Bodybugg

My 32nd birthday was back on the 13th of this month and Pat got me a Bodybugg as a gift. Being an engineer I love numbers and I love tracking the calories I eat and the calories I burn daily. I have always tracked my calories burned during a workout with a Polar heart rate monitor. I'm sure if any of you have watched The Biggest Loser on TV you have seen a Bodybugg, its the black band all the contestants are wearing around their left arm. You just wear it on your arm daily and it uses the following five sensors to calculate your daily caloric burn(within 90% accuracy) : motion, steps, skin response (sweat), skin temperature, and heat flux from you muscles. Not only does the Bodybugg measure you caloric burn it also calculates you daily steps.

Well sounds pretty amazing but how does it really work and what do I think of it. I've only been using it for one week now and so far I'm really enjoying it. I was very surprised that once I put in all of my information it calculated that I probably burn about 2600 calories a day. I honestly thought that was way high until I started wearing it. I have averaged over the past week right around 2600 calories. Here is the graph from the calories I burned on Sunday July 26th.

Can you tell when I worked out yesterday? I guess if you can't I didn't workout hard enough. I was also surprise to find out just how many calories I burn while out shopping. I was out for a few hours yesterday afternoon doing some shopping for the house and groceries and I was burning about 5 calories a minute. Ladies just another reason to go out and shop. Here is the graph of the steps I took on Sunday.

So far I'm having a lot of fun with the Bodybugg. I can't truly give an honest opinion yet of whether it has helped me lose the last few pounds I'm looking to drop. What I have learned: I actually burn 2600 calories a day, 10,000 steps is a really hard goal to make if I don't workout during the day, I actually burn about 70 calories an hour while I sleep, and it is 12 steps from my bed to my bathroom (I can tell when I get up at night). I plan to post a full review with my results in 30 days to see if this nifty tool can help me lose those last few pounds.