Internal Mono(b)log

As many of you may know, a few years ago, before I started on my Iron Journey, I tipped the scales at over 250 lbs.  A strict medically supervised diet, followed by a lot of exercise and a changed relationship with food has brought me to where I am now (about 155lbs and 8% bodyfat).

When I was switching off the supervised diet and onto my own behavior management, I invested in a BodyBugg.  Bodybugg is a “personal telemetry” device that measures your body’s temperature, movement, galvanic skin response and determines your actual caloric expenditure with (according to their site) 95% accuracy.

Now, I’m all about data.  I’m a career geek and firmly believe that strong data helps make strong decisions.  Having data driven data about caloric burn just seemed a natural choice compared to the estimation data published everywhere.  Imagine my surprise when after a rock climbing session, where the tables say I should have been burning 800 calories/hr, I discovered that after 2 hours, I’d personally only burned 400 calories!!   Similarly surprising was that my caloric burn walking briskly was higher than that of cycling and because cycling was a fast mode of transport I’d get from A to B faster, but with less of an overall benefit as I’d expected.  I was hooked!  I was already weighing and tracking my nutrition now I could tailor my diet to my actual expenditure and completely dial in my caloric deficit to keep me loosing consistently without pushing my body into starvation mode! Win!

As I’ve started training more and generally being more fit, my relationship with the Bugg has evolved.  It’s rare now that I need to worry about eating too much.  Rather, these days, it’s much more the case that I’m concerned about making sure that I’m putting enough calories in my mouth to keep my energy levels high for the next workout and to provide my body the nutrition support it needs to repair and build.  The same disciplines are in use, but now, with an emphasis on making sure I get enough, rather than too many, calories.

So enough background.  Let’s talk about the BodyBuggSP:

I started with the bodybugg3 and wrist display and “upgraded” to the BodyBuggSP about a year ago, when it was released.

The BodyBugg3 and wrist display provided pretty much the same data as the SP, but the wrist display (like a watch) was cumbersome since I already wore a watch and it’s styling was really pretty utilitarian.  When the BodyBuggSP came out with it’s ability to display data on a paired blue-tooth enabled smart-phone (iphone or android) the “upgrade” path was clear for me and as soon as I could put my hands on an SP I took the plunge, sold my Bodybugg3 and bought the SP.

Well.. it’s been a rocky road for the BodyBuggSP.  In their desire to get to market, Apex pushed the SP out too soon and the software (especially on the Android platform) was, at best, in Beta.  It would crash, functions didn’t work well and most annoyingly, the “trip” functionality didn’t work until a recent software update about a week ago.  The basic functionality was there, steps, calories/day, goal setting, etc. but it was all pretty fragile.

I’m happy to say that it appears that the Beta stage is behind us now.  The BodyBuggSP and it’s android software seem to be working well together now.  Functioning as expected and not crashing regularly.  Makes me a happy camper 🙂

Generally I really like the bodybugg’s and love the data they provide.  A few things that I’d love to see improved to make the offering top-notch in my opinion:

• make a device that I can swim with so that I can get the same data in the pool – may not be possible given the design of the bugg, but it’d be sweet
• on the smart-phone software, show me the battery status of the bodybugg arm-band
• currently, in order to clear the bodybugg memory, set goals, etc. you must pay for, subscribe to, and use the Apex fitness bodybugg website.  For me, this is just a cash gouge. I don’t use the site for anything that couldn’t be done with a local piece of software.  Certainly the site has a lot of value for people who need the educational and motivational support of the site, but I don’t.  Having to pay for the site membership to clear the memory on my bodybugg once or twice a week is nearly insulting.