First Impressions

OK, so this is a little late as I started using the Bugg last week. Still, I can talk a bit about my first impressions when getting the Bugg up and running and I can post about how my first week went later. So read on . . . .

The box the Body Bugg comes in is smaller than I expected - which also means the unit itself is smaller than I expected. I was pleasantly surprised to find it isn't as bulky on my arm as I thought it would be. (In fact, if I'm wearing long sleeves and the sleeves aren't tight, most people don't even notice I have it on my arm.) They have a quick start card that you can use to get things up and running quickly or you can read through the whole manual. But come on, who's really going to read through the manual when you've got this great gadget you can't wait to use? So I use the quick start card and set up my account online. The website prompts you to download some software so that the website and your computer are compatible. I didn't run into any hiccups with this process.

After getting the website stuff up and running, the program asks you to take a Food Questionnaire. Basically the questionnaire is trying to get at how much you like meat or vegetables or sweets. This information is used to create a meal plan you can use to help you lose weight. However, the meal plan is entirely optional. After the Food Questionnaire, the program asks you questions like what time do you go to bed and get up (so it can determine when you're sleeping), obviously it wants to know your height and weight, etc.

Once you complete the questionnaires, the program launches into some tutorials that I found to be both very helpful and very professional. Sometimes internet tutorials can be cheesy or give you information you already know - the Duh! tutorials. These were not like that. The program asks you the main reason why you are using the Body Bugg right now. Some of the response options are Weight Loss, Weight Gain, Performance Enhancement, Weight Loss/Performance Enhancement, etc. You can view all of the tutorials for each of these options to decide which goal is right for you. I workout 5 or 6 days a week and have a personal trainer. In addition to losing weight, I really want to increase my athletic ability so I chose Weight Loss/Performance Enhancement. The tutorial for this goal talked about how I not only need to work on monitoring my calories to lose weight but that I also need to be putting the right nutrition into my body to get optimal athletic results. Some of the information presented I already knew but the tutorial was a good refresher and clarified some things for me. Based on my goal, the program helped me set a ratio of fats, carbs, and proteins to try and shoot for with my food choices to help me lose weight and improve my athletic conditioning.

The last thing you do is play with the numbers - the program asks you how much weight you want to lose and how fast you want to lose it. Now, one could potentially get into trouble here by saying they want to pull in obscene weight loss numbers like a Biggest Loser contestant but the program won't let you pick a loss rate that is unsafe. I didn't push the limits to see how high the program would let me go but I'm sure other people have. I told the program I wanted to lose 50 pounds and I wanted to do it at a rate of 1.5 pounds per week. The program told me that at that rate, I would reach my goal of 50 pounds in August. So how does the program get me to my goal weight? Through the magic of the Calorie Deficit.

The program computed that based on my current height, weight, age, gender, and activity level, I should be burning roughly 2700 calories a day. In order to lose 1.5 pounds per week, you need to burn 750 more calories than you consume. This means if I'm burning 2700 a day, I can only eat 1950 calories to achieve a 750 deficit. Now this number can change based on how quickly (or slowly) you want to lose the weight. If you only wanted to lose 1 pound a week, you would need a deficit of only 500 calories a day, and so on. What's nice about knowing this number is that you can make adjustments throughout the day based on how your numbers are looking. For example, if I can't make it to the gym one day and it looks like my calorie burn is only going to reach about 2300, I can adjust the number of calories I consume (from 1950 to 1550) to compensate and maintain my calorie deficit. Conversely, if I had a number of pastries for breakfast and I know I'm going to go over my calorie budget for the day, I can try to be more active during the day to push my calorie burn higher to compensate for the poor food choices.

It's so easy to get obsessed with the different numbers and all the ways they can play out. Anyway, the main point is that the program sets up the number of calories I should be burning, the number of calories I should be consuming, and difference between them that I should be aiming for. That's one of the things I like about this program. You don't have to stick with certain food groups and stay away from others. It's all about the calories in vs. the calories out. After all this information is set up, I'm sent to the main screen (called My Results) and I'm off and running.

Overall opinion on setup: very easy and all the information was user-friendly. It took about 20-30 minutes including the viewing of some of the tutorials and it didn't seem like a process you could stop halfway through and pick up again later so make sure you give yourself enough time to get it all up and running.

Next post, I'll do what I've been avoiding: I'll give you all my nasty little body statistics so you can see my starting point. (Not that it matters cause I don't think anyone's really reading this yet anyway.) I'll also share some screenshots of the program and talk about my results from the first week and my first session with the Body Bugg coach. Until then . . . .

Missy

Problems With 24-Hour Fitness Order

I don't think I'll be ordering from 24-Hour Fitness online again. My Bodybugg and digital display were supposed to arrive on Monday. I get home from work and happily see the box waiting for me, but when I pick it up it seems awfully light and small to have my items inside. I open the box only to find the digital display inside and no arm unit. Of all the things to forget to pack, why couldn't it be the display? The arm unit can be used without the digital display but the digital display is just a glorified watch without the arm unit. The packing slip confirmed both pieces were ordered but that only the digital display was packed. I know that most stores won't bill your credit card until they send you the entire order so I checked my bank account and the entire amount had been debited from my account. So I start looking on the 24-Hour Fitness online for a customer service phone # and can't find anything. I try to e-mail them and the e-mail bounces back to me as undeliverable! All I can do is fill out the Contact Us form which talks about things like website feedback - definitely didn't look like the place you inquire about order problems. However, I filled out the form and waited to hear back from then. I get zip; no e-mail, no phone call, not even a notice that the unit is on backorder. I even call the number for 24-Hour Fitness member services and ask them if they have a number for the online store. I was referred back to the Contact Us form. I was trying to figure out what to do and even considered filing a fraud report with my bank to get my money back. In the meantime, I find out that I can get the unit in a 24-Hour Fitness club for the same price and I don't have to be a member. I really needed the unit that week so that I could get things set up because my schedule was going to start getting very crazy. Since I didn't know what was going on with my online order, I decided to buy the arm unit at my local 24-Hour Fitness club. I got the unit set up and the program going (my thoughts on this in another post) and was getting ready to call my bank when I find a box at my front door. Low and behold I've finally gotten my arm unit - 9 days after I ordered it and paid for 2-day shipping. I never received an e-mail or phone call from them about what was going on. I haven't received a refund for shipping either. So now I have 2 arm units and am not sure what to do with the one they sent me. I'm worried if I send it back, I may never get my refund seeing that I can't seem to get a hold of anyone. I'm hoping a friend will buy it from me. Although my purchase from the club was fine, I'll be staying away from the 24-Hour Fitness website until they improve their customer service.

A Moment of Silence

My beloved Seahawks just lost their playoff game to Green Bay in a game that should have been much closer than it was. But how do you win when your stellar defense didn't even bother showing up for the game and your quarterback is too angry about non-calls to focus. Sigh. At least they made it to the playoffs this year. Hopefully Holmgren will stay another year but after Hargrove's departure under the guise of "I no longer have passion for the game" in the middle of the Mariners' season, I don't have a lot of faith that Holmgren will stay around. It's just something about the Seattle karma. The weirdest things seem to happen to our sports teams.

OK, enough of my pity party. As I bask in the exquisite pain of disappointment, I figure it's better to post here then go make cookie dough to drown my sorrows. So I ordered my Body Bugg on Wednesday and the company ships it from California, so I figured because I ordered it at around noon Pacific, it would ship that day. With that in mind, I paid extra for 2-day shipping with the hopes that it would arrive on Friday so I'd have the weekend to set things up. Well, they didn't ship it until Friday and because shipping from CA to AZ is only 3 days, I paid extra money and it's only going to get here 1 day earlier which doesn't matter now that it's coming next week. I hate it when I end up wasting money - such a pet peeve of mine. So I won't be getting "Bugged" until Monday. More sighs.

So I Decided To Buy A Body Bugg . . . . . .

. . . . . and no it wasn't a New Year's resolution. Not really anyway. I first heard about the Body Bugg on my local news broadcast and found the product fascinating. I did some research and decided by mid-Fall that I wanted one. However, I wouldn't have the money to buy the Body Bugg until January. So I waited and continued to do my research. I was surprised to find that there weren't very many reviews or stories from anyone who'd actually used the Body Bugg longer than a week or two for a generic tech review. Granted, the Body Bugg is certainly not mainstream, I still thought I'd find something. After coming across someone's blog about fitness with a few brief posts about the Body Bugg (I would like to link to her blog once she gives me permission), I figured maybe I should start a blog about my experiences with my Body Bugg. I can share my ups and downs in trying to lose weight and become more fit and talk about how the Body Bugg fits into this. And I can share it objectively so that you, the reader, isn't forced to read the promotional "videos" or other sanitized experiences about the Body Bugg. This will be the real deal with hints on how to use the Body Bugg, problems I run into, and hopefully a tracking of my progress through screenshots of the online Body Bugg program.

So here it is: my Body Bugg Blog

I planned to post more than this before buying the actual Body Bugg unit but the opportunity to purchase it has arrived and I placed my order today. After careful debate, I decided to purchase both the Body Bugg arm unit and the digital display. A lot of people who purchased the digital display found the features on the display to be very helpful and motivating and I can use all the help I can get. But that wasn't the main reason I also bought the display. Right now at the 24-Hour Fitness online store, they've discounted the Body Bugg unit $70.00 and the display unit $30.00 for a total of $100 off of both. I paid basically $350 for both the arm unit and the display. If I were to purchase both at the Body Bugg website, I would've paid $480 so I definitely scored. I'm hoping it gets here by Friday or Saturday so that I have the weekend to get things set up. Starting next week my schedule gets crazy and it will be more difficult to get things going. But that's for another post.

Speaking of other posts, I'm hoping to post a few more entries before I get things going with the Body Bugg. I think to follow me on this journey, it would help if you knew my weight/fitness/dieting history (this kind of perspective is always good). I also want to talk some about my daily schedule and the stresses I'm facing because I think how I negotiate these is going to have an effect on my success. And last but not least, like all journeys, we need a starting point. Thus, I need to post all of my unpleasant particulars (height, weight, measurements, etc). Boy that'll be a fun post. Hopefully if some people start reading this, it will help me keep on track. No pressure for all you out there but you better not fail me! Seriously though, it is my sincere hope that people will read this and share their dieting/fitness successes and failures so that we can all learn.

OK, I'm here and ready to go. Now I just need some company. Please post if you read this and like what you see (or should I say read?). In the meantime, I've posted some links to the 24-Hour Fitness online store and the Body Bugg website should anyone else be inspired to check it out.

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