On Jan. 1, I made a commitment to lose weight. One month later things are going well. So far, it looks like 8-10 pounds. I have always worked out, but it grew difficult to keep up with my eating habits.
As I was getting ready for today’s workout, I saw my Polar Heart Monitor in the bottom of the gym bag. Cindy gave me this device as a birthday present a couple of years ago (hint, hint). I have not used it in several months so I decided to wear it during today’s workout. When I was wearing this device and was on one of the cardio machines, I used to play a kind of game with myself. The heart monitor allows you to enter settings (like age), the establish a ideal heart rate zone for your workout. The device keeps track of how much time you spend in the zone. When your heart rate is too low or too high, the device will not record time or estimated calories burned. There is a particular cardio machine I like to use and I would watch during a 35 minute workout to see how much of the time I would keep in the zone and how many calories I would burn during the workout. I think the idea is to push yourself, but stay within your zone.
Since the big weight reduction push, I have been putting more time into cardio. I have kind of established a routine during which I spend so much time at setting 5, so much at 6, bump it up to 7 for 5 minutes, then back to 6 for 2.5 minutes, etc. This routine used to be necessary to keep me in the zone, so I was wondering if the time in the gym since I had last used to heart monitor had resulted in some improvement. Sure enough, I was 25 minutes into the workout mostly at setting 7 before my heart rate hit 143 and I had to back it down to 6. So — the time in the gym is paying benefits. This is pretty cool and I guess it is time to push a little harder.
Isn’t technology great?
Kickin it up a notch in Grand Forks.
