Say Hello To My LIttle Friend...

My heart rate monitor. My touchstone. My raison d'etre. My constant reminder that I have a big ass and it needs reducing.

This little piece of heaven keeps me on track with my activity points. When I first started working out and trying to record activity points, I just took the WW website for what it was worth. Eating those earned activity points was a constant source of worry for me because I didn't want to undo all that work. Seemed to defeat the purpose.

Secondly, if I'm gonna drag my butt to the gym and work out, it better sure as heck be at an effective level. I'm not there for the company, that's for sure.

This settles the unknown on both points. You see, after entering your vital statistics on this little gem, you will know down to the calorie, how much you've worked. It will also keep you working in your target heart rate with an annoying little beep that took me two weeks to figure out how to turn off. And it's accurate....this I know. I calibrated with an EKG at work and it was right on the nose.

Tonight was a double work out for me. I started off with 45 minutes on the elliptical and finished with an hour pilates class on the reformer machine. My new best friend said I earned 679 calories. (the cardio was the biggest chunk but my heart rate got up there with the torture, ahem, workout in the class.) WW's conversion is 1 activity point for every 100 calories burned. I will round that workout down to 6.5 AP's.

My experience is that I see a bigger loss on the scale if I do eat those extra points. Now, it's always better if it's an extra lean protein, extra whole grains, maybe a little more peanut butter than I would normally use, but I also use them for splurges.

Last week I earned about 28 AP'S. I ate my dailies, my flexies and almost all those AP's and ended with a loss of 1.8# for the week. That is HUGE for me. I do not expect that much of a loss next week. This is my first week back to pilates after a couple weeks off and torn muscle fibers = water retention (the reason a lot of people gain weight when they first start working out).

I'm not saying you need to have a heart rate monitor to see success, it has helped me. I admit that it may be more mental that physical but hey, whatever works. And for me it has been the heart rate monitor, a good pilates teacher and MUSIC!!!! The music has made all the difference in the world (maybe something to get into later....it can be a little embarrassing as some of my choices sometimes reflect that of a 14 year old teenybopper).

I plan to wear it Sunday when I help out with tagging and tail docking. I'll check back in and let you know what the results were.