The GoWear fit becomes the BodyMedia FIT… with a few other updates

The GoWear fit website is now the BodyMedia FIT website. BodyMedia is the company behind the bodybugg and the SenseWear, as well as the GoWear fit/BodyMedia FIT, so it makes sense that they’re tightening up their branding a little.

The change won’t require you to buy any new hardware; the GoWear FIT devices will automatically start using the new website, and your existing username and password will work there.

Speaking of the new website, they’ve significantly updated the look of the interface:

From a purely visual perspective, they’ve updated the graphics to a much more “web 2.0″ look: shiny, boldly colored boxes with rounded corners. They’ve also decluttered the dashboard quite a bit and made the actual data the focus. It looks nice.

The new look makes the site easier to use, and along those lines, it’s also faster. I haven’t dug in much yet, but I think they are relying less on Java, which slows down… well, almost everything.

The improvement I’m most eager to explore is the food logging. According to the BodyMedia announcement, they’ve added foods to the built-in database, made it possible to search by brand or category as well as food name, and improved the search in general. They’re also touting “flexibility,” which I’m guessing will become apparent as I use it, but certainly sounds like a good thing.

I understand there are improvements for PC users (it sounds like faster syncing, among others) but can’t tell you much more than that since I use Mac and Linux these days. I’m curious to hear PC users’ thoughts, though!

I’m also curious if the bodybugg site is similarly upgraded, or if this is a BodyMedia-specific thing. Any bodybugg users care to report?

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The main differences between the bodybugg and the GoWear fit devices have been software-only: the GoWear fit tracks sleep and the bodybugg doesn’t, and until now, the bodybugg let you log your daily food consumption, and the GoWear fit did not.

Well, if you’re trying to decide which one to buy, the choice just got easier. The GoWear fit now supports daily food logging.

The logging tool is virtually identical to the bodybugg’s interface:

GoWear fit food logging interface

Throw in the sleep tracking and a lower price to boot, and the GoWear fit is now the obvious choice!

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This blog has been sadly neglected for some time, partly because I can be a flake sometimes, and partly because I got pregnant last spring and my focus shifted from weight loss to a healthy pregnancy.

Now I’ve had my baby (December 21, 2008!) and I’m ready to lose the baby weight and get strong for the events we have planned for the summer (among them: a 350-mile 5-day bike tour). I ended up having a C-section (not my idea!) so I have been exercise-restricted, but today is my six-week follow up appointment and I expect the doctor will give me the go-ahead. Continue reading “Back in the (bike) saddle again”

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I just finished a (lengthy) article called Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan. If you have–no, can make–the time to read this article, I highly recommend it.

The basic premise is that the modern approach to food (looking at isolated nutrients rather than whole foods, diets, and lifestyles) is considerably less healthful than earlier alternatives. An interesting excerpt:

This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates’s famous injunction to ”let food be thy medicine” is ritually invoked to support this notion. I’ll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, viewing food as being about things other than bodily health — like pleasure, say, or socializing — makes people no less healthy; indeed, there’s some reason to believe that it may make them more healthy. This is what we usually have in mind when we speak of the ”French paradox” — the fact that a population that eats all sorts of unhealthful nutrients is in many ways healthier than we Americans are. So there is at least a question as to whether nutritionism is actually any good for you.

You really should read the whole article, but here are the author’s basic recommendations: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

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I recently discovered the fatsecret diet website (probably worth another post all on its own!) and noticed that one of the most effective diets as reported by their members is the Fat Smash Diet. I didn’t know anything about the diet, but I’m always influenced by effectiveness, so I decided to look into it.

It’s the creation of Dr. Ian Smith, who seems to be something of a celebrity himself on Celebrity Fit Club, a VH1 show I’ve never seen (not having VH1 being a significant barrier). It’s a fairly standard diet in that it’s made up of different phases and gives specific guidance on what’s okay to eat and what’s not. It’s mostly no-calorie-counting (as long as you stick to the approved foods) and requires exercise, but is not especially specific about what kinds.

During my basic research, I also discovered a variation on the Fat Smash Diet: The Extreme Fat Smash Diet (yeah, I had to put aside my desire to mock the name mercilessly).

The difference? While the Fat Smash Diet is a 12-week program, The “Extreme” version is made up of three extremely specific week-long “rotations” that can be repeated as needed. Where the regular version dictates categories of foods, the “Extreme” lists out exact foods and portions for each day, as well as a specific amount of cardio exercise. Many of the comments on Amazon suggest that it’s a pretty tough diet to follow, but that if you do, you’ll lose way more weight than the average diet.

That’s significant, because the book cover suggests that you’ll lose “up to 12 pounds in three weeks.” That’s much more than most legitimate diet folks would promise (the accepted rule of thumb being two pounds per week), but the Amazon reviews indicate that it’s for real. Continue reading “Three weeks on the Extreme Fat Smash Diet”

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