Walk in to any fitness center, and you’ll see lots of machines taking up space – from treadmills, bikes and ellipticals to weight machines that seem to be medieval torture devices, seemingly working every muscle in the body. What do all of them do? Do you need all of those machines? If walking into a gym with lots of machines is intimidating enough,walking into a gym without any machines is even more so! What do you do with all that stuff? All you see are free weights, and maybe some bars, ropes, boxes, and other, different looking, torture devices. Is one better than the other? Will machines get you better results? Or will free weights? As with everything related to your health, the answer is, “It depends”. It depends on where you are in your fitness journey: your physical abilities and what you know about exercising. Pros & Cons of Read More . . .
Is the bodybugg worth it?
It’s true. The bodybugg is a pricey piece of equipment, and ultimately, only you can decide how much money you would be willing to pay to lose the weight you desire. I get asked this question A LOT. Is it worth it? When I started with the bodybugg, I only had 15 lbs to lose & was convinced that I had a slow metabolism. I knew that my workouts were good: I’m a personal trainer & nutritionist, so I knew WHAT I was eating was good too. What the bodybugg immediately exposed was that I was sedentary the 23 hours in the day I WASN’T exercising. We all know that moving burns more calories than not moving. The bodybugg illustrates that fact very clearly. Here’s my activity graph from one day. You can clearly see where I was moving & where I wasn’t. I apparently went for a run & Read More . . .
bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 4 – Activity & Accuracy
<< Previous Round bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 3 – Sleep Tracking So the reason I was initially drawn to the bodybugg was that it allowed me to see how many calories I was burning in a day. I knew how many calories I was eating. What I didn’t know, was how many I was burning; but why is that even important? Weight loss is a simple equation of consuming fewer calories than your body burns. There are TONS of food logging websites & tools, and as I mentioned, I knew what I was eating, because I was logging my food for years prior to knowing about the bodybugg. But eating is only half of the equation in weight loss and weight management. I can tell you that if you eat 500 fewer Calories per day than your body needs, you will lose 1 pound per week; I already knew that. Read More . . .
bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 3 – Sleep Tracking
<< Previous Round bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 2 – Food Logging According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 to 70 million Americans are affected by chronic sleep disorders, and I am very fortunate that I am not one of them. I didn’t realize this until just a few years back. I have no problems sleeping. Sure, occasionally I’ll have a night where I randomly wake up in the middle of the night, or have trouble falling asleep, but it typically doesn’t last more than one night & the visualization techniques I use will usually work to get me to sleep. The bodybugg armband has the ability to show sleep efficiency, but the web application doesn’t expose it. Sure, you can wear it to bed & you can see in the activity graph if you got up, but overall it doesn’t display anything different if you’re just lying there, awake Read More . . .
bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 2 – Food Logging
<< Previous Round bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 1 – Getting Going Logging your food is THE most powerful thing you can do to improve your diet & eating habits. Logging your food prevents you from mindless munching. It creates this awareness of everything that you put in your mouth – even if you're journaling your food with a pen & paper. I don't exactly know why it's so powerful – there are a lot of reasons: you become aware of everything that you're eating. Suddenly, you change your eating habits because you don't want to write it down (those 4 hershey's kisses that you scarfed off of your co-worker's desk. Additionally, you gain this awareness of how many calories are in the foods you eat. Whatever reason resonates with you, if you want to drop a few pounds, start journaling your food. Food journals have been around for ages! I Read More . . .
bodybugg vs fitbit: Round 1 – Getting Going
Hello, My name is Elizabeth & I'm a data geek. That's why I love my bodybugg. I've loved my bodybugg pretty much since the day I got it. The bodybugg is the first tool available that allows you to really see how many calories you're burning in a day. This is a fantastic insight for folks who are trying to lose weight, or maintain their weight loss because how do you know how many calories to eat if you don't know how many calories you burn? Since I'm a nutritionist, wellness coach and personal trainer, I instantly recognized how powerful of a tool this was & became a licensed reseller, which affords me the opportunity to distribute them to my clientele. Initially, the bodybugg didn't have any competition. The first competitor was the GoWear Fit, which is the same product distributed by the company that actually makes the bodybugg armband; Read More . . .
Do those new funny shoes work?
Subject: ? For your trainer Hey – I was wondering about those tennis shoes with the funky bottoms…skeechers and reebok make them (maybe also earth). Anyway, can you ask your trainer if she has an opinion about them. Wouldn’t want to miss a buying opportunity if it’s healthy! Thx! I think that’s funny. You know – I AM interested in them though. Let’s see – what are their claims? From Reebok: (OMG! is their advertising selling sex!) 78% of men are speechless. 81% of women jealous. EasyTone helps you get better legs and a better butt with every single step. From Sketchers: 1. Tone your muscles 2. Promote healthy weight loss 3. Make it easy to get in shape! Okay – so at least they’re not trying to claim that you’ll burn more calories in them. What I think they’re doing is providing an unstable surface, so that you have Read More . . .
Heart Rate & the Bodybugg
There’s been a TON of discussion recently about Heart Rate Monitors (HRM) & the Bodybugg: The bodybugg should have one… Why doesn’t the bodybugg have one?… an HRM can do the same thing as a bodybugg at a fraction of the cost… and so on. So, I’d like to address some of the questions about Heart Rate & the Bodybugg. Heart Rate Monitors HRMs can range from $60 – 400. The most basic will tell time & HR. More sophisticated ones may also track GPS location, calories burned, speed, & allow you to upload the data to a website to look at it, and may keep history of several previous "files" (or workouts). I used a HRM for years because it was the only tool available to tell me how many calories I burned when I exercised. However, I tried wearing it the entire day once had no luck as Read More . . .
Bodybugg or No Bodybugg that is the Question?
Yesterday, I posted an article about whether the Bodybugg is useful for fitness pros. It was spurred by a conversation on twitter with another personal trainer, out of Seattle, @Targettraining. He asked if he could post a response. Here it is: Guest Post by Shayne P. Norton In the small article I will discuss why the Bodybugg is not for everyone, and why would you want it. So there are many controversies about calories in versus calories out, fat loss and weight loss. Well I am here to tell you the difference and obsession with the people of today. I have learned in my field of personal training that personal trainers will lie to you at a corporate gym due to the pressure of sales from the management. Trust me I have been there and done that, also if there is a personal trainer that has said that they haven’t Read More . . .
King Corn
I watched King Corn (free on iTunes) a few months ago & have been meaning to write a blog post on it. I’ve only now gotten re-motivated to write about it now because I’m currently reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma & the two compliment each other beautifully. The movie, King Corn is a documentary about two college buddies who through some random events decide to get their hair analyzed. The results come back that they have an enormous amount of corn byproduct in their bodies. Confused, because corn isn’t a food product that they typically eat, they decide to move to Iowa, plant an acre of corn rented from a farmer, and follow that acre of corn from production to consumption. The two film-makers, Ian Chaney and Curt Ellis do a really good job of explaining how corn gets into our food – through corn-fed beef (not only are we what Read More . . .