Walkvest — another Ho-Hum Idea
No doubt you have seen people walking around carrying little dumbbells in their hands (no I’m not referring to their children). Others have weighted ankle-bracelets. Both of those help tone specific muscles and incidentally contribute a slight increment to calories burned when walking.
Now the talk is about Walkvest, which shifts this idea up to the center of the body. A heavy (and hot) looking vest is worn while walking or exercising, and it has little pockets where you can put weights. They claim it will help you lose weight. In fact, they say:
In our studies, individuals who walked on a treadmill for 45 minutes without the WALKVEST (and with no coaching by Debbie) burned from 150 to 230 calories. Those same individuals walked on the same treadmill while wearing the WALKVEST with 4 to 6lbs. and they burned 250-330 calories in 45 minutes. When they walked on the treadmill wearing the WALKVEST with 4 to 6lbs. and working out with Debbie on CD, they burned between 370-540 calories in 45 minutes.
Now most people burn about 50-60 calories per mile walking for each 100 pounds they weigh. So for simplicity, say a person weighing 100 pounds walked three miles in those 45 minutes on the treadmill (a fast pace but it keeps the math simple, for illustration sake), and burned the 150 calories given as the low-end example. Add six pounds of weight, and the same walk, and they should burn 159 calories — but here they claim 250 or even 370!
Of course, the only difference, besides the weight, is the “coaching by Debbie”, which apparently accounts for the other 91 calories burned. Hmmm. Vest adds 9 extra calories burned, coaching adds 91. I think I’d skip the $60 vest and just take the $15 coaching CD (that is if I really believed these figures).