Metabolism Device

dschiller525
dschiller525 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello, I have been struggling with a weight loss plateau since December. I am continuously working out both cardio and strength and the scale fluctuates about 4-5 lbs. My overall tone is getting there but I still have 20 lbs to lose. There is a device, LUMEN, I am curious about that helps you understand how food and excercise are affecting your metabolism. It claims to be as simple as breathing into the device to read your stats. Does anyone have experience with this device? I am tempted to try it but I realize also that some things are too good to be true. Please let me know your thoughts! Thanks so much, Dani

Replies

  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
    This lumen device is rather useless. You might use it during cardio exercise to see what percentage of your energy comes from glycogen or fatty acids, thus for e.g. improve on your marathon training. But it has no usefulness at all for everyday use. Seriously, for weight loss it doesn't matter if you eat a diet high in carbs or fats, or whatever. Only calories count.
  • ddddavo
    ddddavo Posts: 1 Member
    Exercise has very little effect on weight loss, it will tone your muscles and improve your cardiovascular health. The only way to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit. Focusing on that and decreasing your calorie intake by a smell percentage over time will help drop weight. Definitely keep up your exercise for your general health and mental well-being. But focus on your deficit.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    Yes you can estimate your metabolism and discover the proportion of fats and carbs being used during exercise and at rest with breath analysis but how exactly does that help you?
    (Unless you are doing endurance cardio....)

    The rest of the blurb on the LUMEN website is pure fantasy and spin - you can't manipulate metabolism how they are claiming. On a basic level eat more carbs / burn more carbs, eat more fat / burn more fat but that doesn't actually affect the important aspect - your calorie balance.

    e.g. During a sports lab test breath analysis told me that 130bpm is the point I'm burning 50/50 fat and carbs. Could possibly useful for fuelling plans during very long duration bike rides. But knowing that tells me nothing about my all day calorie balance, doesn't give any information on how to change my metabolic rate. The biggest change to your metabolic rate will be through weight loss making it lower!

    Data generally is good but in this case it's of severely limited use. You could (perhaps) get a better estimate of your BMR/RMR but again that's got limited use. By the time you have multiplied that estimate by an estimated activity and exercise number to get to your TDEE and added in the huge variable of your food and exercise accuracy it's in the realm of no big deal.

    Yes, this! The guys who developed this are marathon/triathlon participants, and they probably used their knowledge on this to develop this thing - preying on the gullible to sell something that doesn't tell them anything.

    What Sjiomial wrong is true: Eat more carbs, burn more carbs. Eat more fat, burn more fat. But this has no bearing on bodyfat. You can totally lose bodyfat with a carb-only diet. There are some papers on weightloss in people having a fatty acid oxidation disorder. They can't use fatty acids for energy effectively and tend to eat a diet high in carbs. Yet they still lost body fat. Important is the calorie deficit for losing, and for eating a diet you feel full and are happy with.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,225 Member
    What they said, above: Not relevant for weight management. Might be useful for endurance athletes, but doesn't seem to be designed around their needs, seems to be designed around woo-filled pop-fitness blogosphere notions about "fat burning zone" and "hacking metabolism".

    These devices are not wdely used by those who are most serious and most scientifically well-advised about weight management (elite lightweight athletes, who need to make weight and perform well at the same time) or peak fitness that demands insight into fuel usage (elite endurance athletes). Those people have the very best coaching, dietitians, trainers and other resources, rely on the most current and best scientific research, and will do anything to squeeze out that last 0.001% of results/performance - even kind of silly things with some but limited proof, as long those things are not potentially harmful enough to outweigh the speculative benefit in some way. That Lumen is not universally used/popular in those groups ought to suggest something.

    (Lumen is "the official metabolic tracker of UFC", which I guess is a step above WWE, in cheesy-ness terms. But even UFC says " Lumen will provide the metabolic data for UFC athletes to make data-driven decisions about how they fuel their performance in real-time . . . .", not metabolic hacking and whatnot.)

    It's a cute accessory, though. Most people's friends would be impressed. 😉
  • RockingWithLJ
    RockingWithLJ Posts: 243 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    During a sports lab test breath analysis told me that 130bpm is the point I'm burning 50/50 fat and carbs. Could possibly useful for fuelling plans during very long duration bike rides. But knowing that tells me nothing about my all day calorie balance, doesn't give any information on how to change my metabolic rate. The biggest change to your metabolic rate will be through weight loss making it lower!
    ^THIS^
    I personally recommend getting a scale and weighing every little morsel that passes your lips. And if you really want to drop weight, keep your sugar intake at 25 grams or less. Doing these things have helped me over every plateau I faced.
  • RockingWithLJ
    RockingWithLJ Posts: 243 Member
    edited April 2022
    yirara wrote: »
    RockingWithLJ wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    During a sports lab test breath analysis told me that 130bpm is the point I'm burning 50/50 fat and carbs. Could possibly useful for fuelling plans during very long duration bike rides. But knowing that tells me nothing about my all day calorie balance, doesn't give any information on how to change my metabolic rate. The biggest change to your metabolic rate will be through weight loss making it lower!
    ^THIS^
    I personally recommend getting a scale and weighing every little morsel that passes your lips. And if you really want to drop weight, keep your sugar intake at 25 grams or less. Doing these things have helped me over every plateau I faced.

    Yes to the scale! But you can eat nothing but sugar and lose weight. Or avoid sugar and gain. How much sugar doesn’t matter for weightloss, only calories does.
    Not in a plateau. Believe it or not what you eat matters. A bunch of vegetables vs a bunch of cake cookies and fruit will not shed fat or lbs
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,225 Member
    edited April 2022
    RockingWithLJ wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    During a sports lab test breath analysis told me that 130bpm is the point I'm burning 50/50 fat and carbs. Could possibly useful for fuelling plans during very long duration bike rides. But knowing that tells me nothing about my all day calorie balance, doesn't give any information on how to change my metabolic rate. The biggest change to your metabolic rate will be through weight loss making it lower!
    ^THIS^
    I personally recommend getting a scale and weighing every little morsel that passes your lips. And if you really want to drop weight, keep your sugar intake at 25 grams or less. Doing these things have helped me over every plateau I faced.

    And yet I lost 50+ pounds, class 1 obese to a healthy weight in less than a year, while exceeding the MFP default total sugar goal pretty much every day. I must be a special unicorn!

    Me, and the twinkie diet guy. **

    These days, in year 6+ maintaining a healthy weight since loss, it's very different, of course. These days, total sugars are up around or over 100g, pretty consistently. (No worries, I'm also exceeding protein & fat minimums, getting 800g+ veggies/fruits most days . . . in fact, those are where a lot of the Evil Sugarzz come from).

    Overall nutrition is important, IMO. Absolute amount of sugar grams, not so much, as long as not diabetic/IR. Reducing sugar can drop water weight, though . . . if someone considers that "breaking a plateau". I don't.

    ** https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-06-la-he-fitness-twinkie-diet-20101206-story.html, among other sources. (I don't recommend it, and I don't think the guy who did it really recommends it as a general strategy, either. He's a professor of human nutrition. He was making a point, in the form of losing 27 pounds in 10 weeks.)
  • JBanx256
    JBanx256 Posts: 1,479 Member
    RockingWithLJ wrote: »
    A bunch of vegetables vs a bunch of cake cookies and fruit will not shed fat or lbs

    This is factually inaccurate. As others before me have pointed out, it is entirely possible to lose fat/weight whilst eating sugar. I must be a unicorn just like @AnnPT77 ;)

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,282 Member
    A bunch of vegetables vs a bunch of cake cookies and fruit will not shed fat or lbs

    Of course it is also not a false dichotomy like that in real life.

    I lost weight and maintained weight perfectly well eating cake, cookies,fruit and vegetables - it really isnt a one or the other scenario for most people, your diet can include all of the above.

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