Are your workouts a waste of time?

It doesn’t matter how much time you’re spending exercising if it’s not producing results. To find out if your workout is burning sufficient calories, it’s worth the investment to buy a heart rate monitor. With my Polar watch I learned that a 20 minute Classical Stretch Pilates-ballet video only burns between 50-80 calories. So an hour may only put me at a 150 calorie deduction. Ugh! I started checking my other workouts and this is what I found:

30 minutes on incline treadmill at 3.3 mph = 105 calories

35 minute hard hike = 162 calories

60 minute kickboxing class = 354 calories

I was dismayed that so few calories were being expended, but I’m a tiny female who exercises 5-6 days a week so my resting heart rate is low and it takes intense cardio to get my heart rate up. With this data, I know what exercises to do when I want to shed pounds (kickboxing, kettlebell, stair master, dance) and which ones to do on my easy days or “days off” (yoga, walking, Classical Stretch).