The simple formula of 'Calories in - calories out = change in weight' has always been interesting to me. More recently i've been wondering if there is some way to measure calories burned accurately using some sort of skin-contact device. I've seen the "bodybugg",[1] but I have trouble believing a few sensors and a microcontroller is worth $250+.
Anyone have any experience with this sort of electronics? The "bodybugg" website claims that it does its measurements with an accelerometer, a 'heat flux sensor', a temperature sensor, and a sensor that measures galvanic skin response.
The more I look around, the more this looks like a market ripe for a quality start-up.
Suunto T6 owns this market. To use it right, tho', you need to have a VO2max test done.
Also, it's not as simple as that. You might think "I'm eating less so my body must burn fat" but your body is thinking "shit, I'm starving, better conserve energy" and turns down your metabolism, prioritizes fat storage, etc. A whole bunch of survival mechanisms kick in. Cutting more than 500 calories/day doesn't lead to sustainable results. There's no quick fix.
"Cutting more than 500 calories/day doesn't lead to sustainable results."
Sure it does, if you KEEP IT low (enough). That's the problem with viewing a diet as something you do for a while, and the return to what you've always eaten. If you want to follow a diet to get permanent results, you need to do it for the rest of your life.
The point of the advice is that if you cut too much your body starts catabolism (destroying muscle tissue). Ever kg of muscle you lose reduces your basal metabolic rate, and so if you go on a really restrictive diet you will find that you can't go back up to what was previously your maintenance level without gaining weight again.
Yes, you need to keep to A diet for the rest of your life to avoid adding weight back, but if you cut reasonably low amounts of calories of your maintenance level you will be able to go back to a much higher level when you've reached your target weight than if you cut a high amount of calories to get your weight loss.
The currently most hyped diet in Sweden (and possibly other parts of the world too?) is LCHF - Low Carb High Fat (a variation on the Atkins and GI theme if I've understood it correctly) claims to be different from other diets.
From what I've understood the idea is to eat practically no carbs, which will trigger something called ketosis in the body, which in turn supposed to be good.
Whatever you do, don't start a diet debate with LCHF fans, they tend to be fairly fanatic :) (although in a curteous way, they'll overwhelm you with references to various studies, papers and whatnot).
This is why you must continue weight training while cutting, so that your body knows it needs to keep the muscle, and you can lose more fat than muscle. Your maintenance level will drop, but once you cut low enough, you can bulk back up and pack on more muscle than fat, which brings your maintenance level back up as well. Repeat this process until you are at the weight and bodyfat level you desire, then just maintain.
I'm having poor google-fu at the moment, but I recall hearing about a study which suggested that weight training was 7 times more effective than aerobics, so just do 20 minutes of weights a day and skip most of that cardio.
You right. So you do not need to eat less. You need to eat less calories, right? Eat meat instead of burger - you will be satiated for much longer time with much less calories. Also you need to eat vitamins - they will help organism to convert fat into energy when necessary and you will be less hungry in average.
It's not even a case of less calories. Let's say you need 2000 calories a day. You could eat that in two larger meals with lots of fat and refined carbs, or you could eat in in six smaller meals with protein and complex carbs. Diet 2 is massively better for you.
You can measure calories burned pretty accurately by measuring CO2 exhaled. Measure the concentration of CO2, the length of the exhale, and the force of the breath and multiply to get a quite accurate view.
Hmm, you might also be able to use a pulse oximeter to measure dissolved CO2, plus a chest band to measure respiration. Dissolved CO2 should more or less match CO2 concentration in breath, so you would not need a visible cranula on the nose.
Carbon is not the only thing the body burns, hydrogen too, which makes water which can't be used to measure calories, but because the majority of what we eat has about the same ratio of hydrogen to carbon, measuring CO2 should be enough.
Anyone have any experience with this sort of electronics? The "bodybugg" website claims that it does its measurements with an accelerometer, a 'heat flux sensor', a temperature sensor, and a sensor that measures galvanic skin response.
The more I look around, the more this looks like a market ripe for a quality start-up.
[1] http://www.bodybugg.com/science_behind_bodybugg.php