Welcome, WHEEbles and guests -- it's the Wednesday AM edition of WHEE!
WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
I would like to start by talking about myths.
These myths are not the stories told by bards and storytellers of days gone by. Rather, these myths are those told by personal trainers and embellished by their clients.
For example, there is one popular myth that "Muscle burns fat. If you build up your muscle, you can eat more and burn it off even when you're asleep!" Like many myths, this one has a basis in truth. Muscle does burn more calories per hour or day than fat. Unfortunately, it doesn't burn as much more as the myth would have you believe. On another board that I've frequented in the past, one poster wrote that her personal trainer advised her that each pound of muscle burned 200 calories per day. More recently, I read an article on MSN.com -- titled, ironically, Diet Myths That Make You Fat -- that claimed each pound of muscle burns an extra 50 calories per day. The true number is more like 10 calories per day per pound of muscle. This comes from the Katch-McArdle formula for estimating Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR:
P = 370 + (21.6 x LBM)
where LBM is body mass in kilograms, and P is the total calories your body burns per day. To convert pounds into kilograms, divide by 2.205 -- or you can just divide the constant 21.6 by 2.205 to get a modified Katch-McArdle formula:
P = 370 + (9.796 x LBW)
where LBW is Lean Body Weight in pounds. For example, my LBW is 134 pounds. My daily BMR is 1682.6 calories - this is the number of calories I would burn if I stayed in my waterbed for 24 hours. If I add another pound of muscle, my LBW will be 135, and my BMR will become 1692.5 -- just shy of 10 calories more per day. Not 50 calories, and certainly not 200.
Another popular myth is that vigorous exercise "revs up" your calorie and fat burn for as much as 24 hours after you finish exercising. This myth has been recently busted by research done at the University of Colorado, according to an article on MSN.com. Professor Edward Melanson did several studies on a total of 65 subjects and found that fat burning did not increase substantially over the next 24 hours.
I read this story, and I got to thinking about it one morning when I was recovering from my morning cycling commute. I'd taken a quick shower on arriving at work, but I still needed to run my little desk fan to keep from sweating in my work clothes for the first half hour or so as I sat at my desk. As I thought about it, I realized my elevated body temperature was an indication that my metabolism was still elevated after my workout. I'd worn my heart rate monitor during my ride to work that morning, and I thought, "My heart rate monitor shows calories burned. I wonder what it would show if I were wearing it right now?"
I took a short break, went down to the restroom with my monitor transmitter chest belt, went into an empty stall, took off my shirt, and strapped the transmitter back on. I put my shirt back on and returned to my desk. At intervals throughout the day, I ran the stopwatch function (my heart rate monitor tracks calorie burn only when the stopwatch or countdown timer is running), recorded the calorie burn, and divided the calories burned by the number of minutes I'd run the stopwatch to get an average calories burned per minute.
As expected, the calorie burn per minute dropped off fairly quickly after my morning workout. Unfortunately, I realized that I should have worn my heart rate monitor on the previous day, which was one of the rare days that I'd driven to work instead of cycling, in order to get my base calorie burn on a day when I hadn't wheezed up the hill on my bicycle.
I decided to keep tracking my calorie burn over the next few days, and soon I was thinking of it as a research project. After a couple of weeks, though, I began to wonder if the calorie burn numbers I was getting from my heart rate monitor were accurate. For a couple of days, I tried taking my temperature at intervals to compare it against the heart rate monitor numbers, but I decided pretty quickly that the drugstore thermometer I was using was even less likely to be accurate.
After thinking about my finances for a few days, I bit the bullet last week and bought a Bodybugg. The Bodybugg uses skin temperature, galvanic skin response, and an accelerometer to measure calorie burn and walking steps. The makers claim an accuracy within 10% of high-priced laboratory metabolic measurements. How does the Bodybugg compare to my inexpensive heart rate monitor? What's it like to use? Well -- you'll have to watch for my next diary to get the lowdown!
Previous WHEE diaries
Planned WHEE diarists and their days and times (thus far) will include:
July 22 Wed AM - Edward Spurlock
Wed PM - Sheddhead
July 23 Thu AM - StrangeAnimals
Thu PM - gchaucer2
July 24 Fri AM - help
Fri PM - bluesophie (added)
July 25 Sat AM - help
Sat PM - help
July 26 Sun AM - louisv weekly
Sun PM - Stage Stop
July 27 Mon AM - help
Mon PM - help
July 28 TuesAM - Kascade Kat (added)
TuesPM - debbieleft
July 29 Wed AM - Edward Spurlock (added)
Wed PM - help
July 30 Thu AM - help
Thu PM - Glow Dog
If no one objects, I'm putting myself down for next Wed AM. If you want to write a diary, let me know in a reply to my Tip Jar and I'll edit to add you to the schedule.
WHEE members:
1864 House
3rdGenFeminist
anotherCT dem
anotherdem
askew
badscience
batgirl71
bfitzinAR
blue jersey mom
bluesophie
Brimi
CA coastsider
Cassandra77
chicago minx
Chocolate Chris
coigue
CONEFLOWER42
crystal eyes (?)
cusoon
darthstar
debbieleft
digitalmuse
Dragonladykatie
Ebby
econlibVL - cheerleader
Ed G
Edward Spurlock
el dorado gal
Embee
Fabian
fiddler crabby
flor de jasmine
freesia
gchaucer2
glow dog
GoldnI
Greasy Grant
it really is that important
jiffykeen
Kascade Kat
Ken in Tex
Kirsten
kkbDIA
lineatus
Lisamoe - cheerleader
louisev
luvsathoroughbred
malharden
marleycat
matching mole
Munchkn
nswalls
Oke
Pandoras Box
Proylance (?)
RiaD
revgerry
RLMiller
Roadette
roses
RunawayRose
SallyCat - cheerleader
Shayle
sheba
sheddhead
StageStop
still small voice
StrangeAnimals - cheerleader
supenau
Tenn Wisc Dem
trs - cheerleader
volleyboy1
webranding
Wee Mama
xysea
If you want to be added to the roster, reply to my Tip Jar and I'll put you on the List.
Be sure to join sheddhead's WHEEfit social networking page!
Before I leave you to the Comments, I would like your opinion. As I noted above, I started thinking of my calorie burn measurements as a research project. I intend to continue and expand this research project, but I'm not sure what to call it. I wanted to get a domain name to go with the project, but the first names I came up with -- HeartGeek.com, FitnessGeek.com, HealthGeek.com -- were already taken. I've thought of some new ones, but I'd appreciate your thoughts -- what should I name my research project?