Anybody heard of BodyBugs?

So I found a brochure at my gym for these things called body bugs. They're like little machines that just strap onto your upper arm and they calculate how many calories you burn in a day. Has anyone heard of them? Or does anyone have one? I'm just curious about them because theys sound really cool! Anyone have any info?

Never heard of it but I did try to get some info about it.

Here ya go:

http://www.24hourfitness.com/training/bodybug g/

http://www.squidoo.com/bodycms

I have one, I have been using it since the end of May and I love it. You still have to log your food, what it does is take the guesswork out of how much you burned on a given day. I have a burn goal of 3100 calories/day, so I use my bodybugg to tell me how I am doing. If I am not on track to burn that much, then I take a walk or go to the gym. Mostly what it is good for is motivation to move more.

It has limitations like anything else. You can't wear it swimming, and no device is 100% perfect in its calculations for everyone.

The major drawback is the cost (they periodically go on sale for $199 nowadays) and the fact that they require a web program subscription to use and that program is not free. They give you 3 months when you first buy it, then it is $15/month or $100/year for the subscription. The food logging part has some advantages over CC in that it is easier to enter common foods, but the database is much, much smaller. I often go to CC to get the info and log it over there (so I can see my deficit number on the screen, which is very motivating).

I will say that I also have a HRM and the bodybugg does not measure heart rate so I use both. The measured calorie expenditure during exercise, for me at least, is similar with either device. The reason the body bugg is better than using a HRM for workouts is that you wear it all day so your everyday activity  counts, and also that you can download your expenditure and see how much you burned throughout the day and during certain periods, and also see how many steps you took and how much time you were active.

 The numbers seem to work for me as I lose 2 lbs/week when I average 1000 cal deficit/day. It is a fantastic motivational tool and I highly recommend it!

Hey thanks for the info! Denize07, I'm curious, when you use the bodybug while working out on cardio machines or running  does the calorie count come out similar to what CC says? Or is it way more, way less? Just curious! But thanks both of you for the websites and info. I'm going to look into it!

For me, both the HRM and the bodybugg show a lot fewer calories burned than CC lists for me. For example, today I went on a 3.5 hour hike. The bodybugg for that 3 hours said 1852 calories. CC gives me 2528. When I go on regular walks, "walking" on CC is pretty close to the bodybugg when no hills are involved. I think the problem is that "hiking" as an activity is so generic and I probably walk slower than average and CC has no way of knowing that but the bodybugg does.

But even for things that should be more generic, there is a difference. For example, when I am on the elliptical for an hour, I usually keep my heart rate around 70% of max and if I call that "moderate" effort, CC says 1208 and my bodybugg reaading is closer to 650. Even if I say "light" effort, CC still says 963. The elliptical machine says I burned more in line with what CC says, but I believe the bodybugg.

I also burn about 300 less on a sedentary day than CC says I do. Now that I know these things about myself (that my body is the very definition of energy conservation) I could probably estimate and scale all the projected burn numbers down and do without the bugg, but I really like seeing my "exact" (or what I accept to be exact) calorie burn on the screen. It is addictive! And that is the best thing about it, that it motivates me to keep those numbers where I need them to be.

Question:  Could I wear my heart rate monitor all day from when I wake up until I got to sleep at night on what for me is an average day to see what my daily burn is?  Would this be accurate?  I wonder how it would compare to what Cc tells me for the whole day....

todeinotaton - No, it says right in the owner's manual that it is not made for calculating calories with lower HRs.  I wore mine once all day (because I was curious to see how my hr changed over the day) and it gave me some crazy burn number like 6000+.

alle:  Wait.  So does this mean I don't have to worry about subtracting the sedentary calories I would have burned during the same amount of time as my workouts?  For example I  have been subtracting 100 calories or so from the number my hrm tells me after a 1.5 hour long strength training routine.  So if the hrm says 400 I usually log 300 to be safe.  Is that as stupid as I think it is?

I don't think you have to do that because CC does it for you when you enter it in.  Watch your total burn number next time you enter it.  Mine sedentary daily burn is 1900 and if I enter 300 calories burn for a run, it doesn't equal 2200 (closer to 2100 but I don't remember what exactly!)