My wife officially wins the award for “best idea of the year so far” with her suggestion to get a piece of exercise equipment just after the start of the year. As mentioned in a previous post, we ended up getting an elliptical trainer just over a month ago and instead of largely sitting around for the winter months (like I did last year), I’ve been using it 4 or 5 nights a week at forty minutes a pop.

We’ve had it almost exactly a month now and I haven’t lost any weight. I mainly just hover within 2 pounds of 195, never going over 200 and never under 190. I’ve also managed to gain quite a bit of definition in my arms, shoulders, and legs and through my torso in general. The cardiovascular workouts are really nice, but challenging. I’ve never been one to want to put on a lot of muscle weight, so it’s just about the right workout for me.

I’m a little curious about one thing, though, and I haven’t had much luck finding a straight answer on the any websites. I wonder if there’s any sort of general rules about how many calories it’s safe to burn in a certain time period, and if there’s any sort of limit as to what’s unhealthy. I know that it’s not exact, but in the past three nights of 40 minute workouts, I’ve burnt 920, 926, and 943 calories respectively (or so the machine says, based on difficulty settings and my entered weight). I’m basically just trying to figure out if that’s normal or not. Anyone know?