Body Media Armband

Dsnyfrk921
Dsnyfrk921 Posts: 64 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi! I've been using the bodybugg for the last 6 months and used it a few years ago as well. My husband just ordered me the bodymedia armband which is the same thing. The Body Media can be synced with MFP though and I'm so thrilled about that.

Do any of you have the body media? How do you like it and the way it syncs??
«1

Replies

  • spinnybecky
    spinnybecky Posts: 28
    I have contemplated buying one of those, but I can't get myself to shell out the money for it. I am interested to hear that it syncs with MFP though. Do you feel it was worth the cost? How does your daily calorie reading compare with MFP's estimate?
  • Dsnyfrk921
    Dsnyfrk921 Posts: 64 Member
    I love the bodybugg! It helped me to lose 54lbs a few years ago. At that time, I didn't use MFP (hadn't heard of it!). So, this time I used them together. I think they are pretty close as far as the calories burned. I just happen to like that I can plug in my bodybugg and look to see how many calories I burned between 7 and 8pm during my Zumba class. Sometimes, MFP doesn't have the exercises that I'm doing and I can just plug in the armband and log it afterward. The only reason I'm changing to the BodyMedia is because I know it's the same thing since my bodybugg is made by bodymedia and I'll be able to sync it together. Unfortunately, the bodybugg food diary is hard to use and sorely lacking in foods. So, quite a few months ago, I stopped logging my food on bodybugg and use MFP for that and just use the bodybugg to calculate my calories burned. It'll be nice to have them working together.
  • serenapitala
    serenapitala Posts: 441 Member
    I just got mine on Monday. So far, I love it! I have never been able to determine my TDEE because I couldn't figure out which activity level they would count me as. As it turns out, I am burning way more than MFP (and I) thought during an average day. Because of an injury, I haven't done any real workouts yet, so I don't know how the activity calories compare for those. I have the Link, so it syncs through my phone most of the time. I plug it in in the morning while I shower, etc. (since you are only supposed to wear it for 23 hours a day) and that is when it syncs sleep and charges. Everything else syncs automatically when I open the app on my phone. I still put all of my food into MFP (it has a better food library), but I don't have to put in activity. MFP sends the food to BodyMedia and BodyMedia sends the activity to MFP. Then they both adjust calories as needed. Sometimes there is a delay between the two, but nothing big. Basically, all I do now is enter food. The technology does the rest for me :smile:
  • fitcolette
    fitcolette Posts: 67
    This just thrills me! I ordered mine and I should be getting it next week. I was wondering about the ease of synch and MFP too. Maybe we can all help each other if needed.

    Do you guys sleep with it on too??
  • Rays_Wife
    Rays_Wife Posts: 1,173 Member
    I just got the BodyMedia Core armband for Christmas, and so far it's great. It took me a couple days of learning how to use it and now I'm sailing smoothly!

    It was very easy to set up, and syncs great with MFP. The Core armband doesn't have bluetooth capabilities to sync with phones or anything (like the Link) but I am finding I don't really need that. I just plug it in to sync, charge and upload data in the morning and evening and I'm good to go! It automatically adjusts my calorie goal on MFP according to what I'm burning. After a year of guessing at my TDEE, I've almost got it nailed down in just a few days of using the armband. BIG HELP!! I would definitely recommend it. I also like how it lets you choose activity goals, and gives you the option of "customizing" your calorie goal and TDEE burn if you don't like the standard plans it gives you. You can either choose "eat less" or "burn more" based on the calorie deficit you pick. When you reach your goals throughout the day it beeps at you to let you know!
  • Rays_Wife
    Rays_Wife Posts: 1,173 Member
    This just thrills me! I ordered mine and I should be getting it next week. I was wondering about the ease of synch and MFP too. Maybe we can all help each other if needed.

    Do you guys sleep with it on too??

    I sleep with it! It's very comfortable and stays in place nicely. It keeps track of your sleep very well. I've learned I'm not as great of a sleeper as I thought :laugh:
  • serenapitala
    serenapitala Posts: 441 Member
    This just thrills me! I ordered mine and I should be getting it next week. I was wondering about the ease of synch and MFP too. Maybe we can all help each other if needed.

    Do you guys sleep with it on too??

    I sleep with it! It's very comfortable and stays in place nicely. It keeps track of your sleep very well. I've learned I'm not as great of a sleeper as I thought :laugh:

    I sleep with it too. It shows when you are sleeping and when you are laying down. It is interesting to see just how long I lay there before I fall asleep.
  • Sorova
    Sorova Posts: 101 Member
    I've had a BodyMedia Fit Core since June, so about six months now. I really love it and wear it almost all the time, and it helped me take my weight loss to the next phase (I bought it after losing 50 pounds, as a reward). I find it motivating, and I'm a huge gadget geek who likes data and charts and numbers, so it makes things more fun for me.

    The integration with MFP is very smooth once you get it set up, which is not hard. I like that I don't have to manually enter exercise into MFP anymore - I just connect the armband to my computer via USB and it automatically updates my MFP calorie burned info. The syncing works the other way, too: I enter my food into MFP and it automatically uploads the data to the BodyMedia site.

    I sleep with mine almost every night and I find it very comfortable. Honestly most of the time (awake or asleep) I don't even notice it at all.

    I think the armband is really great for a few reasons: (1) it is fantastic motivation to be active because it keeps you mindful and makes it into a game; (2) it helps you understand how much your calorie burn can vary from day to day, and teaches you how your different activities really affect your burn; (3) it is a more accurate estimation of your burn than you can get from formulas or websites - aside from testing in a lab it's about as accurate as you can get.

    If anyone needs help setting it up or wants to ask a more specific question I would be happy to help if I can. Send me a PM or whatnot.
  • riverbuff2
    riverbuff2 Posts: 6
    I see that the Bodymedia is $149 plus I think $6.95 a month. Do you HAVE to pay the monthly fee for it to work?
  • Tamika_84
    Tamika_84 Posts: 55 Member
    I do and I have it linked to this site. I love it!
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    I like my body media fit.

    cons: leaves a tanline, strangers ask you about it

    pros: tracks sleep, gives a pretty accurate TDEE

    the pros are HUGE for me! I have major sleep issues and it is great to wake up and see how much I actually slept, and be prepared for what I will be like that day. Some days I sleep 2 hrs and wake up feeling like I had a full 8, then a few hours later I am a cranky B. Knowing that I only got 2 hrs of sleep prior to being cranky helps me deal with myself and be in a more even mood.

    Heart rate monitors do not do well tracking weight lifting. BMF doesn't do much better, but it does track all day and that is helpful to me!

    Syncing it with MFP is great for me. Just make sure you have the same calorie goal on both sites (for my example, 1500) then when it shows you burn more than 2000 estimate a day on BMF it will correct MFP goal to accommodate your exercise. If you will burn less than 2000 that day, it will also accommodate and give a negative exercise, allowing you less than 1500 to make up for the 500cal deficit. --just my example

    really good stuff. makes it easy to see what i'm doing
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    I see that the Bodymedia is $149 plus I think $6.95 a month. Do you HAVE to pay the monthly fee for it to work?
    you have to pay the fee to see your numbers. you can wear the thing for a month, plug it in and recharge it, then pay the fee and see all your old data. you get the first 6 months free though so you can try it out and see if you like it enough to pay the fee. if you don't, i'm not sure about the return policy. i liked it so much the $7 wasn't an issue to me any longer (i was concerned at first too)
  • princesskellie60
    princesskellie60 Posts: 11 Member
    I have been considering buying the bodymedia armband also but I do most of my excerise in the water due to a foot injury and needing low impact workouts. I can't wear it in the water so how would I log in the exceise?
  • ChinniP
    ChinniP Posts: 166 Member
    mine just arrived today! One thing I noticed is if you have custom meal headings set in MFP it will log in the bodymedia tracker as one big snack. If you leave them set at the default then not. If you care about that, it's a good thing to know. So far so good but i haven't gotten a full day in with it yet. Looking forward to finding out!
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    I have been considering buying the bodymedia armband also but I do most of my excerise in the water due to a foot injury and needing low impact workouts. I can't wear it in the water so how would I log in the exceise?

    you can log water exercise through MFP or add it in your activity manager (website where you look at your numbers from the armband) as exercise without wearing armband
  • CandyAppleCockers
    CandyAppleCockers Posts: 74 Member
    I see that the Bodymedia is $149 plus I think $6.95 a month. Do you HAVE to pay the monthly fee for it to work?

    Yes. No subscription, it's then a paper weight. I've had mine 2 years. Logged my food for a year.. I like to how how poorly I sleep, work to improve my steps/ exercise a day. The bodymedia food logging was so poor I never used it. I was about ready to cancel mine when it integrated with mfp. Sadly it's taken till October to use it to it's full advantage as I wasn't always plugging it in daily, so sometimes I was looking at 2, 3, 4 day old data.

    Far better to plug it in tonight and make goals for tomorrow.
  • CandyAppleCockers
    CandyAppleCockers Posts: 74 Member
    you have to pay the fee to see your numbers. you can wear the thing for a month, plug it in and recharge it, then pay the fee and see all your old data. you get the first 6 months free though so you can try it out and see if you like it enough to pay the fee. if you don't, i'm not sure about the return policy. i liked it so much the $7 wasn't an issue to me any longer (i was concerned at first too)

    Doesn't hold a month of data.. It holds I think a week. I went on vacation 2 summers ago and had no access to a windows pc, only a linux which I could make the bodymedia sync work on. While I could recharge it, I couldn't dump the data. The three weeks of vacation time were messed up from not syncing it. Had part of the first week and nothing else though it was charged and on.

    I used to plug it in once a week from laziness and look at the data.. But that wouldn't help avoid fees.
  • Superchikanthem
    Superchikanthem Posts: 362 Member
    I ordered mine tonight! I'm so excited to get it in the mail!!
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    you have to pay the fee to see your numbers. you can wear the thing for a month, plug it in and recharge it, then pay the fee and see all your old data. you get the first 6 months free though so you can try it out and see if you like it enough to pay the fee. if you don't, i'm not sure about the return policy. i liked it so much the $7 wasn't an issue to me any longer (i was concerned at first too)

    Doesn't hold a month of data.. It holds I think a week. I went on vacation 2 summers ago and had no access to a windows pc, only a linux which I could make the bodymedia sync work on. While I could recharge it, I couldn't dump the data. The three weeks of vacation time were messed up from not syncing it. Had part of the first week and nothing else though it was charged and on.

    I used to plug it in once a week from laziness and look at the data.. But that wouldn't help avoid fees.

    Oh interesting. I have kept my subscription on but would go a few weeks only wearing it a few hours a day. When I finally plugged it in to charge it gave me the data for those hours I had it on. It also 'guessed' at what I would have burned had I not been wearing it. Maybe it has changed since the 2 summers ago when you had this happen? I'm not sure.

    I did not specify in my other post that I was assuming if you turned off subscription, wore it, then bought subscription again you could look at your data.
  • fitcolette
    fitcolette Posts: 67
    Okay, now I can't wait for mine to get here! I think it's cool that you can sleep with it and it knows so much! I'm so excited to take this to the next level!
  • riverbuff2
    riverbuff2 Posts: 6
    But you all think it is actually worth the $149 and then $84 a year or are there other HRM's that do pretty much the same. The 2 thunkgs I don't care for is the monthly fee and the armband, I wished it was a wristband/watch type.
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    I want to share the information page since that is a thing I was very curious about.

    bmfs_zps5c1c742a.jpg
    showing how each down arrow can expand to give more detailed information about that category
    bmf-1_zpsbdda213c.jpg
    showing how it estimates how much you will burn all day according to your past info and how much you have done so far that day

    Edit: of course Flickr is giving me issues. a moment...
    Edit 2: yay photobucket! Right click 'view picture/image' to see the full size. It is bedtime and I'm not going to try and mess with it right now. :)
  • CandyAppleCockers
    CandyAppleCockers Posts: 74 Member
    Oh interesting. I have kept my subscription on but would go a few weeks only wearing it a few hours a day. When I finally plugged it in to charge it gave me the data for those hours I had it on. It also 'guessed' at what I would have burned had I not been wearing it. Maybe it has changed since the 2 summers ago when you had this happen? I'm not sure.

    I did not specify in my other post that I was assuming if you turned off subscription, wore it, then bought subscription again you could look at your data.

    That's interesting too ;) If you were only wearing it a few hours at a time I think you aren't using up the memory then. If it holds lets say 7 full 24 hour days, then I'd think it would hold a month of a handful of hours a day as it would be roughly the same amount of space. I could be wrong too, lol.

    If you didn't wear it 24/7 you might be able to turn the subscription on and off and get the data then as the memory wouldn't be full potentially.
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    But you all think it is actually worth the $149 and then $84 a year or are there other HRM's that do pretty much the same. The 2 thunkgs I don't care for is the monthly fee and the armband, I wished it was a wristband/watch type.

    I own a Polar FT7 and loved it. It does extremely well with cardio workouts. I bought BMF because I wanted a better idea of how much I burned overall each day, which it is perfect for. I do not use my HRM at all anymore because my workouts are weightlifting based, showing incorrect burns on HRMs. The price must have gone up since I bought it because I do not recall spending $150. I think mine was $97 and I'm certain I had a gift card (amazon). I'm uncertain what amount the gift card was, but I was remembering something like $25. That is a big price, but they have OUTSTANDING customer service. I had an issue where my USB cable wasn't recognized anymore, mailed in the armband, and they mailed me an entire new box, no charge (other than mailing the band to them).
  • sarah44254
    sarah44254 Posts: 3,078 Member
    Oh interesting. I have kept my subscription on but would go a few weeks only wearing it a few hours a day. When I finally plugged it in to charge it gave me the data for those hours I had it on. It also 'guessed' at what I would have burned had I not been wearing it. Maybe it has changed since the 2 summers ago when you had this happen? I'm not sure.

    I did not specify in my other post that I was assuming if you turned off subscription, wore it, then bought subscription again you could look at your data.

    That's interesting too ;) If you were only wearing it a few hours at a time I think you aren't using up the memory then. If it holds lets say 7 full 24 hour days, then I'd think it would hold a month of a handful of hours a day as it would be roughly the same amount of space. I could be wrong too, lol.

    If you didn't wear it 24/7 you might be able to turn the subscription on and off and get the data then as the memory wouldn't be full potentially.

    That makes so much sense.
  • riverbuff2
    riverbuff2 Posts: 6
    Ok Sarah, Thank You. I'm convinced now. I will order mine in the morning before I head to the gym. Thank you! It's after midnight here so I'm headed to bed. Good night everybody.
  • tmt2003
    tmt2003 Posts: 176 Member
    But you all think it is actually worth the $149 and then $84 a year or are there other HRM's that do pretty much the same. The 2 thunkgs I don't care for is the monthly fee and the armband, I wished it was a wristband/watch type.

    If you read the reviews on amazon there are lots of good and bad ones. Mine would be a bad one. I used it for 2.5 weeks. Loved it when it worked right, unfortunately for me that was only bout half the time I had it. I bought the link so I could view my numbers via my iPhone app. It would often loose connection to my blue tooth and have to be reset on my computer. It had issues uploading online too. There were several times I wore it all day only to find when I tried to sync to view the data, none had been collected all day. Now I'm no techie, so maybe some of this is operator error, but still...

    So it's packed ups and going back. For the times it worked it was cool to see my actual calories burned a day and it essentially reinforced that I am on the right track. But at the end of the day, no I did not feel the headaches were worth the $119 + monthly subscription fee...

    I am glad I tried it though, I'd been wanting one for a long time and got it put of my system, lol.

    Teresa
  • Sorova
    Sorova Posts: 101 Member
    But you all think it is actually worth the $149 and then $84 a year or are there other HRM's that do pretty much the same. The 2 thunkgs I don't care for is the monthly fee and the armband, I wished it was a wristband/watch type.

    It doesn't do the same thing as a HRM, though. A HRM monitors your heart rate. If you're doing steady-state cardio (such as walking or running or biking), your heart rate can potentially be a good way of extrapolating your calories burned *if* the HRM is correctly configured with your VO2MAX and other stats. But a HRM doesn't directly measure calories burned. Believe me, with all the demand for calorie monitors, HRM manufacturers would start calling their products "Calorie Burned Monitors" if they thought they could pull it off without getting sued for false advertising. In any situation where your heart rate is going up or down due to other factors (e.g. it's warm in the room where you work, or you're stressed out, etc.) the calorie estimate on a HRM will be massively inaccurate; if you're moving around doing low intensity tasks that don't raise your heart rate but still burn calories, a HRM has no way of measuring that.

    Of course, a BodyMedia armband doesn't directly measure calories either. But it measures four factors (motion, skin temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response) which makes it more accurate than a HRM which measures only one thing (heart rate). Also, it measures routine low intensity activity (washing dishes, doing laundry, using a computer) in a way that HRMs simply cannot.

    I did a lot of research into the available devices before ordering (BodyMedia, FitBit, FuelBand, etc.) and the BodyMedia one is the only one that had an independent study done by a university on its accuracy. It was found to be over 90% accurate. So still not perfect, but better than a HRM. There are definitely flaws - I wish the band was invisible because I hate strangers asking me about it, and I know the Link model doesn't reliably sync with some people's smart phones. But if you don't care about real-time data on your smartphone, and don't mind wearing the band, I think it's the best commercially available calorie monitor consumers can get at the moment.

    [Edited to fix a typo.]
  • jaz050465
    jaz050465 Posts: 3,508 Member
    I wish we could get it in the UK. In UK it is registered to KIFIT. This is much more expensive, doesn't link to MFP, dearer subscription and you can't get the core or Link.
  • Dsnyfrk921
    Dsnyfrk921 Posts: 64 Member
    Thanks for everyone's replies. I'm so excited to get it. Like I said, I'm used to wearing the armband since I've had the bodybugg for several years now. I'm really excited to see it sync. I think I'm supposed to get it on Wednesday. It can't get here fast enough for me. lol :)

    If anyone would like to add me as a friend, I'd love it. I love to motivate and encourage people. Send me a request. We can cheer each other on. :)

Categories