i’ve been using the lumen for a little over
three months now and i thought i’ve kind of
got all the information i need now from the lumen
so it’s time to do a three-month follow-up review
so that’s what i’m talking about on this video
hey it’s kurt welcome to my channel where i
review fitness products do a cost analysis on
them they give my own rating to help you decide
whether they are worth purchasing or not i buy
all my products with my own money unless they
were given to me for free by the manufacturer and
if that’s the case i’ll always let you know at the
beginning of the video there’s a lot of different
fitness devices out there to read metabolism
or for weight loss etc but one of the most
interesting for me was this right here the lumen
so i went ahead and bought one the lumen device
was started by twin sisters marave and mikhail
moore two ultra marathoners who were looking for a
way to get immediate feedback on their metabolism
without having to go through long thorough testing
in a lab they also figured if they could create a
device like that there might be other people who
might want it too since they were both iron man
winners and phd’s in physiology they had the
right background to start something like this
what exactly is metabolic flexibility anyways
well according to the national library of medicine
metabolic flexibility describes the ability of
an organism to respond or adapt according to
changes in metabolic or energy demand as well as
the prevailing conditions or activity exercise
is another physiological condition requiring
metabolic flexibility in order to match fuel
availability with the metabolic machinery to meet
enormous increases in energy demands with that
energy coming from carbs or fats so by breathing
into this little device right here you’ll get
readings on when you’re burning carbs when you’re
burning fat your metabolic flexibility and also if
you need to cut down on your carb intake for the
day or not ideally the lumen app says it’s best
if you’re burning fat in the morning and you’re
burning carbs towards the end of the day does it
work yeah it does work but i do want to go through
a few things about it with you so you can decide
for yourself if you want to try it or not first
what did the lumen do for me lumen definitely gave
me insights as to what my body was doing as it
pertained to was i burning carbs or was i burning
fats before i got the lumen i had no idea what
my body was doing i had no idea what metabolic
flexibility was so it was a great little tool to
learn something new every morning when i got up
i had to go straight to this device and blow into
it and answer a few health related questions like
did i work out for how long how long did i sleep
how long i’ll be fasting until my next meal
and things like that so that information can be
processed in the app you can see from the charts
right here how my metabolism was working for
example if i blew a 1 or a 2 that was good because
that meant i was burning fat in the morning if i
blew a 3 that meant i was burying fats and carbs
which was okay but not ideal and then if i blew a
four or a five that meant i was burning carbs in
the morning which was not good how did this
make me react well when i saw i was blowing
four or fives in the morning i was a little bit
stunned because right away the lumen was telling
me you’re eating too many carbs so i looked at
the carb intake that it recommended for the day
and i would follow along with that and i was just
cutting carbs and cutting carbs i was getting very
obsessed with carb cutting something i hadn’t
even thought about for many many years and it
made me a bit anxious which is not good luckily
i kind of got used to it and stopped obsessing
after a few weeks did it read other vitals for
me as well yes it did you could actually connect
your apple health app to it so it will get any
readings that your apple health app gets but i
haven’t been wearing my apple watch which was
a bit of a problem because that meant the lumen
doesn’t get those readings i’ve been testing this
woof 4.0 which i’m almost done testing with so
wearing this and an apple watch was just too much
if i want to know the progress of my weight i had
to put that in manually i also had to put in my
calorie count manually as well oh yeah sorry to
do this but i do have to tell you if you feel like
you are learning something from this video so far
please do me a favor hit that like button i
really appreciate it what else does the app do
there’s a lot of helpful information on the app
that explains how to train your metabolism to burn
fat how to shift back to fat burn after a high
carb day and how your body taps into its reserves
to burn energy and every morning you blow into
the device you’ll get a little advice like this
don’t aim for the body to burn fat all day
switching between fat and carbon is best do i feel
like i’ve learned a lot more about my body after
using it i know i definitely learned a lot more
about my metabolism and after a while i did figure
out this little hack now here’s what happened when
i first started blowing into lumen every morning i
was getting readings of threes fours and sometimes
fives it was extremely frustrating so even
though i read all the articles on the app
and was trying to cut my carbs down and that
kind of stuff i kind of just went out on a limb
and said you know what i’m just going to go into a
caloric deficit so first i stopped eating as much
and instead of eating like 2100 calories a day
i was eating 1900 calories a day and i didn’t
notice my lumen levels went from four or fives
to like three and then i kind of went completely
rogue and i said you know what i’m gonna fast
for like five days straight and see what happens
well i fasted for 16 hours on the first day and
guess what the next morning i blew a two so i was
burning fat in the morning so i decided i’m gonna
do that again so i fasted every single day of the
week for 16 hours every day and i blew twos every
single day and i think i actually even blew one
one day so one of the things that kind of got me
was is this lumen fancy technology just telling us
all what we all know anyways maybe our metabolic
flexibility is just based on calories in calories
out maybe i just need to eat less calories to get
to fat burn in the morning i don’t know if that’s
true but that’s how it worked for me were there
any upgrades to the app while you were using it
yes like i said before at first the lumen did
not have a way to count your calories but now
you can put all that information into the lumen
itself and maybe i miss it the first time but i
did notice that the app has a whole bunch of
healthy recipes that you can make at home and
finally i noticed they are now offering healthy
meal plans that you can have shipped straight to
your home they start at around 139 and they look
really good and there’s been a lot of good reviews
on their site but i never use that service so i
can’t be sure how many times a day did i have to
blow into the lumen i first started blowing into
the lumen device five times a day i would blow
once when i woke up once after breakfast once
before lunch once after lunch and once right
before i went to bed and that got a bit annoying
that’s a lot of times that blow into that thing
and i actually got so annoyed that after two weeks
i thought i don’t think i’m going to continue this
review anymore because this is a pain but but then
i thought to myself i have to finish this review
so what’s going to make me happy and i thought
what’s gonna make me happy blowing into it
two times a day so i blew it into it in the
morning and then right before i went to bed
and that worked out fine was the lumen worth
buying i have to say i’m glad i got the shortest
membership to the lumen which is a six month
membership because it’s been about three months
now and i think i have all the information i need
what are my final thoughts my final thoughts are
this the lumen is a good tool and i learned a lot
from it it also taught me how powerful eating at
a caloric deficit and fasting was but there
are things that are a bit annoying about it
the first thing was having to wake up and go
to your lumen device and turn on your phone
and turn this on and blow into it and get your
reading it kind of put me in an aggravated mood
i don’t really like to look at my phone until i’ve
had my personal quiet time for about two hours
after i wake up instead it forces you to look at
electronic devices in the morning which kind of
got into my head for a while i did get used to it
but still another thing that was a little annoying
but i know is a necessary evil is if you blow into
the device in the morning and you get a reading of
four or five which means you’re at a high carb
count and you’re burning carbs and you want to
get down to fat burning mode it’ll give you a meal
plan a meal plan basically says hey you got to cut
your carbs to only this many during the day what
happened to me well of course i obsessed about it
and was thinking about food all day long it just
made me feel hungry all day long because i just
thought about food all day long so i kind of did
the opposite and i gained a little bit of weight
for a while until i had stopped obsessing about
it and relaxed and stopped paying attention to
that meal plan i know it sounds funny i’m not
sure if you guys would react the same way but
that’s how i reacted i think the lumen is a
great device if you’re training for a specific
event like a marathon or maybe even an
ultra marathon but for somebody like me
who works out three to four times a week
and surfs and plays tennis and plays golf
i don’t think i need this device what’s your
final score for this thing before i get to the
score i want to show you how i arrived at it i did
learn invaluable information about my metabolism
and how to switch between fat burning and
carb burning modes i don’t think everybody
needs a six month or year membership in order
to get metabolic information that i feel can
be figured out in the first three months of using
the product my suggestion to lumen is they adopt
a month-to-month plan for veteran users this way
they can get a monthly check up whenever they want
without having to sign up for another six months
minimum so on a scale of one to ten with 10 being
best mainly because of the rigid plans that they
offer i’m going to give the lumen a 6.95 okay i’m
going to end this video here thank you so much for
watching if you like this video do me a favor and
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and finally if you guys have a product you want me
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comments down below i might even do a review about
it you can hit me up on instagram at curt fitfi
where i post at least two times a week on other
things fitness i’ll see you on the next one