The Top 6 Exercise Gadgets

The best way to get fit is to spend hundreds of dollars on gadgets, and then watch the [desired result] happen. Here are a few good ways to spend your money becoming perfect. Calorie Monitors

The BodyBugg is a device you wear on your arm that counts the calories you expend when you sleep, walk, run, exercise, and do pretty much anything, which is useful if you like to be on top of what you're burning and not burning (math, control!). It's $250 (it has a pedometer and links up to your smartphone), but it's on sale for $200. (Amazon users are on the fence, although they happily endorse the similarly priced BodyMedia FIT Armband, $209.)

Meanwhile, the less-expensive Fitbit tracker ($99) "gives you a clear sense of how you're doing and encourages you to be more active," which sounds like a living, chattering nightmare, but it does just as much as the BodyBugg, costs less, looks prettier, and everyone seems to love it ("At any time during the day, you can push the one little button on the fitbit to display an estimate of calories burned, steps taken, miles walked, and a graphic of a flower that is larger as you're more active." @-->->-----).

Pedometers

Watch your step -- literally (ayyy!). More than 3,000 users give the Omron HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer, $21, a 4.5-star average rating, plus it's a pocket pedometer, meaning you don't have to strap it to your arm like the BodyBugg (or pay hundreds of dollars). Or you could strap it to your arm! Whatever you like. (And here's a slew of other good-looking pedometers, because why pick just one. Use a few at once, see if they say different numbers. Fill your pockets with pedometers.)

Heart Rate Monitors

Or listen to how slow your body's going with heart rate monitors like the popular Omron's HC100 Heart Rate Monitor ($31). Or go fancy with the Garmin Forerunner 310XT GPS heart monitor ($350) in case you need to know exactly where you are, where you plan to be, and what that means.

Watches

If you still don't know where you are, the Nike+ Sportwatch Powered by TomTom ($199) will tell you. "Never Run Alone Again," it says.





Headphones

Just when you thought swimming had to be silent, you can listen to "Part of Your World" on repeat. The SwiMP3 Waterproof MP3 Player ($129) lasts for two hours and "makes it much easier to swim long distances alone," per an Amazon advocate. Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Your collec-tion is complete.

Scales

And then if you want out-of-control, technologically advanced scales to monitor how "well" it's all going, there's a number of scales to ruin your life with. This Ozeri Touch Digital Scale ($59) is popular on Amazon (5 star average; 60 reviews) and measures weight, body fat, hydration, muscle, and bone mass. What funner way to start the day? Wait, hold up, let me list 999 ways.

1.
2.
3.
...
999.

[The first 999 things that come to mind.] But I bought it anyway. For an even more-beloved scale that doesn't do quite so alarmingly much, though, EatSmart's Precision Digital Scale is available for $29.

So that's all there is to fitness! Spend roughly $500 on gadgets to monitor yourself, and after a few months you'll be exactly who you want to be. On a [bone mass-measuring] scale of 1 to 100, how close are you to being who you want to be? One being far away.

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Edith Zimmerman is the editor of The Hairpin, a blog for women that features original content and general-interest stories of the day.