If I do the same exercise all the time does it stop becoming useful for losing weight?

rileyes wrote: »

Pushing yourself harder will increase your endurance, it will not really burn more calories. Unless this means you will also walk a bigger distance.

???
Say it ain't so.[/quote]

What ain't so? Lost me there.

aggelikik wrote: »

rileyes wrote: »

Pushing yourself harder will increase your endurance, it will not really burn more calories. Unless this means you will also walk a bigger distance.

???
Say it ain't so.

What ain't so? Lost me there.
[/quote]

Increasing intensity of workouts burns more calories. Yes?

I know when I push myself I burn more calories unless Im crazy and just seeing things lol

LynseyJx wrote: »

Maybe I'm just being impatient, a lb is still losing even if it did take two weeks. And yep I thought you'd burn more calories if you pushed yourself a bit more

Not sure you have quite got it...
Walking for an hour at 2mph will burn "this amount of calories".
Push yourself a bit more and walk for an hour at 4mph and you will burn twice as many calories because you have gone double the distance.
It's the distance not the "pushing".

But thinking that exercise is the biggest factor in weight loss is a mistake. It helps but it's not the major player.

trailrunner81 wrote: »

There several factors that go into your calorie burn, one of them is your heart rate and how you keep it up over an extented period of time. If you walk all the time, your body adjusts and you burn less and less as you get into better cardio vascular shape. I have seen this with my running. I wear a heart rate monitor a fair amout of time, and I have seen as example; a year ago a 5k at 8:00 per mile burned more calories than a 5k at the same pace today. My body has adjusted and if I want to burn more cals, i need to change up my workouts, or work harder for longer. Try adding in some body weight "lifting" for a few weeks, and then jump that up to using some light weights. Plus keep walking, and throw in some running when you can. Good luck, and great job!!

This is incorrect. What you are observing is the inaccuracy of HRM technology, not a change in physiology.

If, via training, your fitness level has improved, then a decrease in heart rate for a given exercise workload DOES NOT mean a decrease in calories burned. The drop in the number on the HRM means the HRM settings are now wrong.

sheldonklein wrote: »

I believe the point is that if you walk a mile you will burn X calories, whether you walk it fast or slow.

That is pretty much how I understood it. I can burn (according to MFP) 120 calories walking one mile at 2 mph; 118 walking at 3 mph; 122 at 4 mph

stillnot2late wrote: »

I never understood that. If I burn 100 calories on my walk, and walk for a year, will that be less calories burned than 100 for the same type walk?

NO.

(Assuming you stay the same weight)

Azdak wrote: »

If, via training, your fitness level has improved, then a decrease in heart rate for a given exercise workload DOES NOT mean a decrease in calories burned. The drop in the number on the HRM means the HRM settings are now wrong.

@Azdak‌ is spot on here. As you train, your heart enlarges (specifically, the left ventricle), so it pumps more blood with each heartbeat. Your muscles get more capillaries, so they can extract more oxygen from the blood. Your muscles produce more mitochondria, so they can use more oxygen. The upshot is that you get the same amount of oxygen to the muscles with a much lower heartbeat.

In aerobic activities, calories consumed are proportional to the amount of oxygen consumed. That is correlated with heart rate, but the adaptations that I mentioned mean that the correlation is not perfect. My heart rate bicycling at 15 mph is now about 20 beats lower than it was back in 2008, but that doesn't mean that I am burning less energy (other than due to reduced weight). My resting heart rate has also dropped from over 60 to around 46, but that doesn't mean that my energy requirements at rest have also dropped equally, just that the old ticker doesn't need to pump as often to circulate the required amount of blood.