Polar HRM Watch

If you're tracking your calorie expenditure through
exercise, DONOT rely on the digital readouts on exercise machines and or calorie calculators on various websites. Gender, fitness, weight, and effort are all factors that impact the amount of calories that are being burned during exercise. Machines in most gyms generally include partial information (weight)to estimate calorie expenditure. This is incomplete information to adequately measure the amount of "work" you do exercising. My recommendation? Purchase a heart rate monitor watch. I own a Polar FT60 watch. It is accompained by a strap and wireless device that is straped to my chest. I entered my personal data (age, weight, height, etc) upon starting the watch. Tracking expended calories is as simple as pressing the button on the watch. The watch measures my heart rate and calculates my calorie expenditure during exercise. The faster my heart beats, the more calories are expended. The watch stores and keeps track of my progress. It's absolutely amazing.

The first time I used it I found out that my actual calorie expenditure was 60% of the reported calories shown on the digital readout of the exercise machines. So you can see, if you not carefully tracking your calories you can blow all the work you gained by that extra muffin :-).

There are several companies making these devices at a variety of models and prices. If you run, bicycle, etc., they have one for you. If you're serious about being fit, and losing weight, buy one. BTW, I have burned (throught exercise only) over 211,000 calories for this past year. Please keep in mind, however, that for weight loss...nutrition/diet is more important. More about that later.