Wow I can't believe the BodyMedia FITness challenge is officially over! Six weeks sure flew by.


Previous Weeks:

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five

End of Challenge Wrap Up:

Wearing the armband and collecting data about my movements and habits for the last six weeks has been really eye opening and I wanted to share some of the lessons I've learned.

1. It's not all about calories in vs. calories out all the time. There were weeks when I'd definitely hit the calories deficit I was supposed to be hitting, but the scale didn't reflect a weight loss. There were other weeks when my eating was far from perfect and the scale would drop. Maybe that's just a wonky scale, but I think a lot of it has to do with other things going on with my body -- retaining water or being dehydrated from a long workout or not eating enough post-workout and then making my metabolism come to a crashing halt.

2. Quality of sleep is almost more important than number of hours of sleep. There were a few nights where I'd get 10 hours of sleep, but I'd toss and turn all night long and wake up feeling exhausted. Other nights, I'd get six hours of solid sleep and feel like a million bucks.

3. Tracking my food definitely made me more conscious of what I was putting in my mouth, but it also made me feel guilty sometimes when I wanted to indulge. I think it's totally OK, and actually healthy, to indulge my sweet tooth every once in a while, but I always felt super guilty writing down sweets.

Did wearing the armband change my behavior?

Absolutely.

It gave me an extra kick in the butt some days when I just didn't feel like working out and might have otherwise skipped a workout. It also definitely impacted what I was eating, as I mentioned above.

So how did I do on those goals I set?

So-so.

Get 7 hours of sleep each night: I wasn't too far off on this one. Some weeks were definitely better than others, but I usually averaged just less than 7 hours each night.

Track my food: I was pretty diligent about this. I really wanted to get the most out of wearing the armband and I knew an important part of that was tracking my food intake.

Lose 5 lbs: I came close but didn't quite get there. I'm down 4 lbs since the beginning of the challenge, but more importantly I feel stronger than ever when it comes to my workouts. Runs are feeling easier and I'm feeling longer and leaner in the pool.

Overall, I'd say this challenge was a big success, and I'm really happy I participated. I learned a ton about my eating, exercise and sleep habits over the course of six weeks, and it's all information I can use as I continue to train for my triathlons.

About the BodyMedia Fit Band:
BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes:
1. An Armband that automatically captures data
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)

Standard Legal Disclaimer:
Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.

Guys I'm going through a computer crisis here. Yesterday my Mac crashed. Like completely and totally died while I was in the middle of doing work.


Turns out the logic board crapped out.

I never realized how unproductive I am without a computer. Apple told me they could fix my baby, but they'd have to send her out and I wouldn't get her back for at least a week.

Cue major, major panic attack on my part!

I could write a whole laundry list of things I can't do without my computer, but one of them is download the stats from the BodyMedia Fit armband.


Majorly upsetting.

Luckily I had almost an entire week's stats before my computer crashed. So just a note all the stats in this post go from last Tuesday until Sunday.

Previous Weeks:

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

This Week:


What I learned this week:

Bar crawls burn a ton of calories: Especially if you aren't drinking while crawling. I spent Saturday on a bar crawl with friends and we walked all over the city. I took more than 22,000 steps on Saturday just from walking from bar to bar. Some of those steps could have also been from dancing for two hours at the last bar of the night. And I didn't drink back a single one of those calories. Yes, I was a sober Sally on the bar crawl, but it doesn't matter I still had a blast anyway.

Some weeks are naturally more active than others: It seemed like this week I was on the go all the time and I walked around a lot more than normal. I never really considered how many calories I burn running from the grocery store to the library to the Post Office and all the other little things I had to take care of this week.

How I'm doing on my goals so far:

Seven hours of sleep each night: I'm doing so, so here, but still falling short all the time. There were several nights where I just couldn't sleep well this week, and re-introducing 4:30 a.m. workouts certainly isn't helping on the sleep front.

Track my food: I've been doing better after falling off the wagon last week though it's definitely still challenging to guess the amount of calories in certain foods when I go out to eat.

Lose five pounds: I either have the most fickle scale in the world or I'm randomly retaining a bunch of water this week. All week long the scale said I'd lost 1.4 pounds this week. Then yesterday it randomly said I gained a pound back even though my eating and workouts have been pretty spot on this week. It's certainly not the end of the world, it's just kind of annoying. Anyway down .4 pounds this week, bringing the grand total to down three pounds during the course of the challenge.

If you're interested in learning more about the BodyMedia FITness challenge, check out the details on EmpowHER.

About the BodyMedia Fit Band:
BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes:
1. An Armband that automatically captures data
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)

Standard Legal Disclaimer:
Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.

Four weeks down, two to go! I can hardly believe we're in the second half of the BodyMedia FITness challenge already!


Previous Weeks:

Week One
Week Two
Week Three

This Week:

One of the questions I've been getting from a lot of people about the BodyMedia FITness challenge is whether or not wearing the armband is causing me to change my normal habits or behavior.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that I am a million times more conscious of what I'm eating.


Writing down everything I eat is not something I normally do, and usually it drives me nuts. For this challenge, writing things down hasn't been that much of a problem, but it does make me pay attention to what I'm eating, and I definitely think twice before eating snacks and sweets. I'm sure my chocolate intake is drastically lower than it normally is.

I'm also making an extra effort to work in more fruits, vegetables and protein. I wouldn't be paying close attention to any of that if it weren't for this challenge, having to record everything I eat and seeing the break down of my nutrition intake in the daily and weekly charts.


In the workout aspect, I don't think the challenge has caused me to drastically change any of my behavior. I've always been a pretty active person and I would be sticking to my training plan for my upcoming 10 miler and triathlons whether or not I was using the BodyMedia Fit armband.


Sure, there have been a couple times where I've walked the 11 flights of stairs to my office at work just to sneak in a little more activity during my more sedentary days, but other than that, my activity level has stayed about the same. Side note: Walking 11 flights of steps is no joke.

This Week's Stats:


I should point out first off that these stats aren't perfectly accurate because I didn't record my food all weekend. (Update: Victoria just reminded me in the comments that I forgot to record Friday's dinner too. So the first three rows of that chart and pretty inaccurate.)

On Saturday I was busy and ate every single meal out of the house. Sunday was much of the same. I had no idea how many calories were in half of the things I ate, so I didn't even bother guesstimating.

Although, I'm thinking that plate of nachos I ate while watching the Terps basketball game probably had more calories in it than I eat in a typical day.

After falling off the food-recording wagon over the weekend, I plan to get back on track today.

How I'm Doing on My Goals So Far:

Seven-eight hours of sleep each night: Fail! I didn't pretty well during the work week, but this weekend I was out late with friends and up early to run, which really threw off my sleep numbers.


Track my food: I was doing awesome with this until the weekend, then things got a little crazy.


Lose five pounds: Doing OK here. Despite my crappy weekend nutrition, I still managed to lose 1.4 pounds this week, bringing me to a total of 2.6 pounds lost for the challenge.

If you're interested in learning more about the BodyMedia FITness challenge, check out the details on EmpowHER.

About the BodyMedia Fit Band:
BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes:
1. An Armband that automatically captures data
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)

Standard Legal Disclaimer:
Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.

Three weeks down and my poor little BodyMedia Fit armband is starting to look a little worn.


Can you tell I wear this thing pretty much nonstop (except for when I'm in the shower; the device can't get wet)?

Previous Weeks:

Week One
Week Two

This Week:

Week Three has been an interesting one because it's the first full week I've been in training for my triathlon.

The increased workouts have been majorly increasing my appetite, and the BodyMedia Fit armband has been really helpful in figuring out how many extra calories I should be eating each day to replenish what I burn.

Typically when training starts and my appetite increases, I overestimate how much I've burned and I eat too much in an attempt to keep my hunger in check. Since the armband tells me exactly how many calories I burn throughout the day, I can make more informed choices about my extra snacks.

Here's hoping this is the first training cycle where I don't pack on a couple of extra training pounds.

Now onto the stats!


What I learned this week:

Indulgent meals are OK:
Friday night I enjoyed dinner at Season's 52, one of my favorite restaurants, and I decided to not stress about what I was eating. I wanted to enjoy the food and the wine and especially the dessert. I still recorded everything I ate, but I didn't have a panic attack when the online dashboard showed I had a calorie surplus for the day. I had a long run scheduled for the next day and knew everything would balance out by the end of the weekend.

Cleaning the house burns a lot of calories:
I spent a large portion of my day off yesterday cleaning the house. I vacuumed, dusted, swept floors, and did many, many loads of laundry. I would say in total I cleaned for about three hours. When I plugged my armband into my computer afterward I was stunned to see how many calories I had burned just doing basic house cleaning.

I'm sort of confused by the food charts:

Looking at just the number of grams, I ate about the same amount of fat and protein, but if you look at the pie chart or the bar chart, that's not the picture they paint. Maybe this is a dumb question, but shouldn't the protein and fat sections be the same size? When I did the math I got very different numbers: 54+155+53=262 total grams of macronutrients. 155/262=59. So 59% carbs, and 20% fat and protein. Right about where I want to be, but not what the charts show. Did I do something really wrong with my math?

How I'm Doing on My Goals So Far:

Average seven to eight hours of sleep each night: Better than last week. This week my average is right around seven!

Track my food: I'm still doing well here, but sometimes I find it hard to guesstimate my portion sizes. In those cases I tend to overestimate so I'm not undercounting my calories.

Lose five pounds: So far so good. I'm down .2 pounds this week, which brings me to 1.2 total for the challenge.

If you're interested in learning more about the BodyMedia FITness challenge, check out the details on EmpowHER.

About the BodyMedia Fit Band:
BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes:
1. An Armband that automatically captures data
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)

Standard Legal Disclaimer:
Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.

I can't believe the second week of BodyMedia FITness challenge is already over! I'm loving wearing the BodyMedia Fit armband and checking out/mildly obsessing over all the stats it captures.

I probably plug the armband in to my computer way more often than I should to see how many calories I've burned doing really mundane things like typing at my computer or driving my car.

Here's a peek at my stats from this week:


What I Learned This Week:

Even with my regular workouts, I'm not really burning that many calories:
A lot of this is probably because I sit on my butt at a desk for a large portion of the day. Sure I get up to fill my water bottle and go to the bathroom and stuff, but other than that I don't get a lot of movement during the day. I'm lucky that I at least have a short walking commute each day so I get to sneak in a little bit of extra movement. I need to find some creative ways to sneak in a little bit more movement to burn some more calories outside of my regular workouts.

Tracking my food makes me really, really conscious of what I eat:
I'm a snacker by nature. When I'm in the kitchen packing my lunch or making dinner, I'm always munching on some of the ingredients, but ever since I started writing down everything I'm eating I've stopped doing that. It's too hard to figure out how much of a food I've eaten while I munch so I can get it recorded properly. For the most part though, writing everything down is forcing me to make pretty solid food choices.

I eat a pathetically small amount of protein:
I mean check out the breakdown in the charts here.


Only 17 percent of my daily calories on average come from protein. That's definitely something I need to work on.

Alcohol has a lot of calories:
Ok, I know that's sort of a giant "duh", but I just never paid attention because I never had to write it down. I don't drink very often, maybe a drink or two when I'm out with friends at happy hour, but man, having to record the few drinks I had over the weekend killed me. I tend to drown the taste of alcohol in deliciously fruity concoctions (like Malibu bay breezes...don't judge) and I thought it was going to be the fruit juice that killed me here, but no, it was definitely the rum.

How I'm Doing on My Goals So Far:

Last week I set three goals for the remainder of the challenge. Here's a look at how I'm doing.

Average 8 hours of sleep each night: Epic fail. I only averaged 6:24 of sleep this week. I'm going to dial this goal back and make it my goal to get 7 hours of sleep each night.

Track my food: I'm doing awesome on this front!

Lose five pounds: So far so good. I'm down a pound.

If you're curious to learn more about the BodyMedia FITness challenge, you can check out the details on EmpowHER.

About the BodyMedia Fit Band:
BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes: 
1. An Armband that automatically captures data 
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day 
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)


Standard Legal Disclaimer:
Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.

Earlier this month, I was chosen as one of six bloggers to take part in the EmpowHER BodyMedia FITness challenge. The challenge will track six bloggers over a six week period as we try to reach our fitness goals.

If you were paying really close attention, you might remember back around the holidays when I included the BodyMedia Fit band in my gift guide.


The BodyMedia Fit band is a really cool tool that captures all sorts of information about your fitness like calories burned, number of steps taken each day and how much deep sleep you're getting each night.

Here's a look, straight from the source, at what the BodyMedia Fit bands can do:

BodyMedia FIT automatically tracks the calories burned during your daily activities — from pumping iron to using an iron — and monitors the quality of your sleep, an important factor in weight loss. Add in the easy-to-use food log and you have the information you need to improve your weight loss. The 3 part system includes:
1. An Armband that automatically captures data
2. An optional Display device or free downloadable mobile apps that give you up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day
3. An online Activity Manager* that analyzes raw data, allows you to log food and presents info in an easy-to-understand way (*subscription required)

As a fitness metrics nerd, I'm really excited to take part in this challenge and get a better idea of how much I actually move and burn throughout the day. This challenge is six weeks long and I'll be updating you on my progress once each week.

I've been wearing the armband for just about a week now doing my normal activities, and I have some baseline metrics to work with.


On an average day:

• I get about 7 hours and ten minutes of sleep
• I burn about 1879 calories
• I take 5590 steps

Based on what I've learned this week, I've decided to set some mini-goals for the remainder of this challenge.

Track what I eat each day: Yes I'm absolutely terrible about tracking food and I despise doing it, but for the sake of this challenge, I think it will be really enlightening. Plus the BodyMedia Fit system actually makes it pretty easy to do, so we'll see if I stick with it.

Stay on top of my sleep: Averaging around 7 hours and ten minutes of sleep each night is great, but I'd love to be able to bump that to a solid 8 hours each night during the work week. During the weekend, all bets are off.

Drop five pounds: Yep, I put on a little bit of weight during the off-season, and by the end of this six week challenge, I'd like to be back to my normal racing/training weight. With training starting up again and tracking what I'm eating, I'm hoping this won't be too much of a problem.

I'm really excited about this challenge and I think it will be a ton of fun. I can't wait to see the kinds of numbers my armband gives me once training is happening in full force.

If you're curious you can check out the other bloggers participating in the challenge and read about their experiences. If you want to get involved and take the challenge with us you can find out more from BodyMedia.

And per the FTC regulations, here's the standard legal language about how I got my armband for free:

Disclosure: Device and accompanying online Activity Manager subscription was provided by BodyMedia via EmpowHER. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of BodyMedia or EmpowHER.