Well tonight i'm off to buy one of those exercise bikes, I figured that I would use it more than a normal mountain bike. I would enjoy riding more than running to start with, and as I progress I'll incorporate other things into my routine

I have a really big problem with my emotions, it seems i'm always down and out. Well, i'm not "happy". Through my early teenage years they were hard times and I was really sad everyday, and now even though i'm in a far better environment and have everything I could wish for it's like I just can't stap out of getting down when there's no real reason not to be. I should try to work on my emotions, it's hard but it will work. I should continue reading the secret, I ended up stopping half way through for no particular reason.

I'll get back to how i'm doing with the riding or so in a couple of days

is there anyone you could talk to? a counselor? are you in school? you might want to talk with a professional-i know it might be expensive but if you are in school it should be free and if not they have fee-based services and/or if you have insurance it should cover it. also, exercise is a good way to relieve stress but that would just be temporary relief. good luck with the bike!

Nah it's not that bad. I just wish I was one of those happy-go-lucky people who's happy all the time. As you know though people arent happy all the time. I am happy, I just wish I was happy more often . I know that exercising is also a good way to get up the self esteem too and release any anger too.

I got the bike, but since we got back late yesterday we decided to put it up later on today. I can't wait, I hope it's good.

What I don't get though, is some machines have how many calories have been burnt.... how do you know that the machine knows exactly how much has been burnt? What is the ideal amount of calories to burn a day? I guess it you need to consider what a person eats though, right?

congrats on the bike!! i wouldnt trust the number of calories being burned on the machine b/c the machine doesnt know if you are male or female, your height, weight, shape, age, etc so its just an average and they tend to overexaggerate. there is no ideal amount of calories to burn a day. i wouldnt be aiming at calories i would be aiming at trying to get in shape and trying to do more miles per day or increasing my speed or level, which will take time. those will show that you are getting in better shape. i would also try to eventually aim for doing 30 minutes 3-5 times a week. i would build up to that. start with 5 or 10 minutes , then go to 15....

Awesome thanks! I'm actually wishing it was up and running now, because of a bit of bad news with one of my marks from university.... let the anger fuel me in other words lol. I tried boxing on wii sports just now, I died again on the same person, that made me angrier. Lol Oh well.

You're right though about what to aim for. It's good having one of those machines cause you can watch tv too I suppose.

Tell me, there was another excersice machine.... it looked strange. An epillectial strider or something. You have your feet on either side of the machine on foot rests, and it seems like you swing them holding these bars. What does it do?? It looks like you're just walking, but I think it claims to do your ab muscles. I was thinking of buying it but I would rather ride than walk. Hmm

there are elliptical machines in the gym i go to but i never heard of it working your abs. you are kind of gliding. it is all about personal preference. i never played any of the wii games. they sound like fun. sorry about the bad grade you got. maybe next semester you can do better. try to remember that its only 1 grade. maybe you can talk to your professor and see if there is anything you can do. after you set up the bike, you can watch tv or listen to music to make the time go by faster too. enjoy!

An elliptical machine will work your core, but the trick for this is to NOT use the handles - your abs will be working to stabilize and balance your body. This is, however, primarily a cardio/leg workout.

I went well with the bike, I cycled for 10 minutes and added it to my chart. So i'll keep doing that. It's outside I'll need to move it inside to watch tv.

About my mark, turns out they didn't think I sat for the exam so I failed automatically, thankfully they found it so the mark is back to normal. No more anger to fuel me lol.

Yeah the wii games are fun boxing is my favourite, you just keep hitting into the air basicly. I tried boxing in real life, with a punching bag... but I don't think it's really wise to. Around 2 months ago I broke my right hand by punching something (trying to squish a bug and went a tad too far) and broke my pinky finger's knuckle. I got it out of the plaster after 5 weeks, and the doctor said for the extra 4 weeks onwards don't fall on it or anything otherwise it might hurt it. It's been say 7 weeks after I've had the plaster out. If I push a little on the side of the knuckle it will hurt a little bit. So I don't know if it's fully healed yet or not. I should find some boxing gloves so that way it wouldn't hurt if I do punch with full force.

The ellipitical machine sounds ok, Perhaps I might get it in the future. With Xmas coming up my credit card is slowly going down hill again.

Anyways thanks for the tips

glad the bike went well. i hope your finger feels better and keep up the good work. im glad they found your mark at school. Happy holidays!

Sorry to be a pest again a few things I just want to ask.

I went to fill in my workout for today, and then I thought I would try listing my diet as well. I went to the link going to the USDA to find out the calories. I had sausages (2) for lunch. so I clicked on sausages, and typed in two for the amount. A chart comes up but it doesnt list calories on it's own. How do I work it out in this case?

Also on a different note, on my bike it allows you to see the distance travelled, speed, and as well as calories. However after doing a 2.5 kilometre ride, it says I did 10.47 or so calories? And it seems that everytime I ride really slowly it goes 0.01 .. 0.02... 0.03 each second I ride slowly. Is this calorie count right? I assumed that maybe I burned 100 calories insted of 10. (I know you said they over exagurate too).

I also went to this site to check out a few things:
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

And it says that my body fat percentage is 68.3%... is that good? I think I might have stuffed up on the measurement of the forearm, isnt that from your elbow (but the inside of your arm) to the tip of your finger? Because that's what I did.

My BMR is 1475.8

My BMI is 22.59

My waist to hip ratio is 1.03... and according to that it's a high risk to health problems? Now i'm a little scared, I mean I only weigh around 60 kilos.

Other than that do you think these stats are ok?

Wait sorry it's 0.93. That's still bad

im not sure what you are trying to figure out in terms of calories for the sausages. does it tell you the calories on the package that the sausages came in? you can do a google search for sausage and calories to get an estimate for how many calories in a sausage. im not sure what the 10.47 means and the numbers on the bike b/c each bike has different numbers so its hard for me to say. does the bike have a manual? flip through it and it should tell you what the numbers mean. if not, you can call the manufacturer or where you purchased the bike from and they can help you more. its hard for me to help you with that without me seeing it. your bmi is healthy and in the normal range. if you took your own measurements for the body fat, you might have measured yourself wrong. i would have someone else measure you and always have the same person measure you the same time of day so the measurements are consistent. i dont know much about waist to hip ratios and the body fat % seems high but i have a feeling you might have calculated it wrong but also they are just estimates too when you plug these into calculaters on the computer. i would go by seeing how a pair of pants fit or how you look in the mirror. take a picture of yourself now and then in a month. thats the best way to see progress.

Yeah that's true, sometimes I shouldnt trust the calculations. Nice to know that the BMI is good.

I'll check out the sausages. I guess the main thing I don't really want to do is check everything I eat each day and add up all the calories if I have to say take note of the energy, the fat, saturated fat, and divide it or whatever... you know what I mean?

Also one more thing I wanted to ask. My BMR says that basicly my body can burn 1400 calories a day. So if I ate 1000 calories a day my body is actually burning 400. If I exercise on top of that and burn 100 calories, would that mean then that my body has burnt 500 calories in a day? I was going to say, this is handy, if I just eat stuff that is around 1400 calories or less a day, I know that any exercise I do will then be making me loose fat and burn calories - correct?

Sorry for all the questions

your calculations add up but id be eating more than 1000 calories in a day b/c 1000 is too low and if you go too low you will lower your metabolism. you should want to figure it out where you can lose about 1-2 pounds a week. that is a realistic, healthy weight loss. 3500 calories = 1 pound. if you lose more than 1-2 pounds a week you are losing either water weight and/or muscle (which burns fat) and you want to keep that.
in terms of your diet, once you get into a routine, you really shouldnt have to check everything you eat. you should have an idea of what things are calorically but i wouldnt go crazy about an extra calorie here or there b/c your weight will fluctuate naturally thats why its impt to go by other things than the scale.

Ah ok that makes sense then. Well... I guess I can start off by making a routine of what I eat. Healthy snacks. Take note of the calories. And see what happens from there.

The other day I ended up riding 15 minutes on the exercise bike in the morning, and 15 in the afternoon. I didn't do any yesterday or the day before because I thought it's best to have a break for the muscles to grow, right? I'm thinking of doing it monday, wednesday, and friday. And try to do the HIIT cycles in that as well. Hopefully that will increase my cardio. All I really need to do then is add weights to that and any other exercise I can think of doing.

if you are doing cardio exercise (for ex. the bike), you dont need to take days off in between except if you want to rest (which is a good idea). if you are doing weight training, you need to take days off in between to let the muscles recover.

Oh, well fair enough then Thankyou

you are welcome. you just dont want to work the same muscle groups (for example arms) 2 days in a row.

For the exercise bike, I realised that my bike must have been set to easy. The level of difficulty isnt specified in numbers on the bike, insted theres a nozzle with "-" on one end and "+" on the other. If I turn it say 3 full rotations to the "+" symbol it gets a little harder.

With training, does it matter what level of difficulty it is set to? I would assume that it is like weights, have it on a lower level but do more reps... right?

Cause i'm a little worried now that I didn't get as much of a workout as I thought. I did 30 minutes the other day and it wasnt hard, but it wasnt easy either. So if I ride for longer on an easy level would it actually still give my cardio a workout?

Thanks

well if you are just beginning you are better off starting slower anyway and building it up. you eventually want to aim to do workouts in your target heart rate zone which is 220- your age x .65-.85 that should give you a range. say for example it comes out to 120-140 (im making that #up), during your exercise say after 15 minutes take your pulse (dont use your thumb) on your neck or wrist for 10 seconds and multiply by 6. if it comes out in that range you are working hard enough. if it is lower than you need to work harder, if it is higher than you need to slow it down

by the way, anytime you move, you are never wasting your time. it is better than doing nothing. it is more than you would do than if you didnt do anything.

Thats true. Thannks again for the advice... I was thinking about buying a heart rate monitor on ebay. Here in ebay australia theres watches for around 15 dollars plus 10 postage for a watch that can tell your heart rate... but it says pulse. I was thinking of buying one.

a good brand is polar if they sell those. $15 sounds excellent.