BodyMedia Fit Data

A few years ago I did a post about the calorie burn based on different exercises.  This post is just about the BodyMedia fit data itself not really based on each activity.  BodyMedia fit is similar to Body Bugg but BodyMedia fit does sleep duration and sleep efficiency. 

The night of 11/25-11/26

I set my own goal to 8 hours but I think that might be the default goal though.  The dark gray is when I was sleeping and the light gray is when I was lying down.  Sometimes when I toss and turn a lot, I will look at my data and it shows it.  Note if you sleep with your arm above your head, the armband won't register that time as sleeping or lying down.  This doesn't seem to affect me unless I wear my armband on my right arm but it affects my husband nightly.  For the most part this is accurate.  Sometimes I am lying down almost asleep watching TV and it registers as sleeping, but that is rare.  

Each day you can view your calorie burn.  You can see when your calorie burn was higher.  Most likely you know what you did during that time so it's no surprise.  Sometimes it's interesting to see the elevated calorie burn when you are socializing, shopping, or cleaning.  Shortly before 4:00 when my calorie burn is the highest that is when I went for a run. Over an hour later I'm elevated again because I went ot the gym. I started with elliptical and then did weights.. 

11.4.12 Run

You can move the slider at the bottom to zoom in on part of the graph.  Above shows when I went running (and a little before and after).  Note there are dips. Those dips are each walk break during my run.  The 3 dips that are down further than the rest are actually when we stopped at water fountains.  Normally walking wouldn't be anywhere near 8 calories an hour but your heart rate is still elevated from the run so you keep burning calories but you get some recovery time so you can run longer.

Also on the website you can see your physical activity. Moderate activity is from 3-6 METs and vigorous is over 6.  I mainly get vigorous exercise when I run.  In the past I've gotten maybe 3 minutes out of a 45 minute spin class as vigorous and maybe 18 minutes of a Body Combat class as vigorous.  A lot of normal activities count as moderate for me. Meetings at work, walking, cleaning, and some socializing are all things that count as moderate activity for me.  METs is not calories per minute but it is very smilar for me since I normally burn 1.0 or 1.1 calories a minute so everything is very similar for me.

 Here's another screen shot of calorie burn.  By default BodyMedia fit only shows me what I told it at one point are my standard waking up and going to sleep times.  They are way off based on my current jobless state.  The increased calorie burn there after 8PM is when I went to the gym.  I ran 1.25 miles. Then I got water and decided to run more. You can see the dip.  Then the next 20 minutes were lifting weights.  Then I increased again at the end because I ran another half mile.  I could probably guess my calorie burn and what the graphs would look like based on what I did because I'm so used to seeing these.

 I love when FIT coach tells me Great work but it barely happens. About a month ago I changed my calorie burn goal to make it lower since I was never meeting it.  Back in March my average calorie burn for the month was ~2400 calories and for October it was under 1900.

FIT coach really does give you some interesting tips.  But as you can see by all these screen shots, I don't listen to any of them.

I don't only get warnings about my poor eating habits but sometimes get warnings on my calories burned for the day. I do notice that it will give me different amount of times to use the exercise bike to meet my calorie burn for the day.  I haven't actually done their suggestions yet but maybe some day.  The other day at the gym, I ran an extra half mile at the end because based on my mental calculations I would be a few calories short of my goal otherwise.  

The following are from 11/27

Look at these FIT coach warnings. No wonder I'm fat.

Fit coach tries to be encouraging. I've gained weight since I set up my weight loss goal.  My goal is higher than I was mid September so don't get any ideas that I'm trying to get too skinny or something.

This is a pie chart that you see daily if you enter your food online.  Today I had a lot of fat because I had dinner at 5 Guys. (This was actually before I ate a S'mores ice cream sandwich.)

Is there anything you'd like me to show or explain about my BodyMedia fit? I have more graphs at the bottom of my weight graph page if you want to see some other stuff I didn't mention here.