By Natalie Carter
Ever wanted a personalised calorie breakdown of every single and I mean every single, calorie you burn on a daily/nightly basis? I did! I jumped at the chance when Rescu. offered me the chance to test drive it.
The Bodymedia Fit Armband is a complete system, designed to give you personalised information about your activity, nutrition levels and sleep patterns. This is the future of fitness and health at our fingertips. As a trainer, I’ve always wondered how many calories I burn. Not just through individual workouts but on a day to day basis. For those that are uninitiated, your body burns calories constantly day and night. At rest, it burns further than when you are active and also at different rates, depending your sex, height and weight. My armband arrives from BodyMedia headquarters and I bust to get to my computer to download the software. It’s a simple, easy-to-follow set up with online support available. Lucky for me! I’m an outdoorsy girl not an IT nerd! So I enter all my details onto the Activity Manager and start setting goals (A reduction of 5 kilos of body fat wouldn’t hurt, right? Gosh, will I ever be happy with my body, probably not!) I plug my band into the usb port, sync it and slap it back on my left arm (around my tricep region- this is where the reading is most effectively received). The armband has two sophifisticated sensors that measure heat exchange, movement and sweat to give you an accurate and detailed breakdown of calories burned, calories consumed (when you log them from the database), physical activity and sleep. It resembles an IPod nano, with an elasticated strap. It’s actually quite comfy after a few hours of wearing it.
My Favourite Features:
Sleep Monitoring: Definitely by far the best feature, for me. The Armband measures how effectively I sleep, the duration and it’s so intelligent that it can differentiate between sleep and lying down! The software plots every night on a graph for you to take a look at.
Pedometer/Step counter: I find I’m over the 10,000 step mark most days (I should be, I tend to move around for 10-12 hours with clients). It was also handy to note that even on my less busy days I find out I still manage 8,000. We all know the more movement, the better for weight loss.
Nutrition database: Simply type in your favourite foods or recipes and find out how many calories are contained in each. For those that aren’t familiar with calories or kilo joule content of foods, you’ll definitely be surprised. For the average person it makes you more aware and in turn will force you (hopefully!) to choose better food options.
Physical Activity: The Armband also can give you a graph and information about the intensity of the activity you do. On your initial set up phase you will be guided through how much activity you will be required to do to achieve your goal. A calorie is measure by how much heat is generated through the body to perform that activity so of course; when you work harder you produce more heat. The intensity is measured in MET’s.
From a Personal Trainer’s perspective, the BodyMedia Fit is a helpful tool to all fitness enthusiasts to have in their arsenal. Not only does it make you more accountable for your actions but it provides you with some actual feedback (in the form of data). Another cool feature is you can let all your friends on Facebook know when you’ve achieved a Personal Best or one of your goals. I’ll definitely be bragging when I’ve lost a kilo..or five!
Update: After 4 weeks of use, I recorded a loss of 1.8 kg. I was pleased with this considering I hadn’t really changed anything specifically in my exercise regime. I felt just having the device on my at all times made me more aware of my food choices and incidental exercise (examples of incidental exercise: walking up stairs instead of taking escalators, gardening and shopping). The logging can be at times tedious but definitely worth recording. It will only make you results even better!
My client and RESCU’s editor used it 24 hours/day and during our training sessions. I found it made her more accountable for the type of exercise she was performing. She was able to physically see the output of her workouts. Her previous routine was yielding little results and needed an update and big “re-boot”. I tweaked her routine, got her moving with PT sessions twice per week and used the BodyFit Media armband. We saw that our PT workouts intensified her training regime much more than her previous workouts. This meant a greater calorie burn and quicker results. Logging everything on the Activity Manger meant I could see daily what she was up to and give her extra motivation if she needed it.
I can definitely see benefit with using the armband with all my clients. I can log onto all their profiles and have a little snoop. It makes the client much more accountable for the type of exercise they do and therefore will have those seeing results quicker.
The BodyMedia Fit armband is available at: www.bodymedia.com.au for $429 includes 3 months free access to the BodyMedia Activity Manager (usually $8/month over 12 months) or $499 for the above plus a wearable display (valued at $199).
Another nifty fitness gadget that has caught my eye is, Speedo AquaLap. The timing division has developed a watch that is placed on your finger when you swim or run. The Aqualap allows you to count your laps (up to 175), with a simple innovative one handed operation. Clever! In addition, all buttons on the AquaLap Finger Watch feature Speedo’s Hydro Pusher TM technology, which are easy to use and water resistant. The device comes in handy for the leisure swimmer to competitive athlete.
For my own Biathlon training, I found it really helpful. As a competitive swimmer (in my younger days) and now just swimming for fitness, I’d always miss a few laps out or blank out completely. You tend to get in the zone when you are swimming so this watch keeps us all honest.
The Speedo AquaLap watch is available for $89.95 at Speedo stores
Stay Awesome until next time,
Nat
www.newoutlookfitness.com.au
