Published in the fall 2011 issue of MyLIFE magazine
Everything you do during the day and night—from exercise to yard work to sleeping—burns calories. BodyMedia FIT captures your calorie burn with an astonishing 90 percent accuracy.
At the top of most everyone’s New Year’s resolutions list is one thing: weight loss. It’s why we see a sudden spike in gym and weight-loss program memberships. Recent studies by the World Health Organization show that a staggering 66.7 percent of the American population is overweight, based on surveys conducted during the last decade.
So, if weight loss is on our minds and is something we focus on, why are there so many people who can’t seem to shake those extra pounds? Not enough willpower? Lack of motivation? Backsliding? Or, is obesity genetic? Perhaps, like any other task, we lack the correct tools to complete the job. The Body Media FIT seeks to change that in a radical way.
My experience with the Body Media FIT (BMF) was an interesting one. Unlike other weight-loss systems that have you tallying points, counting calories or swearing off carbohydrates altogether, the BMF gives you specific information about YOUR body. We all know that while one program might work wonders for one person, it may not work for another. Why? Because we’re all different. We respond differently to weight-loss programs, which is why the BMF is so helpful. The BMF tracks and graphs important functions to give you the information needed to lose weight on your “dashboard,” the centralized hub of your weight-loss plan.
The BMF tells you what your target goals are (on the left), which you establish when setting up the BMF and creating a new goal. You can choose to lose weight, maintain weight or get active, and the BMF will guide you through the steps of creating a customized set of targets. If you are eating an average of 3,000 calories a day, suddenly eating only 1,500 would be difficult, and while other programs may start you at that goal in the same place as everyone else on the program, the BMF allows you to tweak your targets so you can progress at your own pace.
This is a single screen shot from just one day of wearing the BMF. Over time, graphs begin to emerge from the data. I noticed that on the weekends, I was consuming considerably more calories than on weekdays, and I was walking fewer steps and exercising less. I hadn’t realized until I saw the data in black and white that my behaviors on the weekend were negating all of the progress I had made during the week. Having the graphs of when I’m most active was also helpful. I could see that although I sit at a desk most of the day, walking around the office does help get my heart rate up and burn calories. So often I feel like I need to punish myself at the gym for 90 minutes after work because I get no exercise elsewhere, but this shows me I’m getting 20-30 minutes of exercise during the day doing my normal routine of work and errands.
Wearing the BMF is a breeze. It’s a small electronic band, about two inches wide and half an inch thick, that you wear around the upper part of your arm and is easily concealed under a shirt sleeve. There are two metal contact points that press against your upper arm to record information about how much physical activity you engage in, your heart rate, how well you sleep, how many steps you take and much more. When you put it on and it makes contact with your skin, it emits a quick set of tones to let you know it has made contact and is recording data. You don’t have to worry that you’ll go the whole day wearing it incorrectly and get bad results. When the device is removed from contact with the skin, it emits a different set of tones to let you know it has stopped recording. Syncing it to the computer is as simple as syncing an iPod or iPhone. Once you’ve set up your account and created your personal goals, plug the BMF into your Mac or PC using the included USB cable, and about 15 seconds later you’re ready to begin wearing the BMF.
The BMF isn’t perfect. Like other programs, you need to be diligent about inputting data, such as the food you’ve eaten and your current weight, which requires you to remember every meal, snack and drink taken during the day when you get home—and let’s face it, it’s easy to forget a peanut butter cup here or there. Fortunately, there’s a free BMF app for your smartphone that will generate the graphs based on the information you input since the last time you synced the BMF to your computer. I found that to be frustrating, since I wouldn’t always remember to sync the BMF each day, so sometimes I was a day or two behind in my information. However, Body Media offers a Bluetooth-enabled armband that talks to your smartphone automatically and can give you near real-time data, cutting down on the number of times you need to sync the BMF with your computer. The downside to wearing the band all day, especially in warmer climates like Arizona, is that it can irritate your skin as you sweat and your skin naturally begins to swell. Adjusting the breathable Velcro band is easy enough, though, and after a day or so of wearing it I forgot it was even there most of the time.
In the end, the BMF is not a magic pill that will get you to lose weight or have pounds flying off your body in record time, but it will give you the information you’ve probably been lacking in previous failed weight-loss attempts and is well worth the investment. Body Media offers armband packages ranging from $180 to $260 plus a monthly fee for the online monitoring service ranging from $7 to $13 per month, depending on how long you want the online service and how long you think it will take to reach your goal. You can get your very own Body Media FIT at bodymedia.com.
Read about how cage fighter Laura Marcusse uses BMF in her training at mylifemagazine.com/marcusse.
