I forgot about the bobble issue; now, alas, I’ll be thinking of nothing else all afternoon. Getting back on track however: most of what I said transfers to the elliptical trainer, which I would think would induce less bobble. The trouble with the cycle is that you’re sitting on your butt, and a lot of the (kilo)calories you burn on the treadmill are just going to supporting your weight; you’re burning glucose (and if you’re lucky, fat) far faster when you’re on your feet.

If the elliptical is still too bobbly, consider the stair machine, or stay at 3 mph on the mill, but crank the incline up. The goal is to be puffing a bit. (How much is a bit? Rule of thumb: exhaling on every fourth step, but not feeling out of breath. If you’ve got a heart monitor, you should be between 140 and your personal Hmax.) Caution: the way I hurt my back was by cranking up the incline too much on the mill. I really overdid it, though.

Captcha is boring this time.

Or those little chocolate bars, the mini’s. Maybe one is enough to give you a taste.

The key: if balancing workouts for sweets doesn’t work for you after a couple of months, don’t give up. Try something else. Everybody is different and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works.

Yes, it bugs me no end that ‘calorie’ has become synonymous with ‘kilocalorie’ because it’s really confusing.

Regarding the treadmill, I have significant problems doing anything more than a fast walk. There’s just no way to put this delicately, but, well, my boobs bounce if I run and it’s very unpleasant. No one makes sports bras in my size and even if they did they’d have to be pretty impressive structures to stop the bounce.

For that reason I tend to focus on the recumbent bike or the cross-trainer which produce a lot less bounce.

I do hope that wasn’t TMI!!

reCaptcha: rar solent. Is rar even a word?

A good rule of thumb is that one burns a hundred kcal per mile on foot. Yes, there’s a difference between walking and running that mile, but it’s a second-order effect. Your weight also affects your burn rate.

At what speed do you run the treadmill? 75 kcal in fifteen minutes suggests three miles per hour. If you are capable of a modest trot, the same fifteen minutes at five miles per hour would burn something north of 125 kcal, which almost earns you a Coke.

Captcha: “ment derek”.

The machines at the gym do ask for age and weight, and if you hold the hand rests properly it keeps tabs on your heart rate too. I agree that they can’t be perfectly accurate, but it’s better than nothing.

I tend to do mixed effort training, although not sure that it’s strictly interval training, but it’s that sort of ‘work harder, go easier, work harder’ regime.

And yes, there’s always fruit around. But fruit just isn’t the equivalent to a Wispa to my taste buds!

One thing that’s definitely worth a go is ‘interval training’, also referred to as Tabata (after a Japanese scientist who studied it extensively). Basically, you have a warmup then intervals of near-maximum exertion plus low intensity rest, repeated, then warm down. Some info:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_training

It’s certainly not for everyone – you’ve got to make sure that for the ‘on’ periods you really are going for it flat-out, which isn’t pleasant – but I’ve yet to find anything more effective.

Oh, a good tip to keep the chocolate & Coke at bay is to have fruit everywhere, allowing yourself to snack fairly liberally. An apple’s around 70 to 80 kCals, which means you can pretty much have two instead of a can of Coke or three instead of a Wispa! Knowing that, then keeping any biscuits, chocolate, etc. right next to the fruit bowl works for me, anyway

Best of luck!