Anything.

As a followup to “What food should I eat while trying to lose weight?,” I wanted to answer another common question in regards to burning calories.

A lot of folks wonder what kind of cardio they should be doing, whether low intensity workouts or high intensity workouts, the treadmill or elliptical or elliptical machine, P90X or so on and so forth, but the only responsible answer is this:  do anything you’d like to burn calories.

Just try to make a conscious effort to burn calories on a regular basis.

As with counting calories, adherence to any sort of plan is more important than holding off for the perfect plan, or trying to stick to a plan that you can’t realistically follow for more than a few weeks.

If you’re having a hard time losing weight and sticking to a routine for more than a few weeks, quit worrying so much about exactly what you’re doing and make sure you do something.  Try to aim to burn calories for a “reasonable” amount of time every week, maybe say 4-6 days a week for 30 minutes a day.

It doesn’t matter what you do to burn calories, you can walk the dog, do yard work, get on the treadmill or elliptical, ride your bike around the block, etc.

Do whatever, but just do it consistently for the rest of your life.

Ultimately, you’ll lose more weight by doing cardio you can stick to for years than following some short-lived or “perfect” exercise program that comes and goes off your schedule after a few weeks.

More posts you might like:

1. Sword Fighting to Burn Calories
2. Find Passionate, Fun Ways to Burn Calories
3. Stop Doing Hours of Cardio (Why Calories in is Much More Important Than Calories Out)

The marketing coordinator for Fitbit sent me a free Fitbit Ultra.

Leanna, the marketing coordinator for Fitbit, said that Fitbit usually doesn’t give out free product(s) to be reviewed but I was going to be an exception.

Aww, shucks.

I imagine Leanna saw all the love I’ve been giving to BodyMedia (its direct competitor) over the last few weeks and wanted to step in on the action.  Isn’t capitalism wonderful?  Whatever the actual reason may be, it still provides us with the unique (and free) opportunity to compare two products and services:

What’s better:  the Fitbit Ultra or BodyMedia’s FIT Core Armband?

I’m going to wear both devices 24/7 for the foreseeable future and see how they track activities/calories differently.  I’ll also add up the pros and cons of both as I go along and present my findings when I’m finished.  From the outset though, I’m much happier with the price structure of Fitbit.  Fitbit is $99, plus it has no monthly fee.  The FIT Core Armband is $149 upfront and $6.95 a month.

That’s $84 a year to just have the “right” to use something you already bought.

At the end of the day, I don’t think either product will make you unhappy, but I would still like to find out the best tracker for the money.   I’ll declare a winner between the two when I’m satisfied I’ve had enough time testing them both.

May the best fitness/calorie/sleep/activity tracker thing win.

More posts you might like:

1. BodyMedia FIT CORE Armband
2. Progress Pictures + Calories for Week 159

I’ve mentioned my CORE Armband a few times since I started using it earlier this month, but I’ve had a lot of questions about it.

I’m not going to give a sales pitch on it or list all of its features – its website does that just fine. I’ll answer the questions I’ve received and talk about the features of it that I use and find to be most beneficial to losing weight.

How accurate are the “calories burned” that it reports?
I’ve compared it to a few of the calorie burning calculators around the web and it’s right on par with those. It’s as accurate as I can tell.

What exact model do you have?
I have the Core Armband (without display) that costs $149. There is a required monthly fee to use the service; $6.95 is charged to my credit card monthly.

Does it bother or irritate you being on all day?
No. It annoyed me the first hour I wore it, but then I completely forgot about it. I’ve gotten into the shower a few times with it just because I don’t feel it.  It also stays in place during the day, even when running, playing basketball, etc.

Do you think the armband will fit me? I’m XXX pounds.
It should fit you. The armband that comes with the package for $149 is large and elastic. It would have easily fit me even at 344 pounds. Even if it didn’t fit though, there are larger armbands available for a few bucks on Amazon.

How long does it take to charge?
I wear it 23 hours a day and some change (I take it off to take a shower) and I have to charge it about once a week. It takes about 10 minutes to fully charge.

How does it compare to the Fitbit?
I don’t have personal experience with the Fitbit, but the reviews on Amazon for it looks fantastic. The Fitbit seems to offer the same information as the Core Armband, but without a monthly fee. That’s a big plus. Otherwise, the biggest difference as far as I can tell is that the Fitbit has to attach to your belt loop or sit inside your pocket all day.  Personally, I prefer an armband.

Are you still using MyFitnessPal to count calories?
Yes. I don’t use BodyMedia’s tools (which come with the monthly subscription) to actually record the food I eat – I still use MyFitnessPal for that. For the graph you see on my weekly weigh-in posts, I manually enter the number of calories I ate for that particular week. That’s an important point. If you forget to wear your armband to work one day for example, you can get home and manually enter the amount of calories you estimated you burned (or ate) that day.

You definitely don’t want to make that a habit, though.  The armband is simply meant to be worn and forgotten, constantly monitoring your activities.

Should I buy the armband to help me burn calories?
It’s a luxury. If you have the extra funds and like data (it helps if you’re borderline OCD like I am), then I’d recommend it. I look at the data it reports every night and try to beat it the next day. It’s a good motivating tool that keeps me wanting to take more steps, burn more calories, and even get more sleep.

I highly doubt that last one it going to happen anytime soon, though.

As always, counting calories and losing weight isn’t about spending hours in the gym or burning a bunch of calories. It certainly helps, and I wouldn’t try to lose weight without some daily physical activity, but weight loss starts and ends with the amount of calories you put in your mouth.

Your choices in the kichten are more powerful than any tool or service for sale.

No related posts.

Absolutely.  Would I recommend skipping exercise and not being physically active on a regular basis? Absolutely not, as exercise has so many benefits outside of losing weight.

But, if I had to give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether or not you can lose weight without exercising on a daily basis, the answer would be yes.

I’m not going to leave it as a simple yes or no answer, though.

If you’re new here, please know that losing weight is just a matter of calories in versus calories out.  Your body already burns a certain amount of calories on a daily basis without an active effort from you to burn additional calories (exercise).  As long as you watch your calories and limit your food intake, you could sit around all day watching Dr. Phil in your underwear and still lose a considerable amount of weight to a point.

Again, I wouldn’t recommend it (especially the Dr. Phil part), but you could.

Don’t mistake this post as your ticket to skip the gym this week.  This post is for the folks that I hear from and about who don’t try to lose weight because they can’t exercise for whatever reason.  Whether it’s a valid excuse like a recent injury or something usually bogus like not having enough time (have you seen how little I sleep?) is irrelevant.

All I know is that not being able to exercise isn’t an excuse not to try to lose weight.

At the end of the day, you absolutely can and will lose weight by only counting calories, even if you can’t exercise and burn them at the moment.

More posts you might like:

1. You Can’t Lose Weight With Diet & Exercise
2. Find the Cardio Exercise Right for You
3. What to Do at the Gym to Lose Weight

I’ve always been curious about how many calories I burn by cleaning the house, playing with my daughter, working at the computer, etc.  I’ve been using my new toy to find out:

The above is a breakdown of the calories I burned yesterday (while not shown here, the total number of calories burned was 3,155).  The number on the left of the graph is the calories I burned per minute. And yes, I will see how high I can get that number.

The graph goes like this:  I woke up a little after 5 AM and worked out at home, then sat down at the computer for a long day of work.  Afterward, I picked up my daughter from school and came home to galavant outside, which is the spike you see around 7 PM.

After returning inside and taking it easy for a while, I finally got around to cleaning and doing a few chores around the house.  This is the hour of the graph that I highlighted in dark grey between 8:11 and 9:11. This hour consisted of doing the laundry, washing dishes, wiping down counters, picking up toys (not mine) and other basic chores.

I burned just over 200 calories by cleaning the house for 60 minutes.

According to MyFitnesspal’s calculator and a handful of other calculators that estimate calories burned from exercise, the readings from my armband are pretty accurate. Most references that I’ve found estimate that “light household chores” and cleaning the house burns between 200-250 calories in 60 minutes for my weight of 217.

As a type A personality, I love this kind of data. While the food you and I eat are mainly responsible for our weight loss, I love keeping track of personal bests (steps taken per day, calories burned per day, etc). I’m already trying to take more steps every day and beat my record from last Saturday when I went to Wal-Mart to pickup a few things.

Those few things were at opposite ends of the store, so I probably walked a couple of miles. That doesn’t include the hike from the parking lot.

And maybe it’s just me wondering this, but I’m really curious how many calories I burn during sex.  Hopefully I won’t have to wait too much longer for that data.

More posts you might like:

1. 5 Ways to Burn Calories at Home
2. Find Passionate, Fun Ways to Burn Calories
3. How Many Calories Do You Burn in a Day?