My BodyBugg review

Well I've had my BodyBugg for a week now and I can tell you, its a fantastic bit of kit, I had feared that it would have been tied to the account Lilliana had setup to order it for, they don't currently ship them to anywhere except the US or Canada, so I thought I might have had to use her account to access the webapp they have for tracking calorie intake and expended but once it arrived, my fears were dismissed, as I was able to tie it by the serial number to my own apex account, so that was one less headache for renewing the subscription.

Once I had tied it to my account I needed to install some software so I could upload any readings to apex, which was easy enough but when I came to charging and initialising the body bugg, this is where the problems started, I normally use safari as my web browser simply because, there is some weird issue where this computer has a problem with its memory, so chrome once I installed it, simply refused to load or even install but safari seems to be a buggy bit of software and no matter how many times I tried I couldn't get passed the starting page to set up the bugg, I thought to myself, I'll give firefox a try and it worked first time, so that was another hurdle passed, I already had the software on my phone as being able to use the software on my phone in the UK was the prime reason for choosing the apex option.

I managed to pair the bugg with my phone through the bluetooth, then no matter what I did, I couldn't get the software to link to the bugg, I followed guide after guide all telling me the same thing, unpair the bugg from the phone, then uninstall the software, re-pair the bugg and phone, reinstall the software then load the app but don't log in, press the bugg's status button then login, so on and so forth, I kept trying, nothing worked until I thought, what if I press the status button on the bugg, then start the app and like a bolt of lightening, it picked up the bugg and the various stats, showed up in wonderful green.

It was interesting to watch my calories burned and steps increase, almost in real time, I had to look through each of the information screens to see what each part of the software did, then I discovered a problem, it seems that, the bugg will only update the web server data, whenever you have it plugged into a computer, so of course, when the app refreshed the data, as apps have a tendency to do, it seemed to overwrite the info I was receiving in real time and no matter how many times I quit the app and did the trick that worked first time, it would only show as linked but not the battery life of the bugg, which tells me they are properly connected.

When I updated the webserver with the data from the bugg, the app seemed to work again, so it seems there is a massive bug within the software, which means the app occasionally becomes less than useless, especially as one of the functions is recording the calorie burn of a fitness session and without a proper connection you can't get any info recorded.

The only other bugbear I have is that the foods database, seems to be hard coded and that any foods you enter as custom foods, only get shown to you, unlike MyfitnessPal, where they become part of the community, which makes finding and recording food intake much easier, still once I've entered the foods I regularly eat, they will be available to me, so its not too bad, just a minor niggle.

The other thing I had trouble getting my head around was the fact that, it counts every calorie burned, including the ones your body naturally burns during the day even at rest, so I need to work out using the handy 24 hour bar graph, how many calories my resting burn is, minus the calories that it reports me as having burned per minute, as I don't want to have anything but my exercise burned calories entered into MyfitnessPal, based on the calories that MyFitnessPal reports as burned for each minute of exercise, I seem to be getting it right.


So as of the end of Tuesday, I had eaten 2,381 calories but burned 3,361, which gave me a calorie deficit of 980, which was just outside my 1,000 daily calorie deficit, which I'm totally blaming on the iceland takeaway dishes I had for my supper.


The system is available in the UK through http://www.kiperformance.co.uk/ but you don't get the option of the bluetooth SP version and the web subscription is ridiculously expensive, I paid £65 or $100 for my SP bugg, the ki performance price is £221 or $347.018, which I think is an eye gouging increase, for something that doesn't have the smartphone app option.

My verdict of the system is that it is brilliant, it will tell you very accurately what you burned for almost any given minute of the day, like when I had to run across to work and it had me burning 9.8 calories a minute at one point.

What is that smell, oh wait its me burning out.

Recently I overdid my exercising, I started writing this blog post, after I'd rode to Gateshead for my Monday weigh in, which resulted in me losing another lb and putting me at 13st 13lbs(195lbs), which happily put me under the 14st level, which is something I've not weighed in I've no idea how long, I took this as a chance to ride back home the long way. I should have been doing my usual Zumba class but I just felt wrong, really tired and not right in myself. So I thought to myself, I'll go for a swim, which I knew would be easier than dancing around for an hour, so I saw a mile and walked up home.

I still felt really tired and had a look at my exercise for the previous days and that's when I noticed what I'd done, I'd eaten too few calories for the amount of exercise I'd done. For the four days in question I had exercised an approximate 8,061 calories, which is quite an impressive amount, with MyFitnessPal giving me a total calorie intake of 14,901/6,840 calories, which would have meant I'd eaten 1,710 calories, my actual intake turned out to be 11,545/3484 calories, which means my average intake was 871, which is nearly 1,000 calories fewer per day than I should have had.

I did most of my exercise over the weekend, managing to swim four miles, walk three, do two fitness classes and ride to the Metrocentre to buy a part for my bike, I felt fine on the Sunday night, it was when I woke up on the Monday, that I felt more tired than I normally do in the morning but not enough to stop me riding for my weigh in.

I think I need to be more careful in the future, as I'll find that my weight will either plateau, or worse start going back up, as my body decides that I'm starving myself, which for all intents an purposes I seem to actually be doing just this. I suppose I could have myself a bit more food, to compensate for this huge deficit but that yells counter intuitive at me, I might calm down with the swimming and concentrate on matching intake for output so that I don't end up with this happening quite so severely in future.

I'm really didn't enjoying feeling as tired and ill as I was, especially as I started to drifting off to sleep mid afternoon. I planned and ate a decent meal for my dinner and had a nice piece of cream sponge cake, in the hope that my body would reward me with not feeling ill. The knock on effect of the weekend has left me still feeling tired and the realisation that its very easy to accidentally harm yourself without meaning to.

So, no more exercising that much without eating back into the burned calories.

Sometimes, you just need a little more.

I've had a few ups and downs in my journey towards a fitter healthier me, the weeks when no weight seemed to come off, the weeks when half a stone fell off, I can now get through a fitness class, without almost dying, boxercise and kettlebell are still hard but I'm recovering a lot quicker than I did four months ago. 

I helped with a beach survey for the Marine Conservation Society last Friday, spending an hour picking up and noting down the types of litter that was on a 100 metre patch of Marsden beach, a lovely little place I've not been to in a few years. They asked us to trawl the beach for an hour and afterwards we were provided with some snacks, drinks and a money off voucher from Marks & Spencer as a little thank you, for our hard work. I helped myself to a few extra snacks when everyone had helped themselves as they would only go to waste if they weren't eaten.

As I had some time before I was expected home, I decided to go for a bit of a longer ride than usual, heading through the Tyne tunnel and then along towards Newcastle before heading up to and across Scotswood bridge and back down past the Metrocentre before riding alongside the Tyne and up to home. After I plotted my route, it seems I'd done 34.68 miles, which I was quite surprised at and because I was in a restless mood, I thought, I think I'll go for a swim, so I did, managing a mile in the time that was left before the pool closed. Though it seems that I hurt my shoulder a little, as I'd had an accident and came off my bike on a small wooden stathes beside the Metrocentre, as it was soaking wet and very slick.

I managed to get through 6 packets of Chocolate, Pecan  Popcorn and a few other things, clocking up 950 calories in snacks, which was a bit annoying, since these were 'healthier snacks' but since my exercise weighed in at 2672 calories I think it'll be alright.

On Saturday I did my usual boxercise class then straight afterwards I did a spinning class, which was unbelievably hard, mainly I think because I'd done all the cycling on Friday but also because its so hard, especially where you float just over the seat and your quads start to scream at you, I wanted to go swimming but it seems I'd forgotten my trucks, oh well.

I had hoped to to some exercise on the Sunday but after downloading Trials Evolution, Lee and I just spent the day playing on that and creating a new track. I managed to eat a lot of food though, for some reason I was not that hungry but felt like I needed it, so my calorie intake was 1,500 calories over my daily allowance, which I was a little sad about but I guess my body was in need of the energy, with all the exercise I'd been doing.

Still I weighed in at 14st 0lbs (196lbs) on Monday so it seems I'm still managing to lose the weight. and I shouldn't worry, since my body obviously knows what it needs, although not so many packets of chocolate popcorn next time.