For the longest time I have sat back & watched as many many people have used the "Heart Rate Monitor" for a calorie counting tool. It sparked an interest in me the day I began my weight loss journey. I thought to myself "What a good idea. Why not know how many calories I burn in a day so I can lose weight & control my calorie intake?" Fabulous idea! So I go out to the nearest Sporting Goods store & purchase a well known name brand Heart Rate Monitor. I spend $60 & walk away with what I THOUGHT was the essential tool to have for CALORIE TRACKING. I started using my Heart rate Monitor that day. I worked out to Turbo Jam for 55 minutes & by the end the Heart Rate Monitor had read I burned 1205 calories......in 55 minutes of Turbo Jam. Mind you Turbo Jam is nothing like INSANITY and since INSANITY was in the making, I couldn't compare burns with both programs. What I did however was take what I had burned & used that in my daily regimen to control my calorie intake. I followed that for about 6 months. Here are a few questions I had to answer for myself after having NO success using the "Heart Rate Monitor" for something it WAS NOT created to do, Count Calories.
Q. Was I losing weight?
A. No. Not the way I could have been had I used a tool that was SPECIFICALLY MADE for counting calories.
Q. Did I know how many calories I burned ALL DAY?
A. No. This little gadget told me what I burned during a workout & IF I decided to keep it going all day my calorie burn would have read something like 10,000. HUH??? Thats over losing 2 pounds a day! Puh-Lease!
Q. What can I do to solve this problem?
A. RESEARCH!!
Without answering these questions for myself, I would never know.
I jumped on my computer. I quickly logged onto Chalene Johnson's website turbokick.com because I had seen her sporting this gadget they call the BodyBugg. I was interested since she had been my inspiration to take control of my life & become super healthy & fit. As most of you know, Chalene Johnson is a TOP World Renowned Trainer & we are blessed enough to have her as one of our very own in Beachbody outside of her company Powder Blue Productions (a.k.a. PBP) She had been blogging about this contraption for a while now & knowing Chalene, she DOES NOT promote something that DOESN'T WORK. In fact, she had one of the Biggest Loser contestants live with her for a month, having to wear the BodyBugg and it took the entire month of the contestant wearing it to convince Chalene that it was totally worth it. I finally decided to take the next step in researching the BodyBugg for myself on its website. I read everything about this tool before I purchased it. I found out Jillian Michaels makes her contestants on the Biggest Loser wear them and I also discovered 24 Hour Fitness was behind supporting Body Media, who created the SMARTEST Calorie Counting Tool available. I took the next step in purchasing one.
2 Business days was all it took for me to receive my BodyBugg. Excited?? Oh goodness, you have no idea!!! I was so extremely excited about this tool. I had that feeling inside of me that told me "THIS IS IT. This tool WILL get the job done." Is that true? ABSOLUTELY, 100% without a doubt in my mind, did this tool WORK. For the first time ever, I learned how many calories I was burning minute to minute, whether sitting still, walking, cooking, working out or even sleeping! Yeah, you burn calories 24 hours a day. Your body doesn't stop burning calories after you workout. Its a continual burn. It just depends on how much muscle or fat you have in your body that depicts how many you burn. Another contributing factor is your body height. 100% true. Shorter people burn LESS than taller people. Chalene will gladly back this statement up. How many calories you burn in a day also depends on how active you are. In a ratio of 1:6 (fat burning 1 calorie a minute & muscle burning 6) I was hooked on lifting weights to build my muscles so I would burn more fat. ChaLEAN Extreme was my workout of choice. With the help of the BodyBugg I lost 38 pounds & gained more muscle than I ever imagined I could build. I was eating the proper portions of calories per day BECAUSE I KNEW for a fact how many calories I was burning. I was NOT being under or overfed.
One of the most irritating things I get messages about is how someone saw another person talking, writing, filming a video clip or posting pictures of their heart rate monitor saying how many calories they burned during a workout. They let me know they have been using a Heart Rate Monitor as well, but have not lost weight, have not built proper muscle, don't know if they are eating too much or too little and don't know how many calories they are burning all day long. They also notice me wearing the Bodybugg Being an EXPERIENCED participant in both tools, I am here to tell you the Heart rate Monitor is ONLY that and a watch/stopwatch. Period. This tool was not created like the BodyBugg. The Heart rate Monitor CANNOT tell you:
Your Skin temperature
Your activity level
Your rate of heat dissipating from your body
Galvanic Skin Response (which tells you water content of the skin, and the constriction or dilation of the vascular periphery)
Steps taken in a day
PROPER Calorie Burn, Minute to Minute
The BodyBugg has ALL of this and more. It comes with a website subscription to input your food for the day & accurately tell you how many calories you've taken in. You can add foods/drinks that are not in the BodyBugg system by inputting the nutrition from the back of the label & it will tell you how many calories you consumed by how many grams/ounces/fluid ounces is in a serving & the nutrition. THIS TOOL IS A CALORIE COUNTING DEVICE & MORE. I will not advertise the Heart rate Monitor for being an ACCURATE Calorie Counter because it is NOT. People are being either over or underfed & not knowing everything listed above by following what their Heart rate Monitor is telling them. They aren't losing weight & its the most frustrating thing to have to go through especially when you "feel" like you're doing enough. Its not enough to just have one part of the solution. It needs to be a whole. Here below you can see how the website for the BodyBugg is set up:
I really hope this blog reaches people on a Learning Experience level. This is not something I came up with, its something I genuinely was a part of, researched & GOT RESULTS from. I used this until I was able to finally know how many calories I was burning on a day to day basis, keeping me from over eating, under eating, working out harder, lifting heavier or moving more. Your calorie burn is much lower during weight training than on days you do cardio. However, after weight training, you burn 2.5 - 4 calories more per minute for hours afterwards as opposed to burning 600 calories during a 45 minute cardio workout & immediately slow down back to a resting calorie burn if of course you aren't active after the cardio workout. There are so many things you can learn if you just research and not take someones word for it. We are ALL DIFFERENT & our bodies require different nutrition workouts and supplements to get us to reach our goals. Knowing your calories is a very important factor in losing weight. I'm not here to tell you to go buy a Bodybugg, I'm just letting you know what the difference is between the 2 devices as I was a participant in using both. Do not speak from inexperience. If you haven't actually tried the BodyBugg & you're so negative right now I could put you in a dark room & you would develop, you cannot say I am wrong because I have thousands of people who have my back in letting you know that the BodyBugg is a Calorie Counting Device & it does just that.
http://www.bodybugg.com
