Things I Don't Love (Hosted by: Lulu & Sweet Pea)

This blog is in response to Lulu & Sweet Pea: Click the images above to head to her blog and look around.

Recently I decided that I wanted to get into shape, because I wanted to feel better about myself. It was a choice that I made after seeing Jillian Michaels. I was also told by my doctor that working out and eating right would help my PTSD, so it was sort of perfect time. What I am not loving about the experience is the responses that I get. 

Now when I started this journey I weight 170 lbs and just overall didn't like how I looked or how I felt, so I decided to change that. Every time I tell people about it, they make comments like 'you're not overweight' or 'so now you become one of those picky eaters?'. 

First thing's first, I changed from eating processed to organic and all natural foods. It was my choice because a lot of the processed foods have pesticides in them and I am allergic to pesticides. It was a choice I made to get healthy, and so that I stopped feeling so sick all the time. Honestly, cutting out the foods not  only makes me feel better but without even utilizing exercise I have managed to lose 15 pounds. That was huge for me and I was proud of my achievement. I told people and at first they were like that is great, but then came the conversations of 'at least I still get to eat my favorite foods.' 

Here is the thing people, I am not missing out on anything at all. For every crap processed food that is out there, there is a healthier option. So with that being said, people can keep their high calorie, processed GMO, hormone, pesticide filled foods and I will continue to eat in a manner that makes me feel better. 

What I really want to say to all those people who instantly judge someone because they want to get healthy, don't get that twisted with going on a diet. I am not on a diet, I changed to a healthier way of eating and I have no intentions on going back. I count my calories every day, I pay attention to what I am taking in and what I need to make my body function at it's fullest. 

With that being said, I am not saying that I don't occasionally slip and fall back into old habits, but guess what, I am not on a diet! I am following the golden rule of Eat Less, Move More. I am currently tracking my calorie intake and burn through Jillian Michaels 360 program. It costs me 4 dollars a week but it is completely worth it. So to all of you who accuse someone of being on a diet, or being a picky eater, simply because they say they want to get healthy, stop! 

Here is why I say to stop, because a diet is something that someone does to lose weight on a temporary basis. I say temporary because people go on diets, lose the desired amount of weight and then they stop dieting. Know what happens next? 9/10 times the person gains all that way back, and why you ask? They have stopped dieting. Programs like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Atkins, and Nutrisystem are great diets to help get you down to your goal weight, but once you start these programs, you have to stay on them forever. 

It is so much easier to count your calories intake for a month, and after that you are pretty much capable of knowing how many calories you eat a day. We are creatures of habit, we tend to eat the same 4-6 meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So after 30 days (which is what it takes to form a new habit) you have trained yourself portion control so you won't always have to count calories. So! If you want to get healthy or lose weight there are a number of apps out there that can help you. Here are some that can help you if you are looking to get healthy and lose weight, and you aren't looking for a diet that once you quit you could gain the weight back. 

Jillian Michaels this is a free app when it comes to keeping track of your calorie intake. For $4 a week you can get a custom meal plan and workouts designed for your body type and learn your metabolic type. You also have the support of a great community of people. If you want to go all out and know exactly what you are burning in calories every day, then you can add a BodyMedia to your plan for free. I personally have the bluetooth band so I have the BodyMedia Fit App so that I can track my daily activity. 

                                        BodyMedia Fit App                     Jillian Michaels App

My Fitness Pal which is a free app that you can use to help you track your calories and fitness for no charge. 

My Plate which is also free and hosted by Livestrong.

So there are a lot of apps out there if you are looking to start counting calories. If you want to lose weight, then all you have to do is calculate how many calories a day your body naturally burns, and subtract 500-1000 calories from your daily intact and you will lose 1-2lbs a week without exercise, which means when you work out you are adding to that calorie deficit so you will lose even more weight. 

NutritionData BMI & Calorie Calculator is a website you can use to take your natural calorie burn. Never eat under 1200 calories a day! and if you want to lose more weight in a week simply work out more, but don't over do it. Also an important side note when you want to get healthy, take your current weight and divide it by 2 and that is how many oz of water you need to take in a day. For every 30 mins of intense exercise you do, meaning you are sweating, add 8oz of water to your daily intake. 

So, there you have it, there is a difference between wanting to get healthy and going on a diet. So please, the next time someone you know says they want to get healthy, don't look down on them, don't tell them they don't need to, or that they are missing out. Support their decision to want to eat better and feel better about themselves. 

Sincerely, 

Gypsy

Fitness Bands & Poor Customer Service (rant)

Hello readers!

I haven't posted in awhile, because I haven't really had much to say. I have been trying to get this whole diet and fitness thing under control and it is harder than I thought it would be. I also realized yesterday that I was doing some things wrong, but you live and you learn right? Of course!

Anyways... moving on.

Lately I have been doing a lot of research on Fitness bands. I did have a blog entry about the Jawbone Up but I removed it. Now, I want to start by saying that the Up is a good product.... when it works. However if you have an issue with the Up getting help is like pulling teeth. I had my Up for less than a week and it started to malfunction. It has this timer that you can set when you have been idle too long, thing basically reminds you to get off your behind and do something. I liked that feature it was the reason I bought the band. That and it helped you track your sleep and also helped monitor your steps. Well the awesome band turned into a horrible nightmare after only a few days. My idle alarm went off every thirty minutes regardless of if I was moving or not. Naturally I contacted the customer support and went through all of that. I had 4 conversations with their customer service in a 24 hour period.

You know what they did? Absolutely nothing, all of them told me the same thing 'well it looks like we need to reset the band.' I explained that I had already done that and they said to try and reset it again and to contact them should the problem persist. 3 online sessions and one email later, I still had issues with the band going off every 30 minutes even when I turned the alarm off. It was a nightmare and a half cause I got woke up every 30 minutes. Now, when this band vibrates you can hear it, it is louder then when a cell phone vibrates, which was great until it went wrong.

So after I got no help from Jawbone, I contacted Best Buy where I purchased the product from. I finally got help! They looked up when I purchased the band and told me I was well within the 15 day return policy and that they would be happy to take the product back with no questions asked. The woman was very kind, apologized for the band and told me that when I came to return it to seek out the employe who is designated to the fitness band area to get fitted with a suitable band for me.

Well I took the band back and decided okay, it just has to be this band so I will give it another go. I get home set everything up again and nothing happened. The thing didn't vibrate at all cue another conversation to Jawbone, and two resets later I took the band back to Best Buy again and returned the thing. Now, I know that working in customer service there are times when you simply cannot help a customer because nothing makes them happy. Thing is I was happy, I just wanted my band replaced because it wasn't working, they told me that would take 2-4 weeks to receive. I spent $129.99 for a product that worked less than a week and now they want me to wait longer for a product? No thank you, I told them I would be returning it to the store and the store could deal with them from that point on.

I was so frustrated with this product, if only because I paid $129.99 plus three trips to Best Buy which is roughly about 10 dollars in gas for me because they aren't close. So I ended up spending over $150 dollars on something that was supposed to encourage me to move more. Needless to say I took my frustrations to Twitter and caught the companies attention pretty quickly. They followed me and sent me a direct message asking where I bought the product from. I explained that it was Best Buy and they said they would look into this... like it was something that Best Buy had done to their product to make it not work.

So... hold on a minute.... now not only were then just taking me through the reset process but then they proceed to blame the faulty product on where I bought it? Come on now, that would be like me saying that letting my milk spoil in my fridge is all Walmart's fault. They didn't want to take responsibility for their faulty product.

They asked me for the ticket numbers and email in which I used to communicate with their staff and just now got told that they appreciated my feedback. Now the thing that really pissed me off about all of this was the fact that no one cared. It didn't matter how many times I contacted them I got the same generic response each time, and if there is anything that gets under my skin more, it is generic prompt read responses. None of them took a moment to actually listen to the problem, none of them cared that this device was causing me stress. I couldn't get them to answer any questions outside the prompted answers or 'if you would please follow the instructions we are sure this will fix your problem.' The when all was said and done after all the emails all the online chats and all the issues their final reply was 'thanks for your feedback.'

They didn't care that I wasted nearly 6 hours of time trying to get a replacement band. They didn't care that I am jobless and couldn't afford the gas to keep going back and forth. They didn't care about anything that I had to say until I took to Twitter... then they suddenly cared, apologized for the faulty device and said they would be looking into why I wasn't helped. You want to know why I wasn't helped? Because companies have stopped training people to listen and started training them to read a prompt. I am pretty sure if any one of those associates had listened to the fact that I have an Anxiety disorder and the band was making it worse, then they probably would have acted sooner. Nope, they just kept going off their prompt because hey, they already had my money why should they care?

So, I ended up going back to Best Buy and got a whole new band all together. I purchased the BodyMedia armband because I know it works. I know it works because its the same model that they use on the Biggest Loser. At first I was like great, now I have to pay a subscription fee for the band on top of my subscription fee to Jillian Michaels, so I was stressed out. Thankfully I finally had some good news and luck on my side, because I already had a membership to JM I could just sync my band up to my account and not pay any additional money. So now I am paying $4 dollars a week to help get my butt into shape and a band that syncs with the program so I get more accurate counts for my calorie burn and so forth.

 Here is what the information looks like when going through JM website. On a side note the band will not automatically send the data to your JM app you have to sync it with your computer to get the information off. This isn't actually a bad thing because you aren't supposed to wear this band 24/7, they don't want you to exceed 23 hours a day. So, I take my band off for an hour a day to sync and charge the band at once. If you want results throughout the day I highly recommend the bluetooth version of the band and use the app to see your progress throughout the day. If you don't need fitness advice you can simply use the BodyMedia app but you have to pay for their subscription if you go without the Jillian Michaels app subscription. 

Now, I also want to let you all now that I am not saying that the Up isn't worth it, because it totally is as long as the band is working. I was thrilled with my results until it went faulty but at the end of the day I switched to a new band because I wasn't treated like a person, I was treated like a robot and felt like I didn't matter to them. Needless to say, if I know the product improves and that I wouldn't have those issues again, I would get the Up. It was comfortable, and looks like a bracelet so I didn't feel like anyone was staring at me. Sadly, that is not how it turned out, and I went with something I had more faith would work. Now, I also want to mention that Jawbone and BodyMedia are merging, I just hope the poor customer service doesn't continue when that happens.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just felt like I needed to write this entry because Fitness bands are becoming a huge thing. People want them to be fashionable and they want to know that they work. We shell out a lot of money for these things to work and to keep up motivated, so mine as well get the best quality possible right? Right! I would still like to encourage anyone and everyone who is trying to get into shape, to seriously look into the fitness bands. However, when looking into them keep in mind what you want the band to tell you.  Every band has its own perks, advantages, and disadvantages. Do your research, ask your friends, and don't be afraid to talk to sales associates. I highly recommend getting a product from a third party source such as Best Buy, as they tend to offer better warranties and if you get it from Best Buy you can get an additional 2 year warranties (mine was $19.99) and if something goes wrong you just go to the store and they replace it with a new one. That and most stores have a 15 day return policy for electronic devices, but always be sure to ask if your product falls within the 15 day return policy guidelines. Some stores will not take back an opened product.

I hope this entry helps someone!

Sincerely,
Gypsy