the calories updated. Patience.

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 2 (one full day & night of wear)

So far I'm impressed with the Link Armband.

In Part 1 of my review, I ended my post saying that I was heading to bed. It's now 7:26am, I took the armband off as soon as I got up, and plugged it into the USB cable that I'm just leaving attached to the computer.

It began syncing immediately since the BodyMedia Sync Application was already running in the background from when I installed it yesterday.

I grabbed my breakfast and a hot chocolate and sat down to review the results by clicking the green "Activity Manager" button on the BodyMedia Fit website.  This is what was logged overnight:

This information gets added to the data for the morning after sleeping. When I went to bed, it was Feb.5th and when I woke up (Feb.6th), this was logged under today's date. I had trouble getting to sleep last night, so I can see that I was last recorded as "lying down" at 12:08am and then "asleep" at 12:19am. After taking a Robaxacet with Ibuprofen in it, it took 11 minutes to put me out. My quality of sleep was probably the most interesting of the things tracked since it's going on while I'm unconscious. I know I didn't exercise yesterday, so the results are just everyday movement. Here's what that looked like:

The numbers on the left show 2/4/6/8 calories per minute and each spike shows how many calories per minute I was accomplishing for any given action or inaction.


Food Logging:  MyFitness Pal vs. Activity Manager at BodyMedia Fit

As I had logged all of my food with MyFitnessPal, only the calories for each meal category were imported into the BodyMedia Fit Activity Manager, however it gives a much nicer pie chart and nutrient summary than the online reports available from the online version of MyFitnessPal (their mobile app reports are more enhanced than the reports offered online):

Here's how it looked in MyFitnessPal:

I wanted to see whether I would prefer logging my food with MyFitnessPal or logging it via the Activity Manager at BodyMedia Fit. First, I had to go to my Preferences screen in the BMF Activity Manager and switch it from "Third Party Logging" to "Food Logging" as shown here:

Once I did that, I was starting fresh with the food database available at the Activity Manager and although I do enjoy creating my own foods to select from as I could do with MyFitnessPal, the ability to find foods that other people have added to a database is only available in MyFitnessPal as shown in the two searches side by side.

 My decision is to continue logging food with MyFitnessPal.



Today, based on my sleep from 12a.m. onwards, I started the day off with a 477 calorie deficit since it takes effort to sleep poorly for 5.5 hours (hahahaha). Here is how MyFitnessPal treated this deficit as "Exercise":

I have yet to go to my West Coast Swing dance class tonight to find out how many calories I've typically burned doing that activity, and I have to download the info from my armband containing all the data for the daytime.


End of Day Results:

I want to show you the Summary screen on the Activity Manager now that I have taken off the armband and uploaded the data while I had a shower before bed. I'm going to put it back on an hour after taking it off so I can see how well I sleep.

In the dark grey column are targets for the day (I set the 1400 calorie target, everything else was set for me based on answering questions in the setting up of the Activity Manager when I made choices about what my goals were, what amount of activity I would likely be doing and how fast I wanted to see results).

In the right column, starting from the top is how many calories I burned among the various activities of the day and all of the bodily functions of sleeping, breathing etc.

Then it lists how many calories I ate, which then shows how much of a calorie deficit I created. If I wanted to lose a pound a week, I would need to create a deficit of 500 calories per day. Since I chose during the setup process that I would like to lose 2 lbs per week, that is why the 1000 calorie deficit is listed on the left in the Calorie Balance row.

1 pound loss per week math: 3500 calories in a pound / 7 days in a week = 500 calorie deficit
2 pound loss per week math: 7000 / 7 = 1000

The # of steps taken is quite higher than the other days, but then I was at dance class this evening where I was doing a lot of "triple steps".

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 1

(for those who have already read Part 1, you can flip back to Part 2...)



I am going to introduce you to the BodyMedia Fit - Link Armband which I bought on Jan.30th from the BodyMedia Fit website with a 15% discount using the promotional code available to me as a user of MyFitnessPal (it expires Feb.28th and you can see the info here:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/10).

There are a few gadgets out there which can be worn as a way to measure what rate you burn calories at, and it was the review of someone in the BodyBuilding.com forums which convinced me that this would be the more accurate approach since it measures more things than the others.  Here's a link to the Features & Benefits page on their website:
http://www.bodymedia.com/all_day.html


Here is my experience so far:


1. I placed my order online and received the item about 5 days later via UPS. As I live in Canada, I was expecting to have to pay customs fees, but I didn't!

2. Unfortunately their website is not that intuitive and if I had known what difficulty I would have trying to pay for the subscription to the online Activity Manager (which captures the data and reports it for you, and also communicates with MyFitnessPal), then I would have added it to the shopping cart initially. Since I bought right from their website, I get 3 months free on the subscription which will start billing at $6.95/month in May. Not too exorbitant considering it's $4.86 for a Starbucks Chai Latte. Just sayin'.

3. Again, since the Manual and the QuickStart manual which come with the packaging are not very comprehensive, I found myself having to call their customer service hotline, which by the way is only available 9am-5pm EST. Otherwise, you need to email them for any issues.  Between the booklets and two phone calls to Customer Service, I have made the process much easier for anyone reading this who is considering buying one:

• charge the armband for 3 hrs using the USB cable connected to your computer

• pay for the subscription and activate your armband for that subscription using the info on page 8 of the user manual 

• from their website, download the BodyMedia Sync application (in this step, I do not mean the Android or iPhone app, that comes later) by clicking on "Getting Started" and stepping through that process. This will install the BodyMedia Sync application on your home computer where you need to have it so that when you plug it in with the USB cable, your data will be captured and then communicated to the Activity Manager you access on their website.

• on your cell phone, ensure that you have activated your Bluetooth so that it can discover devices 

• press the grey button on the plastic interface of the gadget and watch that it pairs properly with your cell phone. If you activated your subscription, it should show something like "RC's Armband" where "RC" are my initials...yours would have your initials. THIS WILL ONLY APPEAR THIS WAY IF YOU SUBSCRIBED AND ACTIVATED FIRST. If you make the error of not subscribing, but trying to get one of the steps out of the way by pairing your gadget with your cell phone, it will say "BodyMedia Fit Armband" and will not be able to communicate the data from the armband to your BodyMedia app. You'll have to go through all the trouble of unpairing the armband, then pairing it again after you subscribed & activated, then log in to the app and watch that it starts doing what it needs to.

• What BodyMedia App? The one you need to download for Android or iPhone. Once you've done that and you know you successfully 'paired' your gadget with your cell phone, log into the app and watch in the bottom right hand corner for "Waiting.....Linking....Linked" . Once it's linked, your data should begin updating periodically.

• However, if you want to get the data from your gadget to the Activity Manager you access through the BodyMedia website, your cell phone will not do that for you (they're working on improving the technology for future prototypes). You will need to take the Armband "off body" and connect it to your computer via USB. You should have the Activity Manager open and ready for data to sync when you're doing this.

• MyFitnessPal Users - you will notice that an estimated potential calorie deficit was already added from what you input during the set up process of the BMF Activity Manager.  Don't go scarfing down calories just yet....you still need time to see how these applications and the gadget will all interface

(this is the part I am at now and I will report on that in the next few days).


I have been wearing the armband all day, it's been very comfortable. I have changed clothing and it hasn't slid down my arm or anything. I've checked my phone a couple of times to see that it has kept track and communicated with my phone as to how many steps I've taken today and estimates of calories etc. It still needs to log a whole night of sleep, so I'm heading to bed wearing it.

At maximum, it should be "on body" for no more than 23 hours so that it can send data properly (I suppose).