Some missing information

Sure. 27 years old. 6'4". Last December I was 229 pounds and now I'm down to 211. Anyone that knows me personally knows I'm a total klutz in sports - though that doesn't negate that I'm an active person, I'm just the comic relief off the bench. The Army pretty much destroyed my knees, so I can't run anymore, hence why I use the elliptical trainer. I can hit the 900 to 1000 calorie mark on that machine by watching action shows like 24 on the TV with the intensity set to 10 (of 20) on an incline of 10 (of 15 I think ...) and then keeping my heart rate at about 135 to 140.

Actually, I first got the idea of heart rate based training almost seven years ago while I was doing my CTLT time as a cadet. (For the uninitiated, CTLT is like an officer internship in the army). I met a lieutenant that had just come out of OCS (Officer Candidate School) and he described a program they had tried on his class. Rather than improve everyone's fitness by doing the standard Army "sweat-until-it-sucks" method, everyone was given a heart rate monitor and exercised at their own pace so long as it was within a target heart rate for forty-five minutes. These guys apparently had huge improvements such as dropping nearly two to three minutes off their run times. When I could run, I was slow so I gave it a shot and have been a fan of THR based training ever since.

I burn 500 calories in 37 minutes on the cross elliptical trainer at the gym. This requires me working hard at level 14 (out of 20). I think it has to do with the resistence that you set. I see other women on the machines for the same amount of time and they burn 1/2 of that!