A few weeks before Christmas, I bought myself a present. It’s not something I often do, but I’ve had my eye on this for a while now. See my favorite heart rate monitor watch broke and months later it’s still not fixed. I won’t bore you with the incompetence of Polar and the expensive screwdrivers I need to fix my watch, and my many calls to customer service but sufficed to say, it was going to cost me a lot of $$ to fix my heart rate monitor not to mention inconvenience and so I decided to get one of these. This is a Body Media Fit Armband. You may have seen something similar (the Bodybugg) on Biggest Loser. This works the same way: you wear it on your arm most of the time and it uses skin resistance and other data to monitor your calorie output. This one also monitors sleep.
Being that I love data and all of the wonderful things it can reveal to me, this thing is awesome for me. I have found out a lot of things I never knew and confirmed some that I suspected. For instance, even without a “workout” I almost always burn upwards of 2200 calories. I attribute it to my good muscle tone combined with my inability to sit still (even at the office I am always getting up and walking around so I don’t get twitchy and lose focus). So it makes sense that when I try to stick to a 1200 calorie diet like has been recommended to me by various programs, I’m STARVING. That’s a 1000 calorie deficit.
I also need to stop pretending that I’m getting 7.5 hours of sleep. It’s way closer to 6.5 or 6. Combining the time that it takes me to actually GET to sleep and the minutes I shave off in the morning hitting the snooze (it feels like sleep but it’s not REALLY sleep), I am really not getting nearly the amount of sleep I thought I was. A bit depressing and overall not really likely to change (I still need more hours in the day!) but still interesting.
I have had virtually no problems with the device – everything has been super smooth and easy to use. The piece of velcro did come off one side of the armband, but a little super glue fixed that right up. The only thing I wish I’d done differently would be to purchase the model that has bluetooth so I could get instant display on my phone. At some point in time I might give this one to Matt (he’s expressed interest in having one – and the BT isn’t something he’d probably be interested in) and buy myself the other, but for now there’s no need. It’s a great device.