Suddenly I find myself asking, where are all the fat mimes?????

The idea behind the "talk test" is that, in order to talk, you can't be huffing & puffing like mad. If your pushing really hard, it's very difficuilt to talk because your entirely consumed with sucking air in & out. If, on the other hand, you can talk as if you're on the phone, your not working too hard. The ideal zone is where you can carry on a conversation, but your still working around taking breathes with occassional gasp.

If you don't have someone to talk to, just utter some lyrics or start reading the instructions on the display of the machine. Most machines have a heart-rate monitor built into them, you might notice the metal section on the handles....those sensors detect the heart-rate in your body....just grab on and watch the display come to life.

As for your question, I've found the calorie-counters on machines to be fairly inaccurate. My heart-rate monitor (waist-strap) that I wear while riding emits a pulse that is on the same frequency and everything as the one built into my Precor Elliptical machine. When the Precor indicates I've burned 100 calories, the Polar (brand) wrist watch indicates I've only burned about 57 calories...that's a significant discrepency! They each display the same heart-rate, but the evidently have a different quotient programmed for my given age, height, weight. Both the wrist-watch & machine take my weight & age, but the wrist-watch takes gender, height and condition into account.....who knows which is more accurate, it's all a projection anyways.

I guess you hadn't seen my reply no6 above when you wrote this?

No worries.

Sometimes you can simply engage in ' self talk ' by ' repeatedly ' reciting a passage you know well or have memorized such as the Lord's Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance to yourself, or recite a math ' times table ' to yourself , or even give detailed driving directions to yourself.......' self talk ' of course which isn't in a halting, gasping etc. manner.

The ' self talk ' needn't be very loud or overt and given the collective noise of the treadmills at a gym is pretty loud anyway, I suspect few people will take notice.

Also, remember, you only need try and use the ' talk test ' for 30 +/- seconds or so once or twice during a 30 +/- minute cardio session IMO.

The ' talk test ' is just a quick self check to ensure you're exercising aerobically - nothing more.

please dont believe everything you read

If your so worried about working aerobically, then its probably better if you buy a hr monitor instead of something as subjective as the conversation thang