In Praise of Exercise Machines

A year and a half ago my doctor told me I had to lose weight.
This is nothing new. I had my thyroid gland out around ten
years ago, and I gained eighty pounds, and I was already built
like an offensive tackle. So lose weight, yes, fine. But how?
Well, diets are no fun, and after they took my thyroid out,
they put me on a 1500 calorie a day diet. And I still gained
weight because, of course, I had no thyroid gland, and it took
them a couple years to find the right dosage for me. (They do
not just assume that because you are three times the size of a
normal person that you need three times the dosage.)

Believe me that nothing makes you more cuddly to be around than
being on 1500 calories a day and still gaining weight,
especially when you are bicycling around Bloomington Indiana
ten miles a day.

This time around, however, I joined a gym. It turns out that
while I can't diet that well, I can exercise like a demon. So,
six days a week, two hours a day I am in the gym, lifting
weights and doing cardio. And now I have lost six inches and
gained a lot of muscle mass.

One thing I have noticed is the cardio really is machine
dependent. The stationary bicycles and recumbent bicycles,
which are not weight-bearing exercise, do not really burn any
calories compared to, for example, the StairMaster and
treadmill, which are absolutely murder on the knees. However,
there is a happy -- well, a tolerable -- medium. The
ellipticals and the basic stairstepper. The basic stairstepper
burns more calories than any other machine, and the programs on
the elliptical and the cross ramp elliptical make it
competitive on a calorie basis.

The elliptical has a cross country and hill climb program that
are very challenging. The crossramp has gluteal and cross
training programs that both make me feel like I am
accomplishing something vary movements enough to avoid
instilling muscle memory in my legs. The crossramp does not
have the arm motion, but the standard elliptical does, and on
the cross country I could get my heart rate up to 158 or so. Now
it's leveling off in the 140-150 range, but my blood pressure
is way down, even if my weight has ballooned back up. (My
clothes haven't gotten tighter, though, except around the
shoulders and biceps. Muscle mass?)

The thing about these machines is that they looked fairly
complicated when I first started. I simply did not think I was
coordinated enough to use those machines. It turns out I was
wrong. The treadmills and StairMaster are murder on the knees,
and bicycles are not weight bearing exercise (and neither is
swimming. It's great for toning, but for getting your blood
pressure down or burning calories or building endurance, forget
it.) I recommend the elliptical and the stairstepper.