Pilates FYI

I know alot of people out in Blogland are in to exercising so I wanted to pass this info along.....

Question: How do I know how many calories I burn doing Pilates? Does it count as cardio or strength training?

Expert Answer:Your Pilates workout is a great way to improve general fitness, and will definitely burn some extra calories--but not as many as traditional aerobic exercise. And it won't provide the same cardiovascular conditioning benefits as aerobics, even if it does elevate your heart rate quite a bit. Aerobic exercise has heart-healthy effects because of the unique way it forces the cardiovascular system to provide extra oxygen and blood flow to the muscles. So, we encourage people NOT to replace traditional aerobic exercise (running, walking, biking, etc.) with other things that serve different purposes. Better to do both, if possible. SparkPeople's cardio tracker doesn't estimate calories burned for things like Pilates and weight training because it's almost impossible to estimate how many calories a given person would be burning due to the many individual variables involved. Since any stock formula is bound to be significantly off for the majority of people who use it, and since overestimating calories burned is just as unhelpful as underestimating calories eaten, we recommend that people just consider the calories burned by these kinds of activity as "extra" calories they are banking for those days when things don't quite go as planned.

*Info taken from email from Spark People