Tuesday, 4 Nov 2008

How to Use My Workout Log

I wrote this for a co-worker. I figured I’d share this with the tumblrs

How to Use the Charles Yeh Workout Log

I know it looks super complicated but let’s break it down.

1. Input everything below (except the column “Slept”). You’ll be using a scale which reads weight, fat% and hyd%. Then input the time you go to bed and the time you get up. The spreadsheet will calculate your hours slept.

2. Based upon your physical activities you’re going to input the # minutes of exercise. I have populated the activities in the 1^st row. These are my most frequent activities. In the 2^nd row I have populated this with the calorie/minute expenditure per the activity above. Use these #’s for now until you get advanced enough to adjust these for your own preferences and body expenditures. The last column is the total, this will automatically populate. The last row is the individual activity total, this will also automatically populate.

3. This is where the magic is. This is perhaps the most complicated section of the spreadsheet:

The “Cal In” is where you put your total number of calories taken in on that day. I have created a separate spreadsheet in the workbook called “Calorie In”. You can also do this by hand and just input the # of calories taken in that day. Either way works.

The “Cal Out” is where calculate your total # calories used by your body. This is a function of what your body burns normally (A) and what your body burns extra via exercise (B). A plus B equals C your total number of calories used on that day. To get “A” click on the “Calorie Out Base” link at the bottom of the workbook to see the Caloric Needs Calculator. Here you will input your weight, height, age, and activity multiplier. The calculator will calculate your BMR, Caloric Needs, and also a Per Minute Need. “A” is the “Caloric Needs” portion of this calculator. Once you get this number you now know what your body burns on a daily basis without ANY exercise.

But of course you’re doing exercise! So now you need to add your extra calories burned into the equation (B). Take the # of minutes you exercised and multiply it to the per minute rate for that particular activity. As I mentioned earlier, I have already populated the activities with MY own per minute expenditure. Let’s not worry about this for now. After you’ve done this, you now know how many calories you burned during that activity which is the “B” of the equation. Take “A” and add that with “B” and now you have a close approximate of what your body burned today. Looking below, you’ll see that I ate 1,800 calories on the 3^rd day of the week. My Calorie Out Base is 1,924 (A). I also played volleyball for 3 hours on the 3^rd day of the week. The 3 hours of volleyball burned 792 calories (B). “A” plus “B” equals 2,726 calories. Since I only ate 1,800 calories, I burned an extra 926 calories that day.