when in doubt, blow it out...

remember to say this to yourself when you are exercising. inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
i've found one of the most important thing about exercising is breathing. the more you breathe the more you burn. i know it sounds simple but it's true. inhale and exhale, inhale exhale. so if you want to lose weight you'll have to either eat less or breathe more, it's just that easy...ha ha!

Dr. Richard A. Muller has this to say about breathing.
"Lets talk about the conservation of carbon atoms. When you digest food, its carbon atoms enter your blood. Unless they are expelled from your body, they add to your weight. But here is the salient observation: the only effective way your body has to get rid of digested carbon is to combine it with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and then expel it through your lungs. Unless you breathe out the carbon, you gain weight.

Here are some numbers, taken from books on exercise physiology. Fat, protein, and sugar all contain about 0.1 gram of carbon per food calorie consumed. So if you digest 2,000 calories of food (a typical daily diet for adults) then you take in about 200 grams of carbon. At rest, each breath exhales about 0.5 liter of air containing about 1 percent carbon, for about five milligrams per breath. After a day at 12 breaths per minute, you get rid of about 120 grams of carbon. Thats less than you ate, so you'll gain weight.

But few of us spend the whole day resting. Walking increases your respiration by a factor of two to three. Running at eight kilometers per hour (five miles per hour) increases it by a factor of eight to 10. Put together a nice combination, and you'll lose all the carbon you consumed, and your weight will be stable. Walking, running, and being active does increase your metabolism--the rate at which you burn calories--and it increases your breathing rate too.

The mistake people make is to think that an hour of moderate exercise will change their body chemistry enough so that they'll "burn" away the calories even when they are inactive. But unless you breathe more rapidly, the carbon will stay in your body. If you want to lose weight, eat less or breathe more. And the only effective way to breathe more is through increased activity. There is no such thing as stimulating your body into a higher resting metabolic rate."

today i did the stairmaster for 45 minutes
i burned 400 calories and my average heart rate was 125
i did 104 floors and went 2.4 miles