On the Menu This Week

Greek Style Cheeseburgers
Vegetarian Black Bean Chili
Roasted Cornish Hens with Quinoa and Broccoli

Friday, October 23, 2009

Body Bugg LOVING it!

Let me start with I LOVE my new toy. Love it! What is this new toy you ask. It’s a Body Bugg. Now you ask what on earth is a body bugg??? Well my friends it’s a weight loss toy for gadget freaks like me. Yes, I love gadgets. I have used and continue to use a heart rate monitor and I used to use a pedometer but my body bugg has one built in!

So what does this new toy do?

It monitors your motion through an accelerometer, basically sensing how your body moves on a number of axis,

It has a pedometer to count steps and the accelerometer can tell the difference between a running gait and a walking gait.

It measures your galvanic skin response, our skin becomes more electrically conductive as we sweat (gross)

It measures skin temperature and heat flux, when we move our muscles produce heat and the device measures the heat that’s flowing from the body into the environment.

With all these measures they get a pretty accurate picture of our calorie burn. They are clinically proved to be within 5% on exercise and more than 90% accurate on daily activity.

So all of this together gives you a picture of your body’s caloric expenditure. This together with a 3 day review of your diet gives you a calorie target and if you are aiming for weight loss you enter your weight loss goal in pounds per week. With this number it creates a calorie deficit you need to reach daily to reach your goal.

Wearing the body bugg tracks caloric expenditure, with the display you can see where you are at or you can upload it. You can also enter your food online and it tracks your calories consumed and your calories burned. It shows your progress on calories burned, calories consumed and caloric deficit. It also gives you a break down of nutrients in your diet. It also tracks your physical activity how many minutes spent in moderate activity and how many in “vigorous” activity. The pedometer tracks your steps and finally it tracks your sleep. I was surprised to discover for the first 4 hours I’m in bed I wake up for about 5 minutes every 15-45 minutes and I only get one full REM cycle a night, no wonder I’m so tired!

Oh by the way I guess it has been renamed GoWear Fit, still great product even if its not a great name. Spendy but awesome

http://www.gowearfit.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment

My Plan

I did WeightWatchers once before in 2004-2005. I lost 50 pounds. I gained some back going through my divorce but the good news is I kept off 20 of them until I restarted WeightWatchers in January 2009.

For the first time, I have found a plan that was easy to stick to. Something just felt right this time. Before embarking on WeightWatchers I re-read some books I had found helpful in the middle of my last journey. The books are listed under "Weight Loss" Books on the side bar, and a blog post about them will follow soon. These books helped get me mentally prepared to lose weight and they are the reason I think I am finding losing to be less of a struggle. I am not letting myself get discouraged by small gains and I am seeing far more consistent results.

WeightWatchers gives you a points target based on weight and basic daily activity level. Every food has a points value based on calories, fiber and fat. Then its like a checkbook you start with your daily balance, subtract for foods eaten and add for activity done which can earn you points. Exercise=More Food. Each food point is roughly 50 calories and each activity point is worth roughly 100, I use a heart-rate monitor to calculate my activity points earned.

You also get 35 weekly points to use as you want anytime during the week. For me the most successful both mentally and on the scale is to use most of those points on Saturday night for a splurge and to then stick to my daily points fairly closely the rest of the week. It helps me to know my favourite foods are only a week away if I want them. People can manage the plan however they want but for me this is the most successful. When I'm working out a lot I try to eat some of those activity points as well. Ironically I get much smaller losses the weeks I don't eat those points on Saturday, maybe it shakes up my metabolism, who knows I just know it works

Finally my last key to my plan is attending meetings. It helps keep me accountable and on track.

Weight Loss Slideshow