Biggest Loser Night BodyBugg Experiment

So, like many other overweight Americans, I was glued to the TV tonight for The Biggest Loser. It was a shame that Joelle screwed things up for Carla, and let's face it, she REALLY needed to be there. I can't believe their friendship is ruined. Oh well, enough about that...

A few weeks ago, Bob Harper said that you could burn 300 calories by jogging in place during the commercials while watching the show. My daughter and I put this to the test tonight. I didn't count the number of commercial breaks, but I worked up a good sweat each time. At one point, they were breaking about once every 12 minutes. I found that my knees could hold out for a while and recover during the break just fine. Ok, now for the results....

During the 2 hours prior to starting The Biggest Loser, I was on the couch watching Jeopardy, then the Simpsons, and doing a scratch off lotto tickets with my husband (my guilty pleasure). I burned 202 calories during that time. Afterward, I sent my husband upstairs, so as not to be mortified by the living room workout session, and simply jogged in place during commercial breaks. I threw in a few jumping jacks and squats from time to time, but mostly I kept a easy paced jog. As it turns out, Bob was right! I burned an extra 366 calories on top of what I would have just sitting there. My total calorie burn for those 2 hours came to 568 calories! Not too shabby! I think it's safe to say that Tuesdays will be Biggest Loser Nights for as long as the show is running. :-)

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BodyBugg - Eye Opening Lessons Learned So Far

Yesterday marked the end of my first official week using the BodyBugg Calorie Management System. I'm please to say that this tool is teaching me more than I ever could have hoped. The main reason I got it was to try and change my all or nothing attitude when it comes to diet and exercise. I can honestly say that after just 1 week, I have learned an enormous amount of information about activity and caloric burn.

I think it is important to note that calorie counting is NOT part of the Clean Eating way of life, but because of my extremely screwed up ideas upon which I've based my various eating disorders over the past 15 years, I felt that I needed to look at things in an entirely new way. Before BodyBugg was marketed through 24 hour fitness, it was called something else. This technology has been used as behavioral therapy for obese (or just overweight) patients that need to make a change to their lifestyle. I read all about this at bodymedia.com, the company that manufactures the product.

These are my activity graphs for the past week. You can see how my activity spikes on my gym nights. The overall pattern here shows me waking up briefly in the middle of the night to feed my daughter (still eating every 3 hours...), and then waking for the day around 7am. The total caloric burn ranges from 2291 - 3770.

Ironically, the days with my highest caloric burn were NOT days that I trained very hard at the gym. These high burning days were days that I did a lot of running around and housework. Eureka! I mean come on! This is huge! You mean if I move more throughout the day, I can burn as much or more as being sedentary all day and then running on the treadmill later in the evening for 45 minutes?!? This is truly eye opening. I mean it makes sense, but it's so helpful to be able to quantify these things. Here's a list of the top lessons learned thus far after using BodyBugg 1 week.

1. An active day running around cleaning, running around and generally not sitting in front of the computer all day (like doing this blog entry) have a greater impact to my caloric burn rate than whether I went to the gym that day.
2. Being even just a little more active really adds up. For example, if you burn 1.3 cals/min at rest, you would burn about 1872 cals per day. If you just move even a little more when you can and boost that burn to just .5 more cals/min, you would burn a total of 2592. What a huge difference!
3. Sleep really does matter. The day that I burned only 2291 (nearly 500 less than my daily target), I took a 3 hour nap during the middle of the day to catch up from a week of sleep deprivation. I was also a couch potato all day from simply being pooped. On days that I am well rested, I burn WAY more calories the next day. I'm just naturally more active on those days.
4. My biggest activity zappers are Internet surfing and infant feeding. Since my baby is only 7 weeks old now, I spend nearly 6 hours a day feeding her. Web surfing/blogging are also zappers. I spend an enormous amount of time on the computer between working, although I'm still on maternity leave at the moment, and just surfing/blogging in general. I'm considering getting one of those under desk pedal things. I work from home, so I don't have to be embarrassed about it. My mom said she knows someone at work that uses one. She said the lady is very thin. Maybe she knows something we are just now figuring out! Here's an example of one I might get. Amazon seems to have a ton to choose from. Isokinetics Executive Deluxe Pedal Exerciser - Chrome
5. Intervals are awesome. I'm too heavy to run for 45 minutes without injuring myself, however if I run/walk at 2 minutes intervals, I burn nearly the same calories and don't injure myself.

Overall this BodyBugg tool has been amazing. I am in no way affiliated with BodyBugg, so I have no reason to endorse it other than the fact that it is just awesome! I think the cheapest place to buy one right now is the 24 hours fitness website (www.24hourfitness.com). I would check Ebay too.

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