BodyMedia activity monitor review

After 10 days trialing the Bodymedia Fit, I can now reveal my results.

I wore this unit around my left arm for 10 days solid, only removing when showering/bathing or swimming. The 10 days in question were over my Easter holidays - so not exactly typical IE no trips to work, more training time, more absolute relaxing time! :-)

So what does it tell me?

Total energy expenditure over the 10 days 142885 Joules (34135 cals) or an average of 3400kals per day expended!!

I walked a total of 102316 steps with an average of 10232 steps per day - most 18879 (5k race and working in the garden). This was marginally more than the day of a 10K race followed by pure rest. The day of the fewest steps 4825 - building a wooden playhouse for the kids. Lots of standing still scratching my head trying to interpret the instructions!

Lying down- Average 10.10 hours per 24hours. As I said it was my holiday time, but this would include time on the sofa watching The Goonies, Back to the Future, Mrs Doubtfire, Harry Potter etc with the kids, so still counts as quality time :-)

Sleep duration - 7.42 hours on average per night - max 9.30 and least 6.30...

Exercise - 20 hours a day sedentary (up to 3 METS)

2.32 hours per day Moderate (METS 3-6),

15 mins per day doing vigorous activity (METS 6-9)

15 mins per day Very Vigorous activity (Mets 9 and above)

I’m pretty confident these are reasonably accurate as the data is actually time stamped so I know what I was up to when my METS were low and very high. EG cycling at 40MPH on a 2 min sprints my METS were sky high, and Easter Saturday 10k race again energy expenditure was one of my highest days.

So what does this all this data (and the rest) tell me? When on holiday I burn a lot of calories over short periods of time, I then like to dump myself in front of the TV for hours on end, eat almost twice the quantity of food I should be eating, but get away with it because of the bursts of exercise, but I will never lose anything if I continue to eat back almost all of my exercise cals.
The main take away point if you want to lose weight is: don’t eat back all of your exercise cals.

Regarding comfort and fit, once the unit was on my arm I didn’t notice it. I had to take it off quite rapidly once as I was getting in the bath and forgot I was wearing it! It certainly collects a lot of interesting data and I would consider wearing it long term to aid weight loss. I have free access to it via work, so thankfully don’t have to either buy it or pay the monthly fee for the software.

I don’t know if this is helpful to anyone, but as this BodyMedia unit is now “pairable” with MFP, it may be useful to anyone thinking about buying it.

Thanks for reading

Mick.