Tuesday 10 February 2009

When good maths goes bad

Have I ever mentioned that I hate running? Hate it, hate it, hate it. And after feeling rather proud of myself for upping my running segments yesterday I realised that in terms of calories burnt (and that's all we're counting folks) it was much the same as I was doing with less effort before. That's illogical! I thought maths was supposed to be logical? Clearly calories have some kind of opt-out clause in the whole maths-is-science-is logic thing. So today I upped the speed a little and I watched how many calories I burnt on each 4 min running segment. An extremely paltry 56. That's an apple! A measly comparatively joyless apple! Overall it was about 460-ish for the whole work out, but I'm still outraged by the exertion required just to burn off an apple's worth of calories - rubbish! Grrrrr.

2 comments:

Lesley said...

Is it very wrong of me to be laughing at your post!!?

I know - it seems very unfair when you stagger sweating and red-faced off the treadmill and look at the calorie counter...I secretly do not believe it. I always feel worse on the treadmill than the ellyptical (sp?) thingy but it does not burn as many calories (apparently!).

So - lie to yourself and feel virtuous. I do.

Keep it up chuck! How about the rowing machine??

Lesley x

Mrs said...

As the exercise phobe, I TOTALLY understand your frustration.

BUT here's the thing - you are STILL running, even though you hate it!!! How about something else instead? Something that you love?

If I thought about the calories (from exercise), I wouldn't do any at all - it REALLY would NOT make sense from the effort/outcome point of view but it's the sum total of what exercise can do - the fat burning that goes on afterwards. Well, that's the theory.

Hope the new job is going well - day two under your belt. Fingers crossed.

Big kiss.

Mrs Lard xxxxxxxx