<p>Thanks, MOWC. I’d looked on the internet and found quite a few sites that offered targe heart rate calculations, including one from the Mayo, but they were all just subtracting a number from your age. </p>
<p>What do people use to measure maximum heart rate, assuming a physician test is not in the picture? Are the monitors on treadmills good enough?</p>
<p>Oh NO! We were on page 4! </p>
<p>Today I am down another .5 pound :)</p>
<p>Good for you, EPTR! I’m glad you’re back on track.</p>
<p>I missed weighing myself this morning because I overslept and had to rush S2 to school. I ate breakfast before I remembered.</p>
<p>I’m down a pound from last week - that’s three weeks in a row, so I think I’ve officially recovered from my heat wave slump. Managed to get a walk in, or do New Rules for Lifting for Abs workouts, or go to the gym every day this week.</p>
<p>That’s great, mathmom! Good for you.</p>
<p>After a too-long period of slacking off (late July to late Sept) I went back to Weight Watchers. Last week I was up 5 # from my low in mid-summer, which was about 25% of my loss since Feb. Very discouraging! But am back with the program and was down 1.2# yesterday, so hoping to get back to reading this thread again for ideas and encouragement and head into the holiday season in a good place.</p>
<p>Great EPTR!</p>
<p>I went out to lunch yesterday and had a 40 point SALAD (for you WWs folks, you know what that means). But since I hadn’t used any of my “activity points” or “weekly points”, I"m still under the weekly point mark. And this morning when I got out of bed, I actually had NOT gained any weight from yesterday’s salad fest.</p>
<p>Today…off to the gym…again.</p>
<p>Kind of ticked off at work today! We are suppose to be taking out a co-worker - it’s her last day of work - and we had discussed restaurants before…the choice ended up being a place where I knew I could still get a good, healthy but delicious meal…</p>
<p>Until in the last 1/2 hour people have decided to dump the one spot and head to a local national chain place that features free biscuits and cinnamon butter, and lots of rich, calorie-ridden food. Ugh!!!</p>
<p>(needed to vent!!! I have learned that I prefer to avoid the big chains that deal in BIG servings, BIG calorie counts!!!)</p>
<p>My Wii Fit weigh in this morning shows me down almost 3 pounds from last week, somewhat of a surprise. I’ve now lost my fourth 5 pounds and am down 21.6 since the start in June. I think part of the loss in the last couple of weeks is because my doctor switched me from Avandamet to just the Metformin part of the mulitpill and the Avandia part sometimes causes weight gain. So maybe dropping that part had an effect. I am having some side effects with increasing the Metformin part so my doctor is having me increase gradually and seeing if that works. If not I may have to switch to something else.</p>
<p>Actually, I attribute the most recent loss to all the standing up and sitting down in services yesterday!</p>
<p>I only wish I had some of the problems you all are encountering - outings with friends and relatives, work parties, vacations, etc. I’ve got a pretty empty life and my weight loss and health improvement seem to be the only aspects I can work on proactively (everything else I want to change in my life needs DH’s cooperation and that’s a whole 'nuther problem). I may hate where I live, have no job or social life, and need friends (apart from all of you), but by God I’m losing weight and getting healthy. And fitting back into that lovely light jacket that I couldn’t button up and couldn’t find a good replacement for and now fits beautifully.</p>
<p>I did that bouncing around a 10 pound range back pre-baby; post baby I mainly just went up and up and up. So for those of you who are discouraged about losing that last few pounds - I’ve only lost about a third of what I gained (do the math and you can see how bad it was). It really shows how terrible my diet has been, not that I’m being more successful now than others.</p>
<p>Tonight will be interesting since we’re going to my brother’s for dinner. His family has been overtly involved in Weight Watchers for the last couple of years (in that consideration of WW has been dominating all meal discussions). I met my brother and mother last weekend at my dad’s cemetery, then we had lunch, and neither of them seemed to notice a thing about my loss; my husband says it really shows in my face (in a good way). It will be interesting to see if my SIL and/or niece are more observant.</p>
<p>Off to make the chopped liver to bring tonight. Low carb! (Until you put it on the challah.)</p>
<p>Marilyn, have a good time!</p>
<p>And you are right - we all have different situations, but when we come to this thread our support and motivation is pretty much equal!</p>
<p>NYMom- The only way to get a true max is to, literally, go to the point of failure. An effort like the end of a 5K or the 3rd of a series of 800s on the track will get you close. This isn’t just me being technical and picky. The estimations on the charts are so off for most people that it is just a guess. There is really no way to estimate a max HR other than putting out a huge effort and seeing what you hit!</p>
<p>Thanks, MOWC. A few years ago, when I joined a health club, they offered an initial assessment that included walking on a treadmill while wearing a monitor. I remember that it was very hard to get my heart rate up. The trainer kept increasing the incline until I had to hold on to avoid falling off backward. Of course, I don’t run so the speed was limited to what I could do as a fast walk. Maybe I could try to do it by swimming, or using the elliptical machine? I find the elliptical a lot more strenuous than the treadmill. </p>
<p>By “failure,” I assume you mean, completely out of breath, can’t go another step?</p>
<p>Yes, failure is max. Elliptical could get you close if you really push it. I used to get tested as part of studies and we were on the treadmill all wired up with all sorts of electrodes and VO2 monitors etc. Both speed and incline was increased and the lab techs would cheer for me to keep me on as long as possible. They could tell when I was at max. Once it was over I would try to say “I think I could have gone a little more” and they would say “Uh, no. You were done.”</p>
<p>I’ve never had any interest in seeing how hard I could push myself. Fundamentally I’m lazy. I think my max is around 180 or 190 figured from my resting heartrate. I try to push myself to over 150 on intervals, but I’ve never gone much over 160 and I don’t do that every time. I don’t have a program yelling at me and I read on the elliptical I am not as scientific as I could be, but I did push myself 4 or 5 times to over 150 on the elliptical today over the course of a half hour.</p>
<p>It will be a big change for me to push myself on the treadmill or elliptical. I’ve been going along at a reasonably comfortable pace, basically a brisk walk, for years. I usually do it for 30-40 mins before doing the weight machine circuit. The elliptical is less comfortable but if I use it I only do so for 10 mins before going to my beloved treadmill. I enjoy treadmill walking because the stride is longer to the back than in “real” walking, and there is a nice stretch of the muscles in the front of the hip/thigh. Besides, you can watch television or listen to an audiobook. If there is a good show on I can easily walk for an hour. </p>
<p>I’ve learned from CC that I’ll need to pay attention to those interval programs, rather than just setting my pace and walking along.</p>
<p>Mathmom- You are missing the point. Seeing how hard you can lush yourself is NOT the goal at all. In fact, knowing the correct aerobic zone for yourself actually helps you NOT work harder than you should. Pushing too hard can lead to fatigue, injury and burnout. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to know your aerobic zone without knowing your max heart rate.</p>
<p>If you add just a little bit of interval work your fitness and weight loss results are likely to improve dramatically. Doesn’t have to be all out or long stretches. Cranking it up on the bike or treadmill for a minute or even 30 seconds at a time a few times is a great start.</p>
<p>MOWC, that *is *what I do. I do intervals, somewhere between 30 sec and a minutes long with 30 second to a minute less strenuous rest periods for about half the time I’m on the elliptical. On some walks at least, I do jogging intervals. What I’ve never done (at least not since I was in my 20s) is to push myself to exhaustion even once to figure out what my max heart rate might be. I know it’s not the goal, but you have to do it once don’t you? Or else use all the less than ideal formulas based on resting heart rate and age and all the rest, which tell me that 180-190 is probably my max.</p>
<p>I’d have more weight loss if I exercised more - there are too many weeks I only get to the gym once or twice and I don’t do enough at home to make up for it.</p>
<p>Yes, you have to do it once. The problem is a lot of people exercise and can’t
understand the lack of results or improvement in any area, and it turns out they are not getting their heart rate into an aerobic zone. OR- in my case- going too far out of the aerobic zone for too much of the workouts.</p>
<p>
Heh, no fear of that! But I do think that before the last year I was guilty of not getting my heart rate up as high as I should have.</p>
<p>Just out of curiousity, if you get a good max heart rate number, and plan your workouts accordingly, how frequently should you re-test? I imagine that the number goes down with age. If you are in bad shape and get into good shape, does the max heart rate go up?</p>