Thin Blog

Posts Tagged ‘24 Hour Fitness’

Bob Harper and Jillian Michaelson The Biggest Loser are mainstays of the show.  One behind the scene star of the show is the equipment that is used.  For the most part that equipment is part of the 24 Hour Fitness families.  If you are an avid watcher of the show you will notice that all of the contestants on the show have a band around their arm.  That band is a high tech piece of gear that is not that expensive and easy to use.  That piece of equipment is from 24 Hour Fitness and is called BodyBugg.  Bob and Jillian use that equipment to track the progress of the players that train under their supervision.  BodyBugg is a calorie management system that helps a person not only manage the calories they consume, but also tracks the calories that are burned through exercise and any basic body movements.   It was created with the concept that you would be able to easily download the information from your armband to your computer and also to a website that helps monitor your progess.  The amount of information that is provided the user is awesome and it works.

(An update to the BodyBugg can be found at this link.)

One reason why there has been so much success on The Biggest Loser is because of Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, but without the equipment the process would not be so streamlined.  Sure the weight loss is so rapid because of the amount of exercise that is being endured, but BodyBugg tracks the path and allows the user to trace what has been done to help plan where they need to go on their weight loss journey.  It is one piece of equipment that is fairly invisible to others when it is being worn, yet it is large enough in technology to help you take control of the direction of your weight loss.

When my wife and I started to exercise and lose weight we dropped weight quickly at first and then the weight loss slowed down.  After a few months of trying to lose weight every pound would be a struggle.  We would watch The Biggest Loser and be shocked to see the players drop double digits week after week.  As the seasons progressed we learned they are exercising six, seven and eight hours a day.  Knowing we could not compete with that in our lives we felt as if we would never get past our weight lose plateau.  We felt as if the last 20 pounds would never budge from our hips.  We were at the point where despite all of our weight loss success we were soon to yo-yo diet our way back to obesity.  That was when my wife and I gathered up the money to buy BodyBugg from 24 Hour Fitness.  We put the thing on our arms and started to track how many calories we burned in the course of the day.

What really surprised us was not the fact that it told us how many calories we had burned but we were able to take that information and sort of reverse it to our advantage.  The sales pitch of the product never really stressed the fact that by tracking what we burned it would allow us to decide how many calories we should eat.  Losing weight quickly became simple math.  There was no guessing and no mornings of disappointment on the morning bathroom scale.  Now when we get on the bathroom scalein the morning the display reflects what we expect.  We are no longer confused by what we see on the bathroom scale.  When we use the bathroom scale we now not only know what to expect we understand the results.  For the first time our bathroom scale does reflect weight loss accurately.  What BodyBugg has shown us is that the bathroom scale is accurate; we just did not know what we were doing. 

Overall we love The Biggest Loser and will continue watching the show.  As we sit on our couch we have gone through the first few seasons thinking about weight loss and did nothing.  About season three or four we started to get off the couch but we were as lost as Jerry (the Old guy) on Season 7.  Now we have educated ourselves on weight loss and have taken that knowledge to the next level with BodyBugg.  If it were not for The Biggest Loser we would have never even heard of BodyBugg.  We ultimately know that through The Biggest Loser, Jillian and Bob and BodyBugg, we were able to not only lose the weight but able to keep the weight off.

Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser was not always that thin, toned and ripped woman you see on your television screen.  Reading the story behind Jillian Michael’s rocket to fame is not only heartwarming, it shows her human side.  What is behind the smile and tanned skin of Jillian is a compassionate person who herself was once over weight.  When she is not taunting and cajoling her team to exercise she is applying the emotional bandages needed to help that skinny person emerge from their obese body.  We have assembled some basic information about Jillian Michaels here because this blog is off the chart for people seeking information about her.

Jillian Michaels was born on 18 February, 1974 and is 5′ 2 1/2″ tall and averages 120 pounds.  The story behind her climb to prominence as a personal trainer began at the age of 12 years old.  At that young age she was obese and weighed 175 pounds.  At that point in her life she became a student of martial arts and began the climb to becoming as athletic as she is today.  To the best of everyone’s knowledge, she is not married and she is definitely not married to Bob Harper.  She used to have a talk show on WKFI, but has taken a break from that.  When we listened to her talk that aired on 1/11/2009 we really loved to hear her speak about how technology will affect future weight loss. She spoke about how new technology will influence the future of fitness and weight loss.  One example of the technology that The Biggest Loser uses is the BodyBugg by 24Hour Fitness and if you have never heard of it you really need to check it out.  She also has a great new product that works with Wiit what she truly believes will work.

Jillian has the best win to loss ratio of all trainers on America’s Biggest Loser, of the seasons she was a trainer.  Every season she has ever been on she has had one of her contestants win the competition.  The only exception with this was Season 5 when Ali won, but technically Ali was under the tutelage of Jillian.

Jillian Michaels has revealed that she never really wanted to be on The Biggest Loser and only went to audition after a Hollywood agent who worked out at her gym approached her.  At first she said no to the audition and hated the name of the show and actually even hated the concept of watching television overall.  She was not surprised with the success of the show because of the epidemic of obesity in America today.

She believes that obesity in America is all about instant gratification.  Also she went on to state people are not educated about eating properly and understanding what calories are all about.  She feels as if people in general know little about the nature of carbohydrates, good fats and bad fats.  She goes onto to state that more people need to eat fruits and vegetables and forsake the fats.   Jillian Michaels feels as if the single most important factor to obesity is the “Secretary lifestyle.”  She feels as if the lack of activity, as a person gets older, cause obesity.   She believes that if people were to just become more active in their life, the obesity issue would vanish and not be an issue at all.

Overall Jillian Michaels had been cast into stardom from the attention she has received from being a personal trainer, but her popularity will soon even eclipse The Biggest Loser.  She has become a national symbol for healthy weight loss without using a fad diet.  Jillian has focused the light of attention on the fact that the best way to lose weight is the old fashioned way and that is to “burn it.”  Here at I Choose Thin.com we applaud the fact that a rising star is staying away from gizmos and gadgets of weight loss that do no more than just take your money.  Granted she is pushing an agenda but then who isn’t?  It is a tribute to Jillian   also refreshing to see someone out there in the spotlight not just trying to sell some fad diet.

Thank You Jillian!!