I figured I'd mix it up a bit with this day of my "week of blogging" with a video. I'll be doing a first impressions (not a review...yet) so in the mean time check out this video on what Focus T25 is if you don't already know.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Beachbody Review: TurboFire
At the end of my "week of blogging" I'll be posting the results of my 5 day "Inferno" schedule (yes it's really called that). So today I figured I'd talk about TurboFire as a whole, I haven't yet talked about any Beachbody workout (or other product for that matter) and that needs to change.
What is TurboFire?
TurboFire is a high paced mostly cardio workout from Chalene johnson. It seems to be an evolution of TurboKick and TurboJam, the idea is to mix kick-boxing, dance moves, and great music for a "fun" workout experience. It claims to be able to burn up to 9x the amount of calories than regular workouts. This is probably mostly due to the HIIT workouts that are carefully weaved into the entire program.
Schedule and time
At first you're looking at a 40 minute time commitment that can balloon into 60 minutes 6 days a week for 8 weeks. There are some sculpting exercises with the included which use resistance bands witch are much more intimidating than they appear at first glance.
What's included?
Your Standard "DVD only" package you'll get the 12 workouts spanning 5 DVDs (in a nice little book). If you have the complete package you'll also have the thigh firming band as well as a resistance band. If you go for the challenge pack you'll also get a free month of Shakeology and 30 days of the team beachbody club. All of these come with a 90 day money back guarantee if purchased from a coach.
Flexibility
The first thing I noticed about this program is it's immense flexibility. Because it focuses on cardio it can be paired with other workouts if you just want to put in the extra burn. The stretching is for the most part a completely separate video which means you can do your cardio, then a strength workout followed my either TurboFire's stretch or another of your choosing. There are also many alternative schedules that allow for total fitness newbies to the super elite. At any time you can fall back to the modified routine to dial back the impact (while keeping intensity). Even better is the optional "Starter Pack" that introduces new users the moves in TurboFire.
Speed and HIIT
The speed of this program seems to be a double edge sword, it is both awesome (because it burns calories like crazy) and confusing as all get out (no seriously, watch Fire 45 and see if you can keep up the first day). Over the course of the workout Chalene will throw new routines at you but typically using the same Kick boxing style moves factoring in jumping to increase difficulty. The "Fire Drills" or HIIT sections of your typical workouts add a huge boost of burn where you are supposed to go all out for 1 minute and then rest for the same. Personally I enjoy fire drills not so much because of the added burn or how HIIT helps your heart but because of that rest! OMG the rest!
Pricing and Availability
Beachbody Workouts are supposed to only be available through your beach body coach (if you don't have one I'm more than willing to volunteer). However it's widely known that you can typically purchase Beachbody products on ebay, Amazon, and the like. I won't bother with ebay prices since those change so frequently and are typically bootleg anyway (which don't include important equipment you need to complete all of the workouts).
Amazon: $144.80
Amazon (Starter Pack): $45.90
BeachBody coach: $159.80
BeachBody coach (DVDs Only): $79.90
Beachbody coach (Starter Pack): $39.95
Wrap up
I didn't mention much about Chalene herself in this review but I'm saving that for another post, she also moonlights as a motivational speaker which allows her to bring her unique talents to this series as well as her other ones. With Chalene's at the helm I can typically get a good 10cal/min burn from most of the fire workouts which is pretty significant for a 30+ min workout. If you have a bodymedia Fit then you are looking at most of the Fire Workouts to be at least 80% Vigorous and significant moderate levels for the sculpting. All in all if you're looking to loose weight you can't go wrong with this workout....if you can keep up. If you are a fitness newbie I suggest checking out the Starter Pack and use that schedule for a while to build stamina and get used to the choreography. Even now, when I'm tired the routines can be very confusing, however I am never disappointed with the calorie burn I get from TurboFire.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Review: MyFitnessPal
I spent a good year avoiding MyFitnessPal but with everyone in my Facebook community suggesting I check it out, so I bent to the pressure. Here is my review of the MyFitnessPal website + App. Grab a snack, this one is going to take a while.
Interface
The website is at best....OK looking. I used to design websites so I have an eye (although no longer the patience) for it. MyFitnessPal can be a bit confusing at times however once you get used to it's retro-Facebook style it can hold a lot of value in recording your fitness journey.
On the Flip side we have the App (I only have Android devices so that's what I'm looking at) which is far more intuitive It should be noted, however, that the app recently went through a major overhaul and I would have originally classified it as the worst fitness app I've ever seen (which is probably the reason I stayed away from it for years). In this version most everything is handled by the "add to Diary" button. Here is where you can add food, exercise, and even put in notes about the aforementioned items. There is also a app for windows phone (shocker), iOS and even Blackberry
Connections and API access
Forgive me for geeking out, but easily my favorite thing about MyFitnessPal is how many sites it is compatible with. I wish all sites were at least half as connected as this one. It doesn't matter if you use Withings, Fitbit, Bodymedia, Everymove, Digfit, iHealth, Runkeeper, or one of the other couple dozen fitness sites that MyFitnessPal supports you'll be able to add their recorded data to your profile. What does this mean exactly? Well, like always I'll use myself as an example. I hate having to enter my weight in the handful of fitness apps I use ('cause they all want it) so I have a Withings scale that has external API access. For those of you non-techies that means that given the proper authorization any program/site whatever could look at what that particular thing provides. In this case it's a scale that records weight. So with MyFitnessPal supporting the ability to read my weight from my scale it doesn't have to ask me every once in a while. With the site also having connections to Bodymedia (my calorie counter) it always knows how much I burn throughout the day. Plus if I record any workouts through RunKeeper I don't have to then add that to MyFitnessPal, connecting the two sites would mean they share information. This is awesome for those who don't want to have to enter there data in a bunch of different places (read: pretty much everyone).
Charts and records
Charts! OMG the charts! Wanna see a chart of your weight patterns? Got it! Wanna see how much your body fat percentage has changed over time? They got that too. Pretty much any record of numbers they keep on file (that you provide of course) they will show you a nice little chart showing your progression. They also give calculators for BMI and BMR which can be handy (although BMR could be more accurately calculated with Bodymedia).
Food Database
Probably the most popular reason to use MyFitnessPal is because of the nutrition database. For the most part users can add food to the database. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is "How do you know if it's right?" Well there is a verification system that allows you to know how many times the nutrition information has been confirmed. this method does allow for you to verify if the food you enter matches the label. However sometimes you'll find indescrepencies which you can correct yourself and update the database. This is especially useful for when you have the label in your hands and you want to make sure what you selected is right.
On the mobile app you also have the ability to use your device's camera to scan the bar-code MyFitnessPal will figure out what the item is based on the code and pull up (usually) the correct product. If it's not you can always report it in a similar fashion as the website.
My Foods and Exercises
Of course not everything is going to be inside the built in Nutrition and exercise database. If you're coming from Bodymedia then adding food to the nutrition will be very familiar you simply enter in all the data you see from the label. The difference is that you can choose to add your the food(s) you enter as part of the public database or not. It is also worth noting that weight is not required here like it is on Bodymedia, this can be especially annoying when you dive into the public database enough times. Need to add a recipie? You'll notice a "recipe" section where you can add in ingredients (that must already be in your personal or public database) this will calculate the final nutritional information and add the food to your personal database, which you can also share.
Exercise is a bit different, you have "Cardiovascular" and "Strength Training". Pretty much any thing that doesn't involve counting reps goes under the Cardio section while everything else is considered Strength Training both will allow you to record your calories burned. The built in database is pretty basic, I had to manually enter in each of my BeachBody workouts. This is a shame since I image that if exercises were made public like food is I wouldn't have to enter in all my workouts manually the first time. Of course this is a minor "First world problem" that I'm not going to condemned the entire site for.
Conclusion
There is even more to this site than what I've mentioned here. I didn't even go into the strong community there (I hope you notice this Bodymedia), or how you can customize your meal names, or even how you can add your own fields to track. This review is already plenty long so I'm sure you get the drift by now. Anyone wanting to keep up with their progress in their weight loss journey should most definitely sign up, while you're at it look me up on my profile.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Review: Nutrisystem
This review is a long time coming. Nearly a month ago I started Nutrisystem of course I did a ton of research into it but what made me finally get it was the steep discount they offered for the summer. It allowed me to get it for $275/mo and it'll continue to go down till I'm at $230 depending on how long I keep doing it (I do not know if they are still running this promo). With that out the way lets get down to what you get.
You could opt for a "mystery box" where Nutrisystem picks and chooses what to send you but heck if I'm going to do that. I went through the site where there was a decent selection of food to choose from. You must choose 28 per meal (for some reason desert and snacks have the exact same food choices). It's worth noting that you can change what is sent to you at any time up until your order is processed. So for example I adjusted my next shipment based on my taste from my current one. This can be especially useful if you loved a particular food and then got sick of it.
Like most every other community, Nutrisystem has a dedicated forum (why oh why can't you follow everyone else's example Bodymedia?). It's fairly detailed, no matter if you're new, your age or heck even your family situation there is a forum in there for you. Also it's interesting to point out that there are chat-rooms member pages, and even your own blog to help chronicle your journey. If that all wasn't enough Nutrisystem provides some pretty robust teaching tools to help you along. None of this matters of course if you don't utilize it. I don't know if previous reviews I've seen just didn't have this function at the time but there have been a number of people saying that Nutrisystem doesn't help you learn portion control. I beg to differ there are quite a few lessons on the subject. The "Core companion" (the name of the guidance section) also goes into what macronutrients to consume and also tries to help you tell the difference between when you are hungry and a craving. The latter is extremely helpful when loosing weight. Most all the lessons are interactive with videos, comments from others and at any time you can speak with a councilor about your issues loosing weight or just for support.
No self respecting service can exist in this day and age without having an app. Nutrisystem has one for iOS and Android. The app isn't bad for recording your food, weight, etc... but all these things can be done with other apps that you're probably already using. If you're not using anything, I probably still wouldn't suggest you use their app simply because there is no connection to outside apps. More on that subject in a later post but for example if you record your weight through a 3rd party like Withings then Nutrisystem will have no idea unless you actually log into their site and put in your weight. Stuff like that is in excusable to me there is no reason why they couldn't just tap into existing APIs speaking as a developer it's trivial at best.
Update: it was pointed out that I didn't mention anything about the effectiveness of the program. My personal belief is that if you utilize the tools and stick with it, this is very effective. I originally wasn't going to post my weight loss since I'm only at the beginning but so far I've lost 8lbs in 27 days. This could have easily been more but here in the US we just had independence day and I gotta say I kinda put my diet on hold in order to eat BBQ >_< and I'm in the middle of recovering from that.
Food and Taste
You could opt for a "mystery box" where Nutrisystem picks and chooses what to send you but heck if I'm going to do that. I went through the site where there was a decent selection of food to choose from. You must choose 28 per meal (for some reason desert and snacks have the exact same food choices). It's worth noting that you can change what is sent to you at any time up until your order is processed. So for example I adjusted my next shipment based on my taste from my current one. This can be especially useful if you loved a particular food and then got sick of it.
Which leads me to taste. I had difficulty finding out how good or bad the food is with Nutrisystem. Opinions on the topic vary wildly, but here is my 2 cents: "If you compare this food to home-cooking it's horrible. However if you consider the fact that you are eating pre-packaged food it's not half bad...even pretty darn good in some cases".
Speed and Storage
One of my very favorite things about Nutrisystem is the speed. All the food is kept at room temperature until you have to cook it. This means you can pretty much keep the food in the box (which is an amazing space saver) till you want to have at it. I have a bunch of food stashed in my office for any time I want to just eat. Most of the meals that involve cooking can be microwaved for just a minute or so. Because the meals are not very large it's easy to heat up, eat up and go.
Connections and Guidance
Like most every other community, Nutrisystem has a dedicated forum (why oh why can't you follow everyone else's example Bodymedia?). It's fairly detailed, no matter if you're new, your age or heck even your family situation there is a forum in there for you. Also it's interesting to point out that there are chat-rooms member pages, and even your own blog to help chronicle your journey. If that all wasn't enough Nutrisystem provides some pretty robust teaching tools to help you along. None of this matters of course if you don't utilize it. I don't know if previous reviews I've seen just didn't have this function at the time but there have been a number of people saying that Nutrisystem doesn't help you learn portion control. I beg to differ there are quite a few lessons on the subject. The "Core companion" (the name of the guidance section) also goes into what macronutrients to consume and also tries to help you tell the difference between when you are hungry and a craving. The latter is extremely helpful when loosing weight. Most all the lessons are interactive with videos, comments from others and at any time you can speak with a councilor about your issues loosing weight or just for support.APPS
No self respecting service can exist in this day and age without having an app. Nutrisystem has one for iOS and Android. The app isn't bad for recording your food, weight, etc... but all these things can be done with other apps that you're probably already using. If you're not using anything, I probably still wouldn't suggest you use their app simply because there is no connection to outside apps. More on that subject in a later post but for example if you record your weight through a 3rd party like Withings then Nutrisystem will have no idea unless you actually log into their site and put in your weight. Stuff like that is in excusable to me there is no reason why they couldn't just tap into existing APIs speaking as a developer it's trivial at best.The Fine print
If you don't dig to deep you're liable to jump in before realizing that Nutrisystem does not supply all your food for the month. You still have to eat fresh fruits and veggies, it comes with a guide that will walk you through what you need to get from the grocery store. Also another point, there are some muffins for breakfast that are absolutely terrible...unless you heat them up for 10-20 seconds this makes a world of difference, trust me.
Wrap-up
All and all if you can get a good sale on Nutrisystem and you want to not only loose weight but save time preparing meals I say go for it. You're liable to find something you like and at any time you can delay a future shipment by up to 60 days making this an extremely flexible solution financially. They also have a referral system that will save you $30 if you want to try. Send me a message if you want to take advantage of that (it would be nicer if they supplied a link...but all well)
Update: it was pointed out that I didn't mention anything about the effectiveness of the program. My personal belief is that if you utilize the tools and stick with it, this is very effective. I originally wasn't going to post my weight loss since I'm only at the beginning but so far I've lost 8lbs in 27 days. This could have easily been more but here in the US we just had independence day and I gotta say I kinda put my diet on hold in order to eat BBQ >_< and I'm in the middle of recovering from that.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Full Disclosure notice
OK, first off I know I haven't posted in forever, sorry about that. Originally I was going to keep a more constant flow when the site was re-designed but my designer kinda flaked and we never got that off the ground. I may do it at some point but in the mean time you're stuck with however this site looks like right now.
On to more pressing matters...I've recently joined TeamBeachBody and became a Beachbody Coach. I wanted to post this here simply for full disclosure. I've seen coaches in the past trying to pressure people into buying product and I don't want to be like that. I've constantly strive to be completely objective and I don't plan to change. With that said, you'll probably start seeing a lot of BeachBody workout reviews on this site coming up. Oddly enough they were in the works before I even decided to be a coach. I will also try to factor in my own personal calorie burns, and activity into the reviews. Anyone who has a Bodymedia Fit should also submit your burns in the comments below I'll be sure to factor that into my reviews.
Lastly since I've had such a dry spell lately I plan on kicking things off with a post a day for this week. I'll try to keep it up as long as I can but eventually I'll have to figure out a regular schedule. Also look forward to my Turbo Fire: Inferno review which is what I'm currently working on. I'm in the process of going day by day writing about the process and what I loose.
What would you like for me to post about? Be sure to leave your answers in the comment section below!!
News
On to more pressing matters...I've recently joined TeamBeachBody and became a Beachbody Coach. I wanted to post this here simply for full disclosure. I've seen coaches in the past trying to pressure people into buying product and I don't want to be like that. I've constantly strive to be completely objective and I don't plan to change. With that said, you'll probably start seeing a lot of BeachBody workout reviews on this site coming up. Oddly enough they were in the works before I even decided to be a coach. I will also try to factor in my own personal calorie burns, and activity into the reviews. Anyone who has a Bodymedia Fit should also submit your burns in the comments below I'll be sure to factor that into my reviews. Lastly since I've had such a dry spell lately I plan on kicking things off with a post a day for this week. I'll try to keep it up as long as I can but eventually I'll have to figure out a regular schedule. Also look forward to my Turbo Fire: Inferno review which is what I'm currently working on. I'm in the process of going day by day writing about the process and what I loose.
What would you like for me to post about? Be sure to leave your answers in the comment section below!!
Friday, May 10, 2013
Bodymedia and You (Part 4) - Putting it all together [Final]
Even though I've covered a lot of ground, it seems like I've only scratched the surface. In this post we'll review everything I've mentioned thus far (so you might see some repeat).
Like any tool or service the Bodymedia Fit is not an be all end all solution for weight loss. There is no "magic bullet" that will reverse the weight gain, however if used correctly BMF will help you to get the results you are striving for. Don't forget to also lean on your support system. So, what are your favorite services to connect BMF to (or in general)? Leave your answer in the comment section below!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Moderate and Vigorous activity
I see a lot of people ask why BMF does not register certain activity as Vig. even though they feel like they are going to die and they are covered in sweat. Quick answer "You're not there yet". Just because you are sweating and "feeling the burn" doesn't make an activity vigorous. Over time you'll figure out how to get your body there but I need to stress something that could help you out. If you are working your muscles then you will most likely get moderate, if you are doing a lot of quick movement you will get vigorous. Remember vigorous in this case doesn't mean the activity is "harder" it's just for the most part faster. Also slower muscle building exercises will never burn as much as cardio, but they do allow your body to burn more at rest which is awesome in it's own right.
Nutrition and Measurement
Do you weight your food when you document? If not you should definitely start. Look at your nutritional labels there is a reason why they all by weight. Sometimes a half cup of something doesn't equal the weight value that is listed, this is one very easy way to get your calorie estimates wrong. If you've been recording your calories in and yet you haven't lost what you expect I encourage you start weighing your food and compare it to what you are use to so you can see the difference.
Networking your Health
We are at the horizon of seeing "the internet of things" which I'll probably mention that a lot during this journey. BMF has the ability to connect to many different services like Runkeeper, Withings, MyFitnessPal, SparksPeople, Earnedit, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Already using one of these services? You'll probably love it more by connecting it with BMF or any other service. For example, you have the option to add in your current weight in BMF's Activity Manager. I don't know about you but I have a terrible memory (and a young child) so sometimes I don't always get to type in my weight. To counter this I got a Withings Wi-Fi scale that uploads my weight for me. Connecting Withings to Bodymedia allowed me to have the Withings service auto-update my weight for BMF. This actually saves a lot of time. With each of these apps talking to each other you can do or enter something once and have it populate on your other services. Wanna see more? Be sure to periodically check out the "Apps" section of the activity manager.
Like any tool or service the Bodymedia Fit is not an be all end all solution for weight loss. There is no "magic bullet" that will reverse the weight gain, however if used correctly BMF will help you to get the results you are striving for. Don't forget to also lean on your support system. So, what are your favorite services to connect BMF to (or in general)? Leave your answer in the comment section below!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Bodymedia and You (Part 3)
Last time I spoke about activity. If you were new to BMF (Bodymedia Fit) then I suggested not worrying about Moderate vs. Vigorous activity. Now I'm going to go in to what the differences are and why both are important.
Honestly this is probably one of the areas that I think Bodymedia could use some improvement on. Each area of the Activity Manager's goals can be customized, with the only exception being....Sleep. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing when I am in a deep sleep or light sleep (although some people say that BMF registers sleep when they are just being still reading...I've never had that issue), I wish I could set my own goals. Bodymedia recommends 8 hours of sleep a day, this is not a bad goal in fact it should be everyone's goal. For me, however, this is practically unobtainable.
As I mentioned earlier, besides sleep, every activity level can be adjusted. I don't necessarily recommend it but in certain circumstances it makes complete sense. So everyone what do you do to hit Vig? Leave a comment below!!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
METs
A MET or Metabolic Equivalent of Task is simply a method of expressing the energy cost of physical activity. The human body can typically go from .8 (sleep) to 18 (running at 10.9 mi/hr). So in short, the more you move the higher your MET level.
Bodymedia calculates your MET at any given time. Unlike most activity plans where you have an assigned value per exercise, with the BMF you have an amount of time that you are in a range of MET levels. If you are familiar with the BMF you probably already know the "Moderate" activity level. This is walking, jogging, weight lifting, heck you could even be cleaning the house to get some of this activity time in. The default range of moderate activity is between 3 and 6 METs. For most people this should not be adjusted, mainly because METs are a scalable form of measurement to begin with. You and I could do the same activity and I could get as high as 3 METs and you could get to 4 or even 5.
Bodymedia calculates your MET at any given time. Unlike most activity plans where you have an assigned value per exercise, with the BMF you have an amount of time that you are in a range of MET levels. If you are familiar with the BMF you probably already know the "Moderate" activity level. This is walking, jogging, weight lifting, heck you could even be cleaning the house to get some of this activity time in. The default range of moderate activity is between 3 and 6 METs. For most people this should not be adjusted, mainly because METs are a scalable form of measurement to begin with. You and I could do the same activity and I could get as high as 3 METs and you could get to 4 or even 5.
Getting Vig
After 6 METs you reach a level of activity called "Vigorous" or "Vig" for short. Vig can be hard to reach at first, it takes a lot of pushing for beginners of the BMF if they are not already in shape. A quick method of reaching this state is running, not jogging, running. I'd suggest trying to run at over 6mph for 3 minutes (with proper warmup of course) and see if that gets you there just so you know what it feels like. I think for most people that would be enough to at least see a little Vig in the chart. After you get a sense of where you have to be it is quite easy to reach that level, you will sweat, you will be breathing hard. Vig is all about pushing yourself harder, which is why it seems to be the best way to loose weight.
I say "weight" because sometimes that's fat loss, sometimes it's just water weight. One thing you have to keep in mind is that everybody is different. Some people respond very well to lots of Vigorous activity to get the results they want while others need Moderate to reach their goals, there are others still that do not even have the option for Vig for one reason or another. Keep all this in mind when you set your activity goals. As time goes on throw more Vig in a day to see if you can do it. If you see that you are not getting the results you want lower it, simple as that.
Sleeping
Honestly this is probably one of the areas that I think Bodymedia could use some improvement on. Each area of the Activity Manager's goals can be customized, with the only exception being....Sleep. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing when I am in a deep sleep or light sleep (although some people say that BMF registers sleep when they are just being still reading...I've never had that issue), I wish I could set my own goals. Bodymedia recommends 8 hours of sleep a day, this is not a bad goal in fact it should be everyone's goal. For me, however, this is practically unobtainable. 
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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