Tools

Last year I got a new heart rate monitor for Christmas. It's pretty spiffy. It has a zone feature (giving a warning if I drop below or go above my target heart rate). It also can track my calorie burn. It knows how much I weigh and my height and how hard I'm working, so it's a pretty good estimate to how many calories I burn during a workout.

I'm not fond of wearing it. I don't wear a watch and I find it annoying when I'm working out... and it's freakin' cold to put that strap around my ribs this time of year. So I got lazy as the year progressed and stopped wearing it.

Tools are important. The heart rate monitor is a handy one, and for many reasons. Since I'm a big believer in a calories in vs. calories out system for weight loss (eating a healthy balanced diet), knowing how many calories I'm eating and how many I'm burning is fairly important.

However, there's the mental aspect of wearing the HRM that I forgot about. Things like: how hard burning 200 calories is. That even if I'm tired, when I look down and see I've only burned 60 calories, I know that I can't stop. It keeps me working out, even when I don't want to.

It even has benefits when I'm not working out or wearing it. I look at my food choices a lot differently. It's that tangible number that stitcks in your head. Is that cookie really worth it? I know that it will take me 20 minutes to burn off the calories of that one cookie. I evaluate my choices a lot more when I exercise with it, that's for sure.

I definitely got lazy with my workouts and my food choices as the year progressed. I baked this year, which I haven't done for a while. I enjoyed the junk and the exercise break, but I am paying for it. I've lost some muscle definition in my arms and my weight has creeped back up.

I'm still waiting for my Eye Toy: Kinetics to show up, so I'm still working out with Maya. She still challenges me more than the treadmill or stationary bike does. I just need a way to warm up those sensors on the HRM!!!