I’ve been playing with several online diet and fitness trackers since D-Day (Jan. 1, start of the Smackdown), but have narrowed the field to two: Sparkpeople and Bodybugg.
I abandoned Perfect Diet Tracker, a $35 software package that has a simple interface, because it just doesn’t cut it in a Web-centric world: It restricted how many machines I could use the software on and wouldn’t let me log in remotely from a third-party computer. If that sounds nerdy, it is, but keep in mind that a diet log needs to be accessible or you’ll fall behind. I tend to update mine a couple of times a day, although I am now able to remember what I’ve eaten to within about 100 calories over 24 hours—World’s Most Boring Party Trick.
I’ll describe Sparkpeople more in-depth in a future blog, but the gist is that you manually enter diet and exercise notes and it tracks your progress with charts and little encouragements.
Here’s the lowdown on Bodybugg.
• The armband monitors body heat, motion, and sweat to calculate energy burned.
• You input your diet on the website from any PC (it isn’t Mac-compatible) using a fairly simple interface.
• It tracks your progress by estimating calories burned, calories consumed, and calorie balance.
How it works: First you must sign up for the service, which costs $399 and up and includes an armband monitor, a three-month pass to the website, and two phone sessions with a “Bodybugg coach.” Then you need to download Bodybugg software into your computer (a portability issue, though not too serious since the armband will store data for at least a week without battery replacement). When you are ready for the results, you connect the armband to your PC and it reports your calories burned per minute. I found the system a bit balky; it crashed and froze on two PCs.
Is this fancy monitoring worth the money? There’s that $399, and after the first 90 days it costs $15 a month just to log in.
Sparkpeople is free. No contest, right?
Not so fast. After three weeks spent tediously inputting my diet on two sites, I noticed something interesting: Bodybugg and Sparkpeople agree on diet data, but they don’t agree about how many calories I burn when I exercise.
A few days ago I did 60 minutes of respectable cardio at my gym—half on the treadmill, half on a stationary bike. Heart rate at about 145.
Here are the calories burned estimates from Bodybugg, Sparkpeople, and a few other online calculators.
Bodybugg: 409
Sparkpeople: 816
Cleveland Clinic: 739
Changing Shape: 739
CalorieLab: 742
FitWatch: 806
The other online calculators and the machines at the gym more or less agree, but Bodybugg begs to differ.
Now, I’d like to believe the higher numbers. But as the New York Times reported in December, calorie-burn calculators, based on averages, often exaggerate a lot.
And if the armband is more accurate, the margin of difference—1,200 calories over a week, if I exercise three times—will sure add up over time, and not in my favor if I believe the higher numbers.
What to do? Right now I believe the Bugg. Eventually I’m going to see if I can get hooked up to some fancy machines at a biometric facility, and do a Bodybugg vs. Facility smackdown.
Competition Numbers:
Start date: 1/1/08
Height: 5′9½"
Start weight: 199 lbs
Latest weigh in: 2/4/08
Latest weight: 192 lbs
Weight lost: 7 lbs
Comments (7)
Can’t wait to see your smackdown – I would consider a BodyBugg just to be able to count exercise calories more accurately.
I’ve found conversely that Bodybugg tells me I’ve burned a lot more than the SparkPeople site. So I also believe the ‘bugg but for different reasons. :)
I’ve actually used sparkpeople.com and lost a lot of wieght. ALthough bodybug works specifically using your body heat, and is pretty cool, I find that it is very expensive for the average person. The fact that sparkpeople is free is what made me use it. It also allows you to speak to other dieters, read interesting articles that will help in the wieghtloss process and motivation, it also allows you to track your food intake for the day. Also, If the you have any questions, you are able to ask any of their trained profesionals. I really recomend sparkpeople.com to anyone who really needs a free way to lose wieght.
I used the Calories Per Hour website to make my calculations all through my 115 lb weight loss and even now as I manage my pregnancy weight gain. I have an OpenOffice/Excell spreadsheet that goes back daily to October of 2004 tracking RMR, calories in, calories out and weekly weight on a portable thumb drive / swiss army knife.
Sometimes the less elegant solutions are cheaper and more accurate that the expensive bells and whistles. I do have to admit using a heart rate monitor for double checking the results I get online, but the heart rate moniter tends to underestimate calories burned in cardio and overestimate calories burned in strength related activities.
Scott,
thank you for posting this info. I was about to buy the Bugg but I’m doing more research and I didn’t realize you have to input all your calories on line…..then the additional monthly cost through me off too. Let me know how your smackdown goes. I am very interested in the results.
Signed,
Desperate in Hawaii
Thanks for the post.
I currently own a bodybugg and find it awesome to plot how many calories/minute that I spent.
I’m currently seeing a personal trainer so I don’t pay a monthly fee.
Being that I love to learn how things work, I plan on hacking the BodyBugg and creating an open-source software that will do the same thing that is available on the website (that seems to be down a lot)–or at least the functionality to download, store, and present the data.
Personally, I think the website is not that great. It looks really nice, but the funcionality is bad–PLUS it is totally not adhering to web standards and made it Windows Internet Exploder compatible only.
Others who want to make it work on other operating systems are totally welcome to contact me and do the porting.
If you know anyone who wants to work on the project, please send them my way as I could definitely use the help!
Thanks!
Oh, I forgot to mention that I got my BodyBugg for $170ish at 24 Hour Fitness.