workout songs

great workout songs can really make all of the difference. or a great magazine. last night i added two new songs to my playlist:

1) all the single ladies by beyonce, and

2) live your life by ti and rihanna

amazing! nothing like getting your groove on to make working out fun. it will be heaven when no doubt releases a new album. HEAVEN.

last night i did about 36 minutes on the elliptical (burning 300 calories), and then moved to the mat for some stretching, sit-ups, and more bootylicious exercises. my bee-hind is definitely feeling the burn.

i wanted to write a little bit about heart rate monitors. mine has really opened my eyes to three important things:

1) the number of calories i'm actually burning. i find the estimates on the treadmill and the elliptical to be grossly overestimating how many calories i'm burning. i used to walk for an hour and think i burned 600 calories. HA! of course, the number of calories you burn doing any exercise varies based on your own weight, height, and age. i burn a lot less calories than a 200-pound man would doing the exact same exercise.

2) the level of physical exertion i should be aiming for and maintaining. after you input your stats into the monitor, it gives you a range to aim for and maintain during cardio exercise. for example, my resting heart rate is in the upper 50s. this is pretty low. my "cardio" zone is between 125 and 165 beats per minute. when i used to run, my heart rate would stay around 140 beats per minute, unless i was running up hill. on the elliptical, it's about 150 because i'm pushing myself hard. sometimes it goes up to 165, and i know it's time to back off a little.

3) what exercises are good for cardio and not as good for cardio. i'm not saying bad, because any exercise is good. but i now know that even walking on an incline doesn't pump me for maximum burn. and that tony gazelle machine (my parents have)... worthless! unless there is some way to turn up the resistance that i don't know about (there probably is).

my dinner last night was ridiculously low in points. i roasted an entire acorn squash, scooped out the insides (1 point for the whole thing) and covered it in 1/2 cup cottage cheese (1.5 points). since i had leftover points i enjoyed a 50 oz. glass of wine. 50! and now i'm dead. i meant 5 oz. i measured it on my kitchen scale and 5 oz. is a lot. i was underestimating my wine consumption before. not anymore haha.

this morning i thought about swimming but that didn't seem very appealing, so i did two pilates videos instead. the first was a beginner 25-minute "band exercises" workout, and the second was the 20-minute circle workout. my hips are very flexible but my hamstrings are NOT and both these videos stretched them out a bit.