stay active – Every Step Fitness

Tuesday tip: Why am I burning fewer calories? 🏃🏼‍♀️

If you wear an activity monitor / heart rate monitor / smart watch you may have noticed that over time you burn fewer calories when exercising.

These monitors measure calories burned based on your heart rate during exercise.

There are wrist and chest strap versions. The chest strap ones measure electrical impulses from heart (like an EKG). The wrist based ones use an optical sensor to measure heart rate based on blood flow. When your heart rate increases blood flow increases so the sensor uses this change to estimate heart rate. Due to this any exercise that impacts blood flow to the wrist will reduce the accuracy of the heart rate measure e.g raising arms above the head, burpees, planks etc. So there are already inaccuracies in the measure anyway.

Regardless of which method you use over time you will find you burn fewer calories than you used to. The body is designed to adapt and hardwired to be as conservative as possible with energy output (it’s an evolutionary adaptation to survive). If you stimulate it with physical stress (exercise) it’s gets better at handling that stress. The heart itself is a muscle and it strengthens. As it strengthens it can cope with more physical stress at a lower heart rate.

So whilst you may view it as a bad thing that you’re burning fewer calories in your spin class / Hiit workout etc it’s actually a fantastic measure of progress and fitness. It takes you less effort over time to perform a task that used to require much more physical effort. This should be celebrated!

It’s also a great reminder not to get too obsessed with those calorie burns. Aside from the fact that they’re not very accurate anyway, they will decrease over time and that’s a good thing! Yes you’ll burn fewer calories, but as I’ve often said you shouldn’t be eating back those calories anyway, they’re just a great measure of activity levels and progress! So if you’re exercising regularly and noticing this pattern don’t be sad – be proud! You’re getting stronger!

Happy Tuesday 🤗

Fitness and Exercise

All 20 Ten Min Bodyweight workouts (pdfs and full playlist)

August 9, 2020November 5, 2020 Dr Nancy P

Here are all 20 of the pdfs of the ten minute bodyweight workouts below and the link to all the videos on YouTube (click on the 1/20 to move through all workouts) or go to the main page and the playlist is there (https://youtube.com/user/ukphd)

Ten exercises, ten mins in total and no equipment required – just yourself, a watch/iphone to time it, and a mat if you want one for your knees/hands.

If you have more time then you can always do it twice or three times, if you don’t have ten mins then just do half! Get everyone involved! 🙂

Bodyweight Circuit 10

Bodyweight Circuit 11

Bodyweight Circuit 12

Bodyweight Circuit 13

Bodyweight Circuit 14

bodyweight circuit 15

Bodyweight 16

Bodyweight Circuit 17

Bodyweight Circuit 18

Bodyweight Circuit 19

Bodyweight Circuit 20

Have fun! 🙂

Fitness and Exercise

Bodyweight workout number 20!

July 29, 2020July 30, 2020 Dr Nancy P

Workout 20!

This marks the 20th of my ten minute workouts – that’s 200 mins if you fancy doing them all together (any takers? nope – thought not lol!). With the gyms now all open or about to open this seems like a fitting time to make this the last one – and it’s a nice round number!

So we finish with a few faves – seagulls (fast feet), basket ball shots, burpees!! What more could you want?

Ten exercises, ten mins in total and no equipment required – just yourself, a watch/iphone to time it, and a mat if you want one for your knees/hands.

If you have more time then you can always do it twice or three times, if you don’t have ten mins then just do half! Get everyone involved! 🙂

If you want to do it “with me” then the video is below.

Or you can use the pics below or download a pdf of the workout here: Bodyweight Circuit 20

Have fun! 🙂

Fitness and Exercise

Bodyweight workout number 19!

July 22, 2020July 23, 2020 Dr Nancy P

Workout 19!

Shuffling into the workout today! Then off for some skiing… (very appropriate at this time of year…)

Ten exercises, ten mins in total and no equipment required – just yourself, a watch/iphone to time it, and a mat if you want one for your knees/hands.

If you have more time then you can always do it twice or three times, if you don’t have ten mins then just do half! Get everyone involved! 🙂

If you want to do it “with me” then the video is below.

Or you can use the pics below or download a pdf of the workout here: Bodyweight Circuit 19

Have fun! 🙂

Ps. If you missed the previous workouts they’re here: Bodyweight Circuit 18, Bodyweight Circuit 17, Bodyweight Circuit 16, Bodyweight Circuit 15, Bodyweight Circuit 14, Bodyweight Circuit 13, Bodyweight Circuit 12, Bodyweight Circuit 11, Bodyweight Circuit 10, Bodyweight Circuit 9, Bodyweight circuit 8, Bodyweight Circuit 7 Bodyweight Circuit 6 , Bodyweight Circuit 5, Bodyweight Circuit 4, Bodyweight Circuit 3, Bodyweight circuit 2 and my first one is here (Bodyweight circuit 1)

Fitness and Exercise

Bodyweight workout number 18!

July 14, 2020July 16, 2020 Dr Nancy P

Workout 18!

Crab shuffles, bunny hops.. and a good old half burpee!!

Ten exercises, ten mins in total and no equipment required – just yourself, a watch/iphone to time it, and a mat if you want one for your knees/hands.

If you have more time then you can always do it twice or three times, if you don’t have ten mins then just do half! Get everyone involved! 🙂

If you want to do it “with me” then the video is below.

Or you can use the pics below or download a pdf of the workout here:Bodyweight Circuit 18

Have fun! 🙂

Ps. If you missed the previous workouts they’re here: Bodyweight Circuit 17, Bodyweight Circuit 16, Bodyweight Circuit 15, Bodyweight Circuit 14, Bodyweight Circuit 13, Bodyweight Circuit 12, Bodyweight Circuit 11, Bodyweight Circuit 10, Bodyweight Circuit 9, Bodyweight circuit 8, Bodyweight Circuit 7 Bodyweight Circuit 6 , Bodyweight Circuit 5, Bodyweight Circuit 4, Bodyweight Circuit 3, Bodyweight circuit 2 and my first one is here (Bodyweight circuit 1)