Using Pedometers to Show How Calories Are Lost During Exercise, Essay Example

Introduction

People are becoming increasingly concerned about how they can track their weight loss progress. While dieting involves diet and exercise, many people are faced with challenges related to exercise because it is difficult to find time to engage in these practices when individuals are faced with a busy work schedule. Dieting can be done without wasting any time because eating is a necessary part of the routines that people follow. However, doctors recommend that people exercise for at least 30 minutes daily, making it challenging for many people to meet this need (VanWormer, 2004).

Because people have very little time to spend to exercise, it is important for them to ensure that they burn an adequate amount of calories during their exercise period. It is recommended that people engage in vigorous activity for at least 30 minutes, because this will ensure that the most calories are burnt (Dena et al., 2007). An individual can be made aware that they are participating in a vigorous activity when they are sweating and having trouble talking. This means that their body is focusing most of its energy on the workout, thereby maximizing the amount of calories burned.

Many people believe that a greater amount of exercise will contribute to a greater amount of calories lost (Marshall et al., 2009). Furthermore, the longer time that is spent exercising will contribute to a greater amount of calories burnt due to the degree to which continuous exercise allows an individual to continue burning calories after the exercise has ended. It is therefore expected that the number of calories burned will increase as the number of steps taken according to the pedometer increases.

Hypothesis

It is hypothesized that as steps are taken on the pedometer, the calories burned will increase exponentially, indicating a direct relationship between steps taken and calories burnt.

Materials:

The materials will include:

• A pedometer
• A camera
• A pen
• A pencil
• One study participant

Variables

Independent Variable: The independent variable is the number of steps taken according to the pedometer.

Dependent Variable: The dependent variable is the amount of calories burned based on the number of steps taken.

Fixed Variable: The fixed variables include the type of pedometer being used and the person engaging in the workout.

Control Group: The control group is the initial measurement in which 0 steps have been taken and 0 calories have been burned.

Experimental Group: The experimental groups will be the measurements that are taken every 100 steps.

Method Steps

• The first step of the experiment is to gather all of the required materials.
• The second step of the experiment is to have a person pace back and forth until they reach 100 steps. The person’s weight and height were logged onto the pedometer; a weight of 125 pounds and a height of 5 feet and one inch was
• Third, the amount of calories burned will be recorded every 500 steps until a total of 1000 steps are reached.
• Fourth, a graph and table will be made to describe the relationship between steps taken and calories burned.
• Fifth, this data will be analyzed to determine the relationship of steps taken according to the pedometer and total amount of calories burned.

Note: Due to the need to bring the pedometer to the evidence card, most steps exceed a count of more than 100 for each measurement.

Conclusion/Reflection

Based on the results of the study, the hypothesis was correct. The experimental design effectively helped determine the relationship between steps and calories burned. It was found that as the number of steps taken increases, the number of calories burned will also increase. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the pedometer is a reliable tool to track the physical fitness of an individual. Therefore, people could use pedometers to track how much they exercise in a day, even if their exercise is limited to walking around the office or taking the stairs. This tool can allow people to determine what steps they could make in order to increase their level of physical activity on this basis.

A weakness of this experiment is that only one person was used to carry out the exercise. In reality, people of different heights and weights are expected to burn a different amount of calories per step. The individual used in this experiment is a fairly small person, so it is expected that she needed to take more steps to burn one calorie that a larger individual would need to do. Future experiments could use more people in order to compensate for this problem. To improve the efficacy of this research in the future, it would also be interesting to have access to a pedometer that can reset steps more frequently each day. It was challenging to hit the step marks because additional steps were always made. However, this might not occur with the use of a more technologically advanced pedometer. A strength of this experiment is that it proved that pedometers consistently relate step information to calorie information and therefore proves to be a valuable tool to help people meet their fitness goals.

References

Dena M. Bravata, MD, MS. (2007). Using Pedometers to Increase Physical Activity and Improve Health. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 298(19): 2296–304.

Marshall SJ, Levy SS, Tudor-Locke CE. (2009). Translating physical activity recommendations into a pedometer-based step goal. Am J Prev Med, 36: 410–415

VanWormer JJ. (2004). Pedometers and brief e-counseling: increasing physical activity for overweight adults. J Appl Behav Anal, 37(3): 421–5.