GPS watches....heart rate monitor worth it?

[Scarpozzi]

Good job on the commitment! Cutting out sodas alone makes a huge difference - all that sugar does nothing but gets stored as fat. People love to blame HFCS for their problems but it's the amt of sugar intake that's the issue, not artificial vs real.

Peanut butter and nuts are a great snack - high in good fat, keep you full. Also keep in mind that you don't want to scale back calories too much, especially with the increased volume in training. At some point you'll stop losing fat and burn muscle if you go too calorie deficient, especially taking into account longer long runs and hard track workouts. IE, you need to eat more on days you do a 15 mile long run than the 4 mile easy run days.

Thanks. My own fears of the 26.2 miles is what's driving me to make the change. I'm a foodie, but can be a minimalist for 6 months... My goal is not to be skinny, but to cut weight to make the running easier.

This is my scale:
http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/taylor-body-composition-analyzer-and-scale?repChildCatid=1168807

Based on my age/height, it will tell me how many calories to take in to maintain my current weight. Right now, it's saying I can eat 3500+. When I get to my longer workouts in about 3-4 months, I'll flip the athlete switch on (tells the scale I'm putting in 2+ hours a day) that and it should adjust to give me a higher number to compensate. I'll probably use that and recommendations by myfitnesspal to try to eat enough. I never had a problem maintaining my weight before.

 

[ControlD]

Yeah... If you use Runkeeper, Strava, MapMyRun, etc...you can actually let it all trickle down from Garmin Connect --> Runkeeper --> MyFitnessPal, etc...

I somehow managed to move 5.7 miles this morning (nursing a lower back injury now)....My run went from Strava to MyFitnessPal, so I didn't feel guilty about eating extra. (1100 calories burned)

That brings up something I have been wondering about. How do these apps calculate calories burned? I am guessing some of the more sophisticated ones must take your body weight / percent body fat into account?

For example, your 5.7 mile run calculated to 1100 calories. Looking at my Garmin app and pulling a random run up, I have a 10 mile run and it says that burned 1216 calories. But, I don't think the Garmin app knows anything about my height and weight. Or maybe it does. It has been so long since I first started using it I honestly can't remember.

 

[RagingBITCH]

That brings up something I have been wondering about. How do these apps calculate calories burned? I am guessing some of the more sophisticated ones must take your body weight / percent body fat into account?

For example, your 5.7 mile run calculated to 1100 calories. Looking at my Garmin app and pulling a random run up, I have a 10 mile run and it says that burned 1216 calories. But, I don't think the Garmin app knows anything about my height and weight. Or maybe it does. It has been so long since I first started using it I honestly can't remember.

Formula. On avg 1 mile = ~100 calories burned. (Just a rough estimate) More when first starting out running. As your body becomes used to the load and more efficient at energy usage, you burn less. Take anything the apps say with a grain of salt.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Formula. On avg 1 mile = ~100 calories burned. (Just a rough estimate) More when first starting out running. As your body becomes used to the load and more efficient at energy usage, you burn less. Take anything the apps say with a grain of salt.

For the case of the 1100 calories calculated, it was actually calculated by Strava and was pushed/pulled to the myfitnesspal app. I expect to burn more calories than most people because of my size (moving more weight). In my case, I actually ran at a very slow pace because of my back...so I broke a sweat and maintained a lot of steps for a very long workout.

I'm not wrestling anymore, so I don't care what my weight is specifically. I know I'm going to lose weight from this program. I'm trying to cut weight safely and at a reasonable pace to make running easier. My real goal is to be calorie aware and not feel guilty when I get hungry as a result of my workouts.