you want a grain of salt with that?

Well, yesterday I went to the gym after work and signed up for the Biggest Loser promotion. Today was my first personal trainer session. Well, my first two sessions, since the first one is a weights/measures/fitness assessment session. I think I'm going to like my trainer fine--she seems to know a fair bit about lifting and form, and she was very encouraging.

However, I have a couple beefs with my first sessions.

First, what's with the supplements? They had me buy one last night (which I only accepted because it was 30% off + I had a $5 off coupon), and then she pushed two more in today's session. One was a meal replacement shake, the other was some kind of pill to curb carb cravings. Apparently releases the same chemical in your brain, whatever, whatever. $30 for a 30-day supply. I read the ingredients, didn't see anything I recognized, declined them both. I think I'll just bring snacks to work.

Second, we have different philosophies on cardio. I warmed up on the treadmill for 5 minutes before the lifting, and she calculated my target heart rate at 155. I am in the "build an aerobic base" mindset right now, so I'm trying to do longer sessions at lower heart rate. She's more of the 75-85% for 30 minutes cardio camp. 155 is fine for her way, but way too high for mine. And getting to 155 in 5 minutes during a warmup seems a bit much. Also, she went on to explain that 155 was 55% of my capacity, a beginner level. Um, no it's not. Even with the most optimistic of max HR, 55% would be somewhere around 120. She must have realized something was amiss with her calculations, though, because she kept mentioning 140 as my cardio target for the remainder of the session. 140 is more like it, but if she's expecting me to get there in 5 minutes on a frickin' treadmill, we better crank up that incline. Later on, she told me that the treadmill burns the most calories of all the cardio machines, because it's a full body workout. Uh-huh. With my hands on the HR sensors.

She seemed to be obsessed with the calorie burning, actually. I was burning calories lifting this, burning calories standing up, burning SOO many calories doing the prone cobra thing (which was really, really hard, by the way--those little muscles at the back of my waist? Haven't felt those before). I get that it's a weight loss promotion, but damn. You don't have to keep reassuring me. I understand the basic thermodynamics at work here--this is not my first rodeo. All the calorie chatter wouldn't have been irritating, except that she was so indiscriminate about it. I hate to think that she really believes that performing a mat exercise using small muscle groups for 30 seconds at a time is a massive calorie burner. Core strengthener? Sure. Good for me? Absolutely. But I seriously doubt it burns as many or more calories than, say, walking to the door and back. She also told me that a bike doesn't burn as many calories as a treadmill and tightens the hip flexors. I'm with her on the hip flexors, but I call shenanigans on the calorie thing.

Those things aside, I liked her fine. I learned some exercises and stretches I haven't done before, and I think I can learn from and work with her. I have 3 more sessions on the BL promotion--Friday, Monday, and Wednesday--then I can decide whether to continue on my own or pay for additional sessions.

My measurements were a little discouraging, in that they were frickin' huge. Did you know I have 41% bodyfat and 47" hips? I do. No wonder my jeans don't fit.

5 miles on a treadmill burns more calories than 5 miles on a bike. 20 minutes vs 20 minutes or an hour vs an hour is a different matter. If you only have 30 minutes to do cardio, you can probably burn more calories on a treadmill because you have to keep walking and you can push yourself. On a bike you can always coast whether you mean to or not. The reason long term, you burn more on a bike is because very few people can go 3 hours on a treadmill, but you can on a bike, and at the end of the day HR*Time is calories burned from a cardio standpoint. There are other things that came into play, but she's probably used to dealing with people that think of cardio as 25 minutes of something. In that case, the treadmill probably does burn the most calories. If you disagree, call her on it though. If she's any good, she can explain why she believes something. If she's just repeating shit someone told her with no understanding of what it means, then you'll know that too. As for supplements, it's like McDonalds asking if you want fries. They make money when you buy supplements so the try to sell them to you. They aren't worthless, but they probably aren't crucial either. MR shakes or bars can be good when you're trying to eat 5 meals a day and get your protein.

yeah, the part I objected to on the treadmill thing was the "full body workout" bit. And my calorie counts on an elliptical machine are always higher than the treadmill. With biking, I think she was referring to stationary bike, v. actual bike, so coasting wouldn't really be a factor. But yeah, I agree that I could have asked, and she probably would have backed up her logic. She didn't give me the impression that she was parroting information, and since I knew she meant to be encouraging, I didn't want to get in a full-scale debate over which exercise burns what. I'm certainly no expert, I just found some of her claims to be sort of specious. And I'm skeptical of supplements in general, and hate feeling pushed into something. To her credit, though, one "no thanks" was enough.

Man, trainers can be the best thing in the world or the worst (having had maybe two in my life). ;) Good luck with this one, and kudos for signing up at all. I tend not to trust organized exercise/weight loss programs, which is perhaps why I've stayed at the same weight for four years.

Anyway. I just wanted to pipe up that, while I agree that weights and other strength workouts aren't really massive calorie burners (and certainly not the prone cobra ones), they can increase your muscle mass, and an increased muscle mass can boost your basal metabolic rate. So you do end up burning more calories throughout the day after strength training, even if you don't burn a whole heck of a lot in the exercise itself.

Eleanor, I'm going to agree with half of you statement on weights and disagree with half. Resistance training in general does increas BMR by increasing muscle mass and making the muscles themselves burn more calories, but weight lifting itself is a huge calorie burner too. Particularly the major muscle groups. You burn a lot more calories per minute doing resistance training than you do on any kind of aerobic exercise. The problem is that it's only burning while you are actually doing the resistance. An hour weight lifting session not planned as a weight loss session might contain 40 minutes of rest between sets and when the muscles aren't engaged in resistance exercise, they aren't burning fuel. So it can be deceiving. That's why circuit resistance workouts or even just alternating 2 body parts when lifting so you are never really 'resting' can be incredibly effective in burning calories. The calories it takes to refill glycogen stores in muscles and repair them later are also considerable. Cardio is good for you heart and certainly should be a major part of any fitness program, but you can burn calories and lose all the fat you want without ever doing a minute of cardio. Your overall fitness and wellness would suffer from this approach, but it's important to remember that resistance training is a much better calorie burner than cardio. It's just harder to do right and regularly.