Quote:
1- What are some of the best ways (activities) to burn 500 calories a day?
Best is going to be highly subjective. What's best for me might not be best for you - because if you don't like it and won't continue doing it, then it's not going to help.
I personally combine 30 mins of weight lifting with 30 mins of ss-cardio 3x a week. 2 other days a week, I do HIIT cardio, which doesn't burn off 500 cals at the gym, but provides an "afterburn" effect.
Also I don't concentrate on how many calories I burn exercising, as much as making sure I get in a good solid workout. I know that by building muscles, I'm creating more metabolically active tissue in my body, so even if I don't burn 500 cals at every workout, I'm creating a situation where I will burn more calories on average per day, because I'm building more muscle.
Quote:
2- Does exercise have to be done all at one time to be effective or can it be divided up throughout the day and still be just as effective?
There are a lot of theories about this and information from both sides that is valid. IN order to gain any cardio-vascular benefit from aerobic exercise, you need to do at least 20-30 mins of it at a time and maintain your heart rate. Also when lifting weights, you'll find your workouts much more effective if you continue the work for a 20-30 minute period, vs. doing a few lifts here and a few lifts there. When lifting, you need to work your muscles almost to exhaustion, and it's hard to do that if you're spacing things out too much.
Quote:
3- Is there any kind of monitor that will monitor calories burned kinda like those pedometer thingies that monitor distance walked?
As others have mentioned, a good Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) is worth it's weight in gold!
I got mine at Target - it's a Polar F6 and cost me about $85 (after a coupon and a sale). I use it at every workout, more to monitor my heart rate than to calculate calores, but it is nice to get a rough idea of what I burned at each workout.
Quote:
4- Share with me what kind of exercises you do and how much time you spend each day doing them and how is it working for you?
I actually posted this on my blog a while back:
On a normal week I hit the gym 4-5 times. I do 30 mins of weights (I’m using sort of a modified version of the New Rules of Lifting for Women plan) 3x a week, followed by 30 mins of ss-cardio on either the elliptical or the treadmill. The other 1-2 days I do 20 to 30 mins of HIIT cardio on the elliptical.
Also every morning when I get up before I shower I do a set of mat stretches just to get the blood flowing (sort of a combination of some Pilates type stretches combined with a short set of Tai-Chi stretches that a friend of mine who’s an instructor taught me), followed by 50 crunches on the swiss ball and 50 pushups on an incline off of my cedar chest (not full *real* pushups yet - but I’m working on it).
Every once in a while I throw in a workout DVD on a non-gym day, but lately I’ve been slacking on those.
.