Body Media and what I've learned about my body!
SpecialKH
Posts: 70 Member
Hello everyone - I haven't participated much here but I thought I'd share something I've learned that is interesting.
Backround - 46, 5'6, 18s were getting tight and I hopped on the scale - OMG I got to 230. Heaviest I'd ever been. Wow. Time to get it in check. MFP has always been helpful so back to logging everything and went to the doctor March 3th. BP was up and it had always been low! Month 1 lost 14, month 2 lost 8 pounds, month 3 lost 5 pounds... I started with getting portions under control the first month since exercise usually makes me ravenous. Added cardio the second month, strength training the 3rd month. I started wondering just how many calories I was burning during my 30 minutes of strength training and the elliptical didn't seem to change much whether I covered 2 miles in 30 minutes or 2.5. Plus the calories expended listed here were pretty different from what the machines said and Google provided even more variations. I thought about a heart rate monitor and started researching those and came upon Body Media. I found out it's the most accurate at determining calories burned than any other device. (Not useful for bikers unless they put it on their leg and doesn't do anything to track distance and no GPS for routes so if that's important to you, this isn't the device for you.) Then I checked with my insurance website to see what they offered and lo and behold - 25% off Body Media plus a free 12 month subscription which you have to have to access the interface. So I got the Link version with blue tooth and gave it a try.
Third month dropped 8 again - back on track! What I loved was that I could sync it at any time of the day with my phone via the app and see how many calories I burned up to that moment! And although their food database was pitiful, I could link it to MFP! Yay! So it imports my calories consumed (and tracks nutrition) and it exports calories burned to MFP! Double yay! So after dinner if I want a treat or a glass of wine I can sync it, see where I am for the day and decide if I want that item.
If I want to loose a pound a week I need to average a 500/day calorie deficit. Sometimes I might think "sure, I can afford it" and other times I might look at the deficit and think it's not worth it because I want the weight loss more. But I love it! I wear it 24/7 except when I shower. I charge it about once a week while sleeping and I bought an extra arm band so I can hand wash it after the gym and switch to the fresh one. But it never gets stinky as I don't push it all of the way up to the armpit and I move it around a lot so it's not on the same patch of skin all of the time.
I had read I wasn't getting enough calories and going into calorie conservation before I got this. I heard I was gaining muscle while losing fat so that's why I didn't drop much weight. I got all sorts of advice. So back at the doctor at month 5 he was so impressed with the weight loss that he did my body fat percentage. Turns out, like many people, I did loose some muscle but thanks to tracking nutrition and getting tons of protein, it was less than most trying to drop 80 pounds but I certainly did NOT gain muscle! Even with 1g of protein for every pound of lean body weight so for me 100g of protein a day. Which is a LOT on a 1500 calorie diet and difficult to get! So debunked the "muscle gain" myth. I'm down 45 pounds, have increased weights on almost all strength training, can do 3 miles in 30 minutes (a pace I could only keep for 7 minutes at the beginning) and most importantly - my BP is down a bit, slowly backing away from 'borderline' and thanks to MFP I know it's not sodium related. My body fat went from 45% down to 39 and my BMI is out of 'obese' and now under 30.
Now the other myths to debunk. Because I wear it all of the time, I now know why I don't burn a lot more calories running at 6mph than I do fast walking at 5mph. Walking fast burns on average (for ME) about 6 calories per minute (that includes BMR, not above and beyond normal metabolic functions that keep us alive!) but running at 6mph only burns 10. So 4 calories extra times 30 minutes is only 120 calories. That's only an extra glass of wine. That's not even a chocolate bar. So all of that sweating and busting my butt doesn't really earn me a ton of calories more. I still can't have mac and cheese for dinner, or a piece of cheesecake after a meal!
I have learned I'm a solid sleeper (which I knew) as my sleep efficiency is consistently in the upper 90 percentile. When sleeping my AMR (average metabolic rate) is .8 cal/min. When strolling/slowly walking, 4; jogging/fast walking it's 5/6. Running 8 to 12 depending on speed. Strength training I average around 3. At my desk job with no gym, I burn about 2000 calories a day. When I add gym I burn about 2300. A day of serious yard work got me up to 2500 once. Before Body Media, I would assume that I'd really worked hard all day and thought I could have a 3 course meal! Sadly, not so. This will really help me maintain once I get down to my goal.
The other myth - that your body continues to burn more calories after exercise. Not completely a myth but it sure doesn't keep up as long or burn as many as one might think. On average, driving to the gym, .8 calories per hour. So After I left the gym I averaged 1.55 but only for 45 minutes. After that my sedentary rate dropped to .83 and sleep back to .81. So although my BMR increased post-exercise, it only increased for 45-ish minutes AND by such a small amount that I only burned an extra 25 calories. So those of us (including me) who have told ourselves that we worked out hard and have desert because we are still burning more calories sitting down after exercise vs. before exercise, it's true but not enough to indulge.
Interestingly enough, non-REM sleep I burn .71cal/min but during REM that is raised to .85/min. The dashboard is easy to read - it records my steps and lets me set goals for steps, vigorous vs. moderate activity, calories in, calories out and shows in a colorful bar graph. If I tip it sideways, I can get detailed graphs of calorie burn for the day, steps per hour, sleep efficiency per hour and see how often and when I wake up.
I don't work for them or benefit in any way from sharing this info - it's just such a wonderful tool for me! It really keeps me accountable and helps me focus on good choices every day. I'm so much better informed about how my body performs and just how many calories I burn doing any given activity. And it shows just how important moving really is! Just walking is 4 calories a minute which doesn't sound like much but since I spend most of my day sitting, a day walking at a street fair (avoiding funnel cakes) or hiking a trail, etc. makes a huge difference than sitting burning 1 calorie a minute! It really ads up.
I hope this has been useful to some of you in your journey to better health!
Backround - 46, 5'6, 18s were getting tight and I hopped on the scale - OMG I got to 230. Heaviest I'd ever been. Wow. Time to get it in check. MFP has always been helpful so back to logging everything and went to the doctor March 3th. BP was up and it had always been low! Month 1 lost 14, month 2 lost 8 pounds, month 3 lost 5 pounds... I started with getting portions under control the first month since exercise usually makes me ravenous. Added cardio the second month, strength training the 3rd month. I started wondering just how many calories I was burning during my 30 minutes of strength training and the elliptical didn't seem to change much whether I covered 2 miles in 30 minutes or 2.5. Plus the calories expended listed here were pretty different from what the machines said and Google provided even more variations. I thought about a heart rate monitor and started researching those and came upon Body Media. I found out it's the most accurate at determining calories burned than any other device. (Not useful for bikers unless they put it on their leg and doesn't do anything to track distance and no GPS for routes so if that's important to you, this isn't the device for you.) Then I checked with my insurance website to see what they offered and lo and behold - 25% off Body Media plus a free 12 month subscription which you have to have to access the interface. So I got the Link version with blue tooth and gave it a try.
Third month dropped 8 again - back on track! What I loved was that I could sync it at any time of the day with my phone via the app and see how many calories I burned up to that moment! And although their food database was pitiful, I could link it to MFP! Yay! So it imports my calories consumed (and tracks nutrition) and it exports calories burned to MFP! Double yay! So after dinner if I want a treat or a glass of wine I can sync it, see where I am for the day and decide if I want that item.
If I want to loose a pound a week I need to average a 500/day calorie deficit. Sometimes I might think "sure, I can afford it" and other times I might look at the deficit and think it's not worth it because I want the weight loss more. But I love it! I wear it 24/7 except when I shower. I charge it about once a week while sleeping and I bought an extra arm band so I can hand wash it after the gym and switch to the fresh one. But it never gets stinky as I don't push it all of the way up to the armpit and I move it around a lot so it's not on the same patch of skin all of the time.
I had read I wasn't getting enough calories and going into calorie conservation before I got this. I heard I was gaining muscle while losing fat so that's why I didn't drop much weight. I got all sorts of advice. So back at the doctor at month 5 he was so impressed with the weight loss that he did my body fat percentage. Turns out, like many people, I did loose some muscle but thanks to tracking nutrition and getting tons of protein, it was less than most trying to drop 80 pounds but I certainly did NOT gain muscle! Even with 1g of protein for every pound of lean body weight so for me 100g of protein a day. Which is a LOT on a 1500 calorie diet and difficult to get! So debunked the "muscle gain" myth. I'm down 45 pounds, have increased weights on almost all strength training, can do 3 miles in 30 minutes (a pace I could only keep for 7 minutes at the beginning) and most importantly - my BP is down a bit, slowly backing away from 'borderline' and thanks to MFP I know it's not sodium related. My body fat went from 45% down to 39 and my BMI is out of 'obese' and now under 30.
Now the other myths to debunk. Because I wear it all of the time, I now know why I don't burn a lot more calories running at 6mph than I do fast walking at 5mph. Walking fast burns on average (for ME) about 6 calories per minute (that includes BMR, not above and beyond normal metabolic functions that keep us alive!) but running at 6mph only burns 10. So 4 calories extra times 30 minutes is only 120 calories. That's only an extra glass of wine. That's not even a chocolate bar. So all of that sweating and busting my butt doesn't really earn me a ton of calories more. I still can't have mac and cheese for dinner, or a piece of cheesecake after a meal!
I have learned I'm a solid sleeper (which I knew) as my sleep efficiency is consistently in the upper 90 percentile. When sleeping my AMR (average metabolic rate) is .8 cal/min. When strolling/slowly walking, 4; jogging/fast walking it's 5/6. Running 8 to 12 depending on speed. Strength training I average around 3. At my desk job with no gym, I burn about 2000 calories a day. When I add gym I burn about 2300. A day of serious yard work got me up to 2500 once. Before Body Media, I would assume that I'd really worked hard all day and thought I could have a 3 course meal! Sadly, not so. This will really help me maintain once I get down to my goal.
The other myth - that your body continues to burn more calories after exercise. Not completely a myth but it sure doesn't keep up as long or burn as many as one might think. On average, driving to the gym, .8 calories per hour. So After I left the gym I averaged 1.55 but only for 45 minutes. After that my sedentary rate dropped to .83 and sleep back to .81. So although my BMR increased post-exercise, it only increased for 45-ish minutes AND by such a small amount that I only burned an extra 25 calories. So those of us (including me) who have told ourselves that we worked out hard and have desert because we are still burning more calories sitting down after exercise vs. before exercise, it's true but not enough to indulge.
Interestingly enough, non-REM sleep I burn .71cal/min but during REM that is raised to .85/min. The dashboard is easy to read - it records my steps and lets me set goals for steps, vigorous vs. moderate activity, calories in, calories out and shows in a colorful bar graph. If I tip it sideways, I can get detailed graphs of calorie burn for the day, steps per hour, sleep efficiency per hour and see how often and when I wake up.
I don't work for them or benefit in any way from sharing this info - it's just such a wonderful tool for me! It really keeps me accountable and helps me focus on good choices every day. I'm so much better informed about how my body performs and just how many calories I burn doing any given activity. And it shows just how important moving really is! Just walking is 4 calories a minute which doesn't sound like much but since I spend most of my day sitting, a day walking at a street fair (avoiding funnel cakes) or hiking a trail, etc. makes a huge difference than sitting burning 1 calorie a minute! It really ads up.
I hope this has been useful to some of you in your journey to better health!
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Replies
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They are fun tools but keep in mind it's all just another estimate, they don't really measure calorie burns. They estimate them based on the motion of your body and METS values from population averages done with actual calorimetry tools.
You can walk at 5mph? Dang.0 -
Body Media does measure calorie burn and is 95% accurate. It measures based on body temperature, movement and galvanic skin response. It is not like a fitbit.
I can walk FAST at 5mph.
ETA the mph figure is based on the elliptical mph feature and 'feels' like I'm walking very fast/light jogging.0 -
It estimates calorie burn. Fitbit's are virtually as accurate at estimating. They both rely on accelerometers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/20/activity-monitor-accuracy-fitbit-jawbone_n_5516156.html0 -
I disagree, respectfully. They are not equally accurate.
Yes, it measures steps with an accelerometer. But it also has sensors that press against your skin to detect temperature, heat flux as well as motion. It only makes sense that a device that measures more things is more accurate. FDA studies have proven it's 95% accurate in measuring calorie expenditure (OK so it's not 100% so we can say "estimates") and it's the only activity manager that is an FDA-registered medical device.
I researched fitbits and other like devices, heart rate monitors and the different versions of body media before deciding on the Body Media Link with bluetooth. Still love it. 0 -
I like my Body Media too, wore it pretty much 23 hours a day there for a couple of months. I don't know if it's psychosomatic or what, but I started noticing my left arm muscle would ache right where the sensor sat, so I stopped wearing it at night and then eventually stopped altogether. Now that I'm doing more strength training than running, I'd like to wear it again for maybe two weeks to get a more accurate gauge of what I'm burning, but I don't want that ache to come back. Have you experienced anything similar?0
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I haven't had any issues with it on my arm and pain or discomfort. I did pull it down off my arm too quickly before hopping in the shower and felt like I had removed skin with it because it had been in the same place too long! Now I'm just sure to lift the device up off the skin before I slide it down my arm.
I wear it 23:50/7 - literally I take it off to shower. I do move it around to different areas on the skin daily. I got an extra armband so I can wash one while wearing one and swap out. I asked them if they could make one in a light and a dark skin tone and also "skins" (stickers) for the face of it so it would be less noticeable under clothing.
Is it too tight? It should be just tight enough that it doesn't slide off the arm - no tighter. I don't notice a difference when I move it around - that is, the area of the sensor doesn't seem to make the muscle ache regardless of where it is.
Congrats on the 42lbs! I am down 45 in 6 months; 4 of them with Body Media.0 -
That's great that you like it! I liked mine, too. Then I got a Fitbit and liked it much better, but only because it was small, discrete, had a display, synched wirelessly and had no monthly fee. Which I only mention because if you want to downgrade later, you might like one, too.
Jawbone, who makes the UP products which are like the Fitbits and also only use accelerometers, owns Body Media.0 -
I know I'm late to the convo but @knitapeace I had the same issue, but the last month or two I've been wearing it everyday till bed time and taking it off and I've not had that issue anymore!
@walkingalong Jawbone just bought body media this year and their next device is going to include body media tech! Yay up3. I'm looking forward to no monthly fee for sure... I mostly love my body media because it tells me the difference between two different 8 hour days in which I'm doing the same thing with different urgency. Some times it's vigorous, sometimes it not... Yesterday's 10 hour day was 3300 calories, todays is currently estimated over 4k.(at 3100 right now) last week was more like 2500 calories a day... so the intensity meter(the surface sensors) are really important to me.
It is driving me crazy that the sync is not functioning properly though... *grumble*0
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