This morning I weighed in at 162.6. I guess I have shed some of the water weight that I took on because of the weekend spent indulging in Mexican food and chips and salsa. The past 2 days, I’ve solidly stuck to my plan.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is that a few weeks ago, I purchased a Body Media armband and have been kind of entertaining myself with its daily readouts. The Body Media (or “BodyMedia”) system involves wearing a device that has a bunch of sensors that somehow get readings on things like how many calories you’ve burned, how many steps you’ve taken, and how many hours you’ve slept.
I’m always looking for something new to keep myself motivated, and when I saw the Bodia Media thing at Costco the other week, I was intrigued. I didn’t buy it immediately – I was put off by the $149 price tag, which even included a $50 instant rebate. I debated about buying it for a couple of days, and then I decided to go back to Costco to give it a second look. That’s when I found, to my dismay, that the display was gone. Eventually I asked a Costco employee if they’d sold out completely, and she was able to direct me to where they’d moved the remaining stock. Only a handful were left.
Somehow, the idea that so many of the devices had sold in just a matter of two days pushed me over the edge. I bought the Body Media system that day.
When I activated my subscription to Body Media’s online service a few days later, I wasn’t sure how I was going to like wearing the device, which must rest snugly against one’s skin, necessitating a velcro-adjusted elastic armband that feels too tight every time your arm muscles flex. It took a few days for the thing to stop really bugging me (and now I’d say that, at best, it’s just mildly annoying), but so far, I’ve found it interesting to see how many calories I’m burning.
I’ve also found that the readouts about exercise intensity have been motivating me to seek out more intense workouts. I was surprised to discover that the calories-burned calculations on my treadmill and elliptical machine are pretty accurate. The treadmill will show that I will have burned about 340 calories after running 3 miles. The elliptical shows around 200 calories burned after 25 minutes and 2 miles. I’d always thought that the two workouts have felt roughly the same in terms of intensity, but according to my Body Media readings, I only do about 10 minutes of “intense” exercise while on the elliptical machine, and the other 15 minutes or so would be considered “moderate,” which is the same rating as what I do while cleaning the house or just walking around. Jogging on the treadmill, on the other hand, shows up as “intense” exercise for the full 30 minutes.
So does jogging around my neighborhood. And here’s the weird part – it shows up as “intense” for the full 40 or 45 minutes that my usual 3.8-mile route takes me, even when I’m just walking briskly, as I do for segments of the last piece of that route. I was VERY surprised by this – to me, my elliptical machine feels like a much more intense workout than plain old walking around the neighborhood. Go figure.
My one huge disappointment with the Body Media system has been that their food-tracking system is severely lacking. Considering that Body Media would appear to be a fairly new thing, the nutritional information offered would appear to be frequently outdated or inaccurate. Of the few foods that I’ve tracked – I tend to eat the same things pretty often for breakfast and lunch – almost all the information that comes up in Body Media’s program is incorrect! For instance, I’ve been eating South Beach bars for breakfast each morning. Body Media doesn’t even have an exact listing for the type of South Beach bar I like, and the one that comes the closest is something like 30 calories off of what the label says. Likewise their listing for Slim-Fast shakes. And every single one of the Lean Cuisines I’ve looked up in their system.
If these were recently introduced foods, I’d say (in Body Media’s potential defense) that maybe the system just hasn’t had a chance to catch up yet. But these are NOT new foods. Nutritional information for my favorite Slim-Fast shake has remained exactly the same for years! And I know the Lean Cuisines I’ve attempted to look up have been around for a long time.
Even more disappointing than the inaccurate food readings, though, has been the discovery that unlike some other sites I’ve used since starting my diet 3 years ago (such as www.thedailyplate.com) the Body Media food database contains little if any nutritional information for restaurant meals. I was so bummed when I found this out! Considering all the information out there on sites like dailyplate, it’s ridiculous that a paid site like Body Media wouldn’t have included restaurant nutritional information in their database.
Overall, I’d say that so far I’ve enjoyed using my Body Media system. I don’t have the watch-like attachment that provides instant readouts – I wait until certain points in the day to download the information onto my computer with the USB cable that came with the armband. I’ve liked being able to see how many calories my body burns throughout the day, and it’s been downright fascinating to discover the different levels of intensity in activities that I’d thought were equal but actually aren’t. I’ve found that when I’m wearing the system, I am definitely more motivated to move around and to seek out more intense workouts.
I just wish they’d improve their database of nutritional information! And if there’d be a way to create a system that somehow automatically sensed and calculated caloric intake, that would be the most amazing motivator of all. I’d be in line to buy a system like that in a heartbeat. As it is now, though, Body Media relies on the honor system when it comes to recording your food intake.
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