Weigh in Day #25 - Something to celebrate?

Happy Easter I guess...if you celebrate it. I for one don't really have any reason to. I'm not religious and don't have any need for hiding or finding eggs, nor do I have a desire to stuff my face with giant chocolate bunnies. So what did I do today you ask? I'll tell you.

First, I got out of bed and stepped on the scale. Okay, first, before I tell you about that I must confess something. I was too curious about my progress this week, or lack thereof so I actually weighed myself on Saturday. Then I weighed again this morning for my official weigh in.

Last week, the scale was not nice to me at all. It showed a gain. I went from 163.6 to 165 last week. Then on Saturday, the scale displayed a whopping 162.4. I know right! RAD! How can I not be happy with that. Seriously! And I was happy and bouncing all over the place. Finally, the scale has moved in the correct direction. Finally!

Then I weighed again this morning just to have my official weight on Sunday because that's what I do, and no matter what I did, it showed 163 even. What! Stupid scale. How is it possible to gain .6 lbs over night? It's not. Nope. But, such as life. I'm going to log my loss at 163 even to be consistent with my weigh ins but in my head and in my heart and in my pants, I know it is actually 162.4.

Enough about the weigh in. Time to get on to the big news. My awesome workout today. It really was awesome. Hubby went and got himself his very own racquetball racquet so he could play with me regularly. We watched YouTube videos last night to learn the real rules and scoring and stuff. So today, we actually played 4 games. He won 3 of them. Damn him.

The amazing thing about the experience besides being a load of fun was the calories I burned. Normally I just plug my average heart rate into my spreadsheet and it calculates my calorie burn based on that. Well, I don't think that is going to work today because I blew that average out of the water.

1 hour, 20 minutes of activity
140 average heart rate
If I plug that into my spreadsheet, it shows a total burn of 537 calories. Not too shabby right? I agree. Pretty good. But....do you know what my heart rate monitor said? Do you wanna? Ok.

988 calories burned

Seriously? Seriously! Fanfreakintastic! Seriously!

All I have to say is INTERVALS BABY! Intervals! I was watching my monitor like a hawk and saw my hr get up to 170 while we were in the middle of a rally then when it came time to restart, my hr dropped down to 127 in no time at all. Up and down. Spike and fall. Over and over and over and over again for 1 hr, 20 mins. Do you have any idea how exciting that is?

It's so exciting I just feel all kinds of giddy inside. Interval training is probably the single most efficient way to rev your metabolic engine so you become a lean, mean, fat burning machine.

When I first got my metabolism tested in 2008, I was pretty deconditioned. When I got my heart rate up to around the 160s, it took forever for it to fall back down to a more manageable zone. I remember the guy telling me that he was concerned about my metabolism and conditioning while he was conducting the test because it took a few minutes for it to fall. When I asked him what it should do if I was healthy, he said that ideally conditioned indivuals of my age and sex typically see the hr fall at least 10-20 beats per minute.

Now that I'm all learned from the ACSM, I have a much better understanding of what he was referring to and why it was so significant. The rate of how fast our heart rate falls after vigorous exericse is called "recovery heart rate". There have been a decent amount of studies done on the recovery heart rate and what it tells the medical community about our level of general health and our risks for heart disease. Although there are multiple opinions on the subject, it has been widely accepted that the recovery heart rate is a reliable indicator for health and risk for heart disease. Essentially, the slower our heart rate returns to a normal rate, the higher risk we have and the more unhealthy we probably are. The opposite is true as well. The faster our heart rate returns to normal is an indicator of our level of conditioning as healthy individuals.

Generally acceptable recovery rates:

• A recovery of 12bpm or less is considered to be an indicator for higher risk for death from heart disease
• A recovery of 15-25bpm is considered normal
• A recovery of greater than 25bpm is considered to be ideal fitness

So are you getting the idea here? Today, my heart rate went from the high 160s to the high 120s in about a minute. That's a 40bpm drop in one minute.

25bpm drop is considered ideal fitness
Mine dropped 40bpm today! 40bpm!

40 BPM!

WooooooHoooooo! Now that's something to celebrate.


You can read more about recovery heart rate all over the internet. One source is on WebMD.