The Weight Loss Secret Weapon

Lets face it, weight loss is all about calorie management. The tried and true formula of running a calorie deficit does the job every time. But it can also be a pain in the rear to figure out just exactly what you're burning. The job of figuring what you take in is made fairly simple these days by the creation of some super simple websites with apps like MyFitnessPal or Livestrong. They make tracking what you eat a snap because they have huge databases of food with calories already entered by other users. If you come across something that's not entered...then you are eating very weird stuff.  You can track exercise burns here too...but that's where the problem comes in.

There is a lot of conflicting information on how many calories any particular exercise burns. Anyone who has spent time trying to find out how many calories vacuuming the living room or riding a bike for 30 minutes burns can attest to this.  And how accurate are those calories burned on exercise machines anyways?  Those things seem to good to be true.

That's why a few years ago when I first saw the BodyBugg on an episode of the Biggest Loser, I was intrigued. The BodyBugg is a device that straps on your upper arm and uses a variety of measurements to calculate how many calories you are burning just doing normal, everyday things. You can even wear it while you sleep.

In my first attempt at weight loss several years back, I wasn't so calorie savvy as I am now (after a lot of research and experience), so when I heard what it was supposed to do, I really, really, really wanted to get one. The problem was the price. Back then, it cost $300, plus you had to buy a monthly subscription to their website to keep track of your burn. I tried to justify it for a long time, thinking I could share it with my wife, but I just couldn't bring myself to shell out that kind of money.

So, when my wife messaged me one day about a huge sale on BodyBuggs, I jumped on it. I have come to view such expenditures as an investment in my health, and the short term sum is negligible when compared to the long term gain.

When it arrived, we were so excited to get it going.  I strapped it on and started experimenting with different exercises each day.  Of course, running was the number one experiment. 

We had all sorts of questions about burns.  Are online calculators and MyFitnessPal entries accurate?  How about those exercise machine readouts?  Does pace affect your burn while running?  What does the after-burn look like on different exercises?  Just how awful is my sedentary desk job?  So many questions, and for analytical junkies like us, we were like kids at Christmas time!

How it works
The BodyBugg uses four measurements to calculate your burn per minute:  motion/steps, sweat, skin temperature, and the rate heat is dissipating from your body.  No, it doesn't measure heart rate, which totally surprised us.  Wasn't the heart rate supposed to be the be-all end-all of calculating calorie burns?  This worried me a little, but we were giving it the benefit of doubt.

This is what the readout looked like part of the way through the first day while my wife was wearing it: 

She put it on around 8:00 a.m. as you can see the calorie spike while she was getting ready for work.  You'll notice the tremendous drop off in the burn around 8:30 when she got to her desk.  Or maybe she was a little late that day...looks like 9:00 really.  Oops. 

This shows how bad sedentary jobs can be on us.  The burn from 9:00 a.m. to about 10:15 when she takes her morning break and walks outside, her calorie burn is as low as if she was asleep--about one calorie per minute for a 140 pound female.  The walk burns about 4-6 calories per minute depending on the intensity.  Then you can see a little spike for her lunch hour at 1:00 p.m. and her afternoon walk at 3:00 p.m.  She got off work at 4:30 p.m. and you see the activity start picking up.  She's doing every day things like walking to and from the car and getting dinner ready, and she's already tripled the burn from sitting at her desk.  So, if you don't think that taking a walk on breaks will do much for your weight loss, you are wrong.  Get up and move as much as you can during the day.  It all makes a difference!

From the questions we had before using the BodyBugg, here are the things we found out:

(1) Exercise machine readouts are very high.  I've always suspected, but couldn't tell you for sure that our elliptical machine wildly over-estimated calories burned on its screen.  Before I knew much about calorie burns, I happily accepted that I could burn 300 calories in 20 minutes on the elliptical (WRONG!).  In reality, it was about 140 calories.  See the problem here?  You THINK you burned twice as many calories as you actually burned, so maybe you feel you can eat a little more today.  Then you wonder why you are not losing weight like you think you should.  Bottom line, the machines lie!  Never trust a calorie readout on an exercise machine.  Even if they have those little heart rate monitors--those will get you closer, but they still aren't accurate. 

(2)  Running and other high intensity workouts have an after-burn.  I was happy to know that I burned an extra 100+ calories for the 15-20 minutes after I stopped running.  I already knew, but was curious about how much.  Your elevated heart rate takes a while to get back down, and your body take a while to get back to normal temperature, so all the while, you are still burning calories.  So, get that heart rate up and get your bonus burn too! Weight training is even better. After an intense weight training session, your calorie burn can stay elevated for up to 36 HOURS after you stop. All those muscle repair processes in the body burn calories!

(3)  Online calculators and user-entered stats (MyFitnessPal) are hit and miss with accuracy. 
User-entered stats are only as good as the information entered.  Some good, some bad.  I've found that they can be trusted sometimes, but not all times.  The running and walking entries can be accurate when they take pace into consideration, because if it knows your weight and intensity it's fairly accurate.  They seem to be close to what the BodyBugg comes up with.  However, things like "Aerobics, high impact" is subjective.  You may think you did high impact, but the BodyBugg might say otherwise.  That one wasn't too accurate.  As for other online calorie burn calculators, they are most accurate if it lets you enter your weight and gender, but again, there is the problem with not being able to enter the intensity.  Not everyone ellipticals at the same speed or resistance.  You will have accuracy problems for sure.  No way to know for sure by just using the online calculator.

The bottom line is it helps to use something, anything: a BodyBugg, a heart rate monitor, or one of the other calorie gadgets out there.  Just make sure whatever you buy that it has a lot good reviews.  There are some really junky heart rate monitors out there so don't waste your time or money on them.  Better to spend a little extra and get what you pay for. 

We highly recommend the BodyBugg, especially if you can catch it on sale (maybe right now), or use the link to the $20 off discount code we posted below.  Even if you only keep the subscription for 6-months, it's well worth it to learn what you burn (accurately) if you are serious about losing weight.  Six months is a good amount of time to get familiar with your base metabolic burn (calories burned if you were sedentary all day) and your burns during different activities.  You'll be surprised at how accurately you can estimate your burns on most days after wearing the BodyBugg consistently for a couple weeks.

24 Hour Fitness has the best deal going on BodyBugg's right now, you can get yours here.

Not this kind of body bug....totally different.