How Effective Is An Elliptical Trainer At Burning Calories?

Elliptical trainers are an excellent way to improve your health. This fitness machine can improve cardiovascular function, increase fitness, strengthen muscles, and build bone density. One of the most sought after benefits of exercise is to burn calories. How many calories you burn on an elliptical depends on a number of factors, as this machine allows the user a variety of workout routines that can have a significant impact on how many calories you burn off during that workout.

Basically, the amount of calories you burn when exercising on an elliptical trainer depends on 3 things, your weight, the intensity of the workout, and the duration of your workout.

Your weight - The amount of calories you expend during exercise depends on how big you are. Harvard Medical School says that, in general, during a half hour workout on an elliptical trainer, you will burn 270 calories if you weigh 125, 335 calories if you weigh 155, and 400 calories if you weigh 185. These are very basic statistics that have been generalized. The amount of calories expended can vary greatly depending on the intensity of the elliptical workout.

Intensity of Your Workout - Elliptical trainers have a number of features that allow you to vary the intensity of your workout. You can increase the intensity by moving the pedals faster which increases your strides per minute. The higher end models will count and display strides per minute for you. You can also increase the intensity by setting the resistance at 

a higher level. An elliptical with moving handlebars will allow you to work your upper body as well, making you expend more energy and burn more calories. Some machines allow you to vary the incline, and increasing the incline will also cause you to burn more calories per hour. Interval training will ramp up the intensity of your workout considerably. 

Instead of staying at one speed throughout your workout, increase the resistance setting for 30 to 60 seconds, recover at a lower setting for 30 to 60 seconds and repeat this cycle for 10 to 20 minutes or longer depending on your level of fitness. Interval workouts challenge your heart and muscles to work harder for short bursts, which causes your body to 

work harder and burn more calories. You can get an idea of how intensity affects calories burned by going to caloriesperhour.com. According to this website a 150 pound person who does 60 strides a minute with a resistance of 4 (out of 20) will burn about 200 calories in an hour. That same 150 pound person will burn 382 calories an hour by increasing their strides per minute to 70 and the resistance to 10.

Duration Of Your Workout - This is pretty simple, the longer the workout the more calories you burn. So if you double the length of your workout you will burn twice as many calories.

If you are looking for an exercise routine to burn calories you should try an elliptical workout. A higher end new or used elliptical has all the features you need to design a workout that can maximize calorie burn based on your fitness level.

Consider purchasing a health club quality used arc trainer or elliptical trainer that has been professionally refurbished from [http://www.ellipticaltrainersdepot.com]. Purchasing a refurbished elliptical or arc trainer can save you 50% or more off the price of a new machine, which makes it more affordable for you to own the top brands such as a used Precor elliptical, refurbished Life Fitness, or a Cybex arc trainer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_S_Broderick

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Free Online Calorie Counter - Plan, Analyze, and Track Your Diet

Maintaining a healthy weight, for one's life, involves understanding how the body reacts to the foods eaten. Each one of us responds differently to food: 

our bodies are not identical. Franz can feel energetic and focused eating a meal plan of thirty percent protein, forty five percent healthy carbs, and twenty five percent healthy fats. Hilga is not the 

same as Franz. She needs a more carbs and fats than I do to achieve similar results. So how can a free online calorie counter help you to know what foods are best for you?

Obviously, calories are important in the makeup of an appropriate meal. When I consult with 

folks on how to approach healthy eating and meal plans, calories are discussed at the start, but once an appropriate value is determined, they don't need to count calories each day. It's more about servings of healthy proteins, carbs, and fats. A free online calorie counter is good to help 

you understand the energy values that certain foods contain. It helps you to keep in mind the fact that certain foods are better choices than others. In other words, given two healthy food choices, what do you want to spend your calories on?

Most free online calorie counter programs are okay, but they usually have some promotion of a particular diet program that go along with them. But, the USDA has launched a new diet 

tracking program at choosemyplate.gov. Along with a free online calorie counter, their program called Super Tracker allows you to search and chart the foods you want information about. Right now the USDA has about eight thousand foods in the database.

In addition to the free online calorie counter section of the site, there is also a fitness section. It can help you to determine the amount of calories burned during certain exercise activities. This kind of information might be helpful in motivating you to choose one type of exercise over another. It may also help you to realize that if you make a poor food choice, you may have to walk a mile to burn it off. It still comes down to calories in versus calories out. This free online calorie counter site might be just the thing to help you stick with your New Year's resolution!

Lets look at a quick example to show you how this can help you out in your weight loss goals. Let's say I am coaching a two hundred pound sedentary adult male, one who should be at one hundred and seventy pounds to have a healthy BMI. If he ate twenty six hundred calories a day, 

he would maintain that current weight. If he ate twenty one hundred calories a day, and exercised for thirty minutes, five days a week, he would lose a pound or two a week until the weight was gone.

Simple, right? The trick is to know how to put together healthy meal plans that have the proper nutrient make up for your body type, knowing what your body type is, and what exercise will be the most effective for you. Ah, that is where a little professional advise can save you some much time and effort!

Franz and Hilga are very passionate about healthy eating habits! They have been where most people are these days: choosing processed foods and ignoring all the healthy foods that should be eaten. One day, reality set in! Feeling tired all the time, being overweight, and just disgusted 

with how they looked and felt, they made a change. Franz studied how food and exercise affect the body, got a nutrition certification, and he has never looked back. For ten years now he has talked healthy nutrition habits to anyone that will listen.

Living full time in their RV gives them the opportunity to interact with people all over the country. They created a website to share knowledge in not only RVing, but also on optimal nutrition for better health and permanent weight loss.

Visit http://www.yourfulltimervliving.com/a-to-z-nutrition for articles, pictures, and all kinds of useful information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Franz_Williams

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1200 Calorie Diet

Many weight loss professionals use the 1200 calorie diet as scaffolding for the diet plan. Reason being it is a safe, effective and provides enough adequate daily nutrition. Any fewer calories could possibly result in a deficiency in nutrients and any more may hinder weight loss progress.

How Many Calories Should I Eat to Stay Fit?

There is no precise answer to the question, "How many calories should I eat?" but there are guides in knowing the restriction to one's caloric intake. And the restriction is predisposed to age, sex, lifestyle, and diet. Therefore, to truly know how many calories you should eat, evaluation is a must prior to jumping into conclusions.

Clean Up Your Diet If You Want Better and Faster Results

There was a time when I could eat anything and everything on the table or in the fridge without a worry of adding a pound. One of the reasons why I started to work out, was so that I could never feel guilty about indulging in tasty food.  I ate everything in moderation and didn’t pay attention to the types of food I was eating and how they were affecting me. I was content with that, because my workouts were intense and I stayed in shape.  But I didn’t have big shoulders like that werewolf kid in Twilight or shredded obliques and v-shape of lower abs like Bratt Pitt in Troy.  But I was strong.  My endurance was excellent and every time I’d hit the gym, I’d be getting faster and stronger.  Clothed, I had a great body silhouette. Take the shirt off and you could see a nice layer of hibernating fat.

20-30% of my fitness success was covered by the workouts alone, 70-80% was neglected.  That was my diet.  Through my studies and fitness training I knew well enough that 70-80% of your fitness results depend on your diet.  Although I preached it to my clients, but I never practiced it myself.  I have enough training and background to understand the impact nutrition has on one’s health and fitness. But as the old saying, the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot. I neglected to take my own advice and failed to apply my expertise to my personal health.

Recently, however, I was prompted to change my ways for a number of reasons.  First, my wife has our baby due in mid-Fall, and I couldn’t be any more excited and happier. And for some reason I am very motivated to cut my BF% by a third, at least.  Second, I saw a very unflattering picture of myself.  I thought I was in a decent shape, even with 16% BF but I was embarrassed with by the emergence of the spare tire.  Lastly, one of the fellow trainers at the Studio Fitness recommended I check a book called Eat Right for Your Type, after I asked about how he got ripped.   In ‘Eat Right for Your Type,’ author Dr. Peter D’Adamo argues that everyone should eat foods based on their blood type.  This perfect storm, a triple threat if you will, sparked my motivation