Body Bugg.....?

kwrecks

So, I know that the people on the biggest loser wear them, and I had a friend who has one and likes it, but has anyone else had any luck with them? Is there another heart rate monitor or something like a body bugg that you've had success with?

ramius

Didn't know about this one.. at the gym I go to they exclusively use Polar HRMs that seem to have similar usage though the price is a lot higher... this looks interesting I'll be interested to see what other MFPers have to say

donbogi67

Hey there -

I just purchased one two weeks ago and I love it! You can get more info by going to www.myapex.com. There are two models - the regular model and the more expensive one which can track your progress with an app on your phone periodically during the day. The basic model (which I own) cost me $144 through my health club which requires a USB manual connection to get the data to transfer to my apex account. Also, the body bugg comes with a free six-moth apex.com profile for tracking after that I believe it is $7 a month.

Good Luck and Cheers!
Don

wolfchild59

Here's what i recently wrote about the BodyMedia Fit in another thread about them vs. HRMs:

I have both a Polar FT4 and a BodyMedia Fit. I wear my HRM everytime I work out and I wear my BdyMedia Fit every moment of the day I'm not in the shower.

I log all of my food and exercise into MFP just like I always have, but my eating habits have changed a lot in the almost-month I've had my BMF.

I hadn't been losing weight for a few months. Maybe a couple down, then back up and so on and I was going insane trying to figure out how to break through that. I zig zagged calories, I ate back more exercise calories, I ate back less, I ate more every day, I didn't eat extra, used every BMR calculator I could find, worked out the numbers by hand (I literally filled pages and pages of a notebook trying to get an accurate number for what my real daily burn was and what I should be eating), and so on and so on, but nothing broke me through the extremely annoying plateau I was in.

I got my BMF from Costco for $150 with free shipping, an extra armband and a one year subscription. And it was the best investment I've ever made for my weightloss journey. I almost instantly discover that I was ending up with a huge deficit each day, even when eating back a large chunk or all of my exercise calories. I'm around 10 pounds away from my goal and so I'd been trying to (blindly) maintain a 500 calorie per day deficit with MFP and I saw pretty quickly that I was usually at 1000 or higher of a deficit each day. So, first thing I did, start eating more. (YAY!) Bam, weight came off.

Then I started realizing the totally awesome charts and graphs that the BMF activity manager had. I can see exactly when I was asleep and when I was just laying there, when I had the highest points of activity, when every step was taken, how many calories I burn per minute during various times of the day, etc. But the best was the food info. Since I already track in MFP I just enter my daily info from here as one big meal in BMF to make things easier. But they have these really great reports that you can run and export to PDFs or Excel and my favorite, most basic, but best one, the pie chart that shows carbs vs. protein vs. fat.

Sure, I looked at those numbers on my MFP app every single day. I looked at where I was over or under and saw the numbers. Did I realize how they related to each other by just seeing the numbers? Nope. Seeing that pie chart for those first days I had my BMF shocked me as to the percentages and how they really related to each other visually. So I made some dietary changes based off of that and got my pie chart looking fairly purdy each day. Ta Da! More weight came off and my little belly pooch that has resisted every bit of weight loss I've had so far has started going down.

And that's with eating 200-300 calories over what MFP gives me daily. And yes, that's 200 OVER my exercise calories as well. There have been a couple of days that I 400 calories over what MFP told me I should be eating and still ended up with a deficit far over 500 for that day because I was more active overall and just burned a lot more through the day. And I'm losing weight by doing that, including my belly pooch and the hubby commented the other day that even my *kitten* is finally getting smaller as well.

I had planned on buying a BMF to help me once I got to maintenance, but I so, SO glad I got it before then, because it's really helped me to see what I should be eating way better than MFP had been able to do for me. And really, it's helping me get to maintenance faster than I would have without it.

I love my HRM because I can monitor my rate rate in real time while I work out and can get the immediate caloric burn for that workout without having to sync it up to anything. But if you forced me to give up either my HRM or my BMF, I'd be bidding a fond farewell to my HRM. Eating more, losing weight, shedding inches, and I get to play with charts and graphs? Yeah, it's like the bestest toy ever! lol

kwrecks

I didn't really want to have something that I have to pay a monthly subscription for. I just want something that will tell me all of that info you said, like when i was most active, how many calories i've burned throughout the entire day. If I don't want something with a subscription, would I be better just getting a HRM? And for most HRMs, do you wear them on your arm, or on your belt, or what?

ramius

I didn't really want to have something that I have to pay a monthly subscription for. I just want something that will tell me all of that info you said, like when i was most active, how many calories i've burned throughout the entire day. If I don't want something with a subscription, would I be better just getting a HRM? And for most HRMs, do you wear them on your arm, or on your belt, or what?

Well from reading the other posts here I think that it'll depend on what your goals are.. for me I'm looking at HRMs as when I do my workouts at the gym I totally go by the HRM thats on the machines I'm using to see if I'm going to hard or too slow and I want to make sure that what I'm seeing on the screen is actually accurate.. as far as where you wear a HRM .. the Polar is a watch that has a chest strap in most cases that is wireless and transmits to your "receiver" on your arm..

kwrecks

I want something that is actually on my body that is telling me what my heart rate is, and that is telling me how many calories i'm burning. Not that I don't trust MFP, but I just want to make sure that it's right. I don't want to do this thinking that I'm doing good, when actually I'm not burning as many as the site tells me.

wolfchild59

HRMs are only calibrated to give proper caloric burn when your heart rate is elevated, typically 130 or above for most HRMs. So just wearing one all day isn't going to give you anything accurate to go off of.

My HRM is one with a chest strap, so you position the chest strap and sensor directly below your breasts and wear your sports bra over it. Then you have a watch that you wear that gets the readings from the sensor and shows your heart rate while your working out, as well as information after the workout.

I've heard about a BodyBugg/Body Media Fit type device that doesn't need a subscription, but I'm not sure of the name of it. It's not as robust of a device as the BMF though. But my subscription is free for a year with purchase and I'm not sure I'm really going to need it much past that point because I hope to have a better handle on my daily burn/caloric intake by then and be able to take of my training wheels of MFP and the BMF to really start on this lifestyle for "real".

Honestly, even if the monthly subscription wasn't free, I'd pay for it in order to continue getting the results I'm getting with my BMF. It's totally the best thing I've done so far for my weight loss journey.