Bodymedia?

[mandy75]

anyone have any experience wearing a BodyMedia arm band?

[bigm141414]

I think Catspaw had one. Or at least a similar one. 

[catspaw]

Yep, I have one.

 

What in particular are you hoping to use it for, and maybe I can speak to that.

[mandy75]

I ordered one. it will be here tomorrow. I have not lost weight in almost a year, and no change in clothing size either with working out 3 to 5 days a week. I am having pretty good strength gains, but that's it. I still have a good bit of fat to lose and I hoping that keeping track of both cals burned and consumed are going to help figure out what's going on. 

 

Do you like it, do you find it accurate, do you wear it everyday? 

[catspaw]

I wore it every day for 3 weeks or so.  Eventually I started getting a bit of a skin rash from it, which can apparently happen if you wear it too long.   But the three weeks gave me looots of data.  I found that it's about 10-15% off for me, but reliably so.

 

Nowadays I wear it when I radically change environment or habits -- like if I travel somewhere new, or if I really change up my diet, etc., to get a feel for the impact that those changes have.

 

The "cals consumed" interface is no better than any of the free ones out there.

[Maxtrong]

I have a bodybug and it worked pretty well. Make sure you actually weigh your food if you want as accurate a measurement as possible.

 

I don't wear mine anymore so I'm getting rid of it. Got to be a hassle and I have recently stopped subscribing to the calories in calories out paradigm.

[blablues]

I've had the BodyMedia link armband for about two weeks now and I think it's working well so far. I sync it with MyFitnessPal, which is where I track all my calories, so it helps me determine how much I can eat for the day based on how much I've burned and trying to acheieve a 900-1000 calorie deficit. I recommend using MyFitnessPal for the calories since their database is much more extensive.

 

I do wear it every day, most of the day - I only take it off to sync it and charge it and to shower. I found it to be accurate when comparing the calories burned estimate from my heart rate monitor during a workout to what the bodymedia said. I really got it so I could track those random calories burned (or not burned) when I'm not exercising - extra steps an so on. Before the Bodymedia, I used Fitbit, which was inaccurate in calorie counting and I lost or washed 3 of them in 6 months. The BodyMedia is much easier to keep track of and not lose.

 

For the rash, in two weeks I haven't had that problem, but I do make a point of moving it around to different spots in my arm so no one area is always underneath it.

 

Things I don't like include their website - it's just not as nice with as good a feature-set as Fitbit or MyFitnessPal - but they charge you to use it. I also don't like that they give you more calories to eat in the beginning of the day, based on what you've burned on other days with exercise, instead of working with your base calorie burn and working up as you exercise. Their point is that they want you to keep trying meet those high expectations for calorie burn, but I know on some days I won't exercise at all, or I will have a lower calorie burn exercise. So I end up doing extra math to figure out what I should be really eating for the day so I don't run out of calories to eat at before dinner.

 

Hope that was helpful.

[mandy75]

I am on day 2 of wearing it. The first day, my arm ached wearing it, not sure why, today I barely noticed it. Im liking the data, I had 1130 cal deficit yesterday, but only 172 deficit today. I still have dinner to eat so not a good day. Had I not known the numbers, I would still be assuming, I did just fine today. I had a smoothie for breakfast, chicken and veggies for lunch and a little frozen yogurt, tonight I  am having Italian sausage and chicken. I had a very light day at the gym today so not a lot of calorie burn. I am going to have to some sort of activity tonight. Knowledge is power