Seven Pound Drop

Over a year ago, when I began the exergaming campaign, one of my primary interests was whether video games could be used to maintain or lose weight. But over the ensuing year, as weight did indeed drop, focus has shifted somewhat to endurance, strength and stamina building aspects of exercise, as well as wonderment at how far one can push one’s body before collapse.

For a long while, perhaps three months or more, my weight has remained relatively stable even as I’ve been adding additional miles on top of my base weekly mileage and exergaming. I haven’t been bothered by it, to be honest, since clothing has been fitting me better and my focus has been set on sheer distance. Over the last month or so, I’ve been fine tuning clothing and regimen in order to make distance runs longer, and added the goal of a half marathon in April.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me yesterday, when I stepped onto my garden variety scale for the first time in perhaps a month. Mind you, that month was also filled with yummy holiday events. The surprise was not only that I had dropped seven pounds seemingly overnight (at least since my last weigh in), but that I had been just thinking about fine tuning my eating and exercise even more in an attempt to lose weight, because I was sure I’d added some weight.

Obviously there are many things at play in one’s weight: daily, weekly, monthly fluctuations; muscle versus fat balance within the body; level, frequency and type of exercise; portions, types and balance of food; among other things.

We hear from doctors that a body can change dramatically for a short period of time; but that in its physical memory, it retains a “memory” of its former self before the change was implemented. So, following this theory, it’ll bounce back to its former “normal” state unless change is constant and indefinite. That makes sense. I’ve also wondered for a while that when the body realizes it’s being holistically changed (like shedding 70+ pounds), it’ll hold on at certain stages before allowing itself to move into the next state of transformation.

So, using my weight loss as an example, it was hard to lose the first 60 pounds. It took a lot of concentrated effort regarding exercise and food. Then, for about three months or so, my body seemed to stay the same weight wise, regardless of whether I worked out more or less, or ate more or less, or healthier or less healthy. The number on the scale remained the same. Then, one day, I had a seven pound loss without seemingly changing anything.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward. With a half marathon coming up in 12 weeks 2 days, my training has to increase. It’d be nice to lose some more weight, but my focus is on the distance, not the clothing size. So we’ll see.

Have you found something like this happening with changes you’ve made in your life? If so, please email me and let me know!

Jacket: SportHill Symmetry II

It’s cold out here. In fact, as I sit at my computer, gazing past my computer screen to the “artic tundra” outside the house, it registers as 24 degrees on the thermometer we’ve stuck outside my office window for exactly this purpose.

Twenty-four frickin degrees.

I was not anticipating this when I first strapped on my Merrell barefoot running gloves and took my first run in many years down the dirt road a few months ago. Way back then, running in eighty degree heat seemed comfortable and a lark. Now, temps are falling in the frozen zone and the road still calls.

Until recently, I’ve been ignoring the falling temperatures. Chilly fifty degree runs called for a ratty sweatshirt over my t-shirt. Of course, me being me, I didn’t want to wear my nicer sweatshirts while running and get them all sweaty. Generally I looked like a female version of Rocky hitting the local roads, pulling the hood on if it began to rain.

Since running is one of my prime times to defrag, I haven’t been generally concerned with appearance or the way in which one’s clothing affects one’s performance. I’d simply throw on something ratty, hit the roads and let my brain wander.

All that changed as the mercury dropped. My feet got cold and wet, my hands got cold, my head got cold and my trunk…well, it was cold too.

Something needed to change if I was going to continue running into the winter. I researched local health clubs for the bare minimum buy-ins. Since I’m not one to generally take exercise classes, or care if I have exercise partners, I only wanted to find someplace where I could wear my ratties and hit the treadmills for ever longer runs. While there are a few good options locally, the local roads still call, which means I actually have to outfit myself to use them.

As I’m not one to take any new endeavor lightly, I began to ask other more experienced runners what they use, what brands they were wearing, and why they liked them. The gathered information led me to purchase a few items, but I have to admit that the stuff is so darn cute it seems too cute for me to wear on the road. I’ve resisted wearing them down by wearing them out. Instead, I’ve been using them around the house and to exergame.

My reading of Runners World cover to cover began to yield other information as well. I am a target marketer’s dream. Being an early forties married mommy female, who has come to running later in life, I’m looking for their pitches to try out new items. Which brings me to SportHill.

I’d seen the SportHill ads in Runners World and ripped them out to research more online. The more I read, the more excited I got. Wow, a company that makes exactly the items I’m looking for! They can save me from frostbite and hypothermia! Fabulous!

Had to try at least one item, but which one first? I settled on the Symmetry II jacket,  as it claims to keep one warm down to 0 degrees, looks awesome, comfortable and has a fleece lined collar. Hmm…So I got it after much hemming and hawing.

It couldn’t have come sooner, as the 35-45 degree weather had kept me exergaming and homebound for a few days straight. The jacket was so cute and comfy inside that I wore it around the house feeling my mood elevate with it on. My daughter loved it too, and begged it off me and then wore it around the house the rest of the day.

The next day, it was 39 degrees out, and I was ready to go go go. I layered one t-shirt with one long sleeved t-shirt, and then put the jacket on over the two. Everything else remained the same. I must admit that when I first started the run, I was a bit frightened. I’m quite sensitive to the cold, and was fearful that I was doing something dangerous to myself.

It was chilly out, don’t get me wrong. But after the first few yards, something amazing began to happen: I warmed up. Not just my muscles in the running, my trunk became nice and toasty. This jacket was making me feel like it was fifty-five or so outside and I relaxed into the run.

The run was in fact so nice and toasty that the next time I ran, I only wore a short sleeved t-shirt under the jacket. The same effect happened. Amazing.

While SportHill is kind of on the expensive side (for me), I look forward to trying out more of their cold weather items and discussing here through the winter.

Have you tried SportHill? If so, what are your thoughts? What should I try next?

Mid-August Malaise

Image via WikipediaAlthough writers' block doesn't hit me often, it does seem to have hit this week.

Everything is going along as planned. Work outs are going well. Weight stays lower than the weeks before. A couple of friends and I have signed up for another 10K in early October, which should be fun.

We're all enjoying the lovely summer with loads of fun outside activities and healthy eating.


Is there anything in particular you'd like me to discuss at this point in August? Email me and let me know.

***

Check back tomorrow for this week's guest blogger: friend and author, Sarena Straus!

Reflection on Video Games and a 10K

Image via Wikipedia

When I embarked on this exergaming campaign at the end of 2010, I had two goals

1)      To find out if a person (me) actually could lose weight by using video games; and

2)      To lose weight.

As I’ve discussed, I really did have quite a bit of skepticism that one could actually, really, honest to goodness lose weight using video games. It didn’t equate for me at all. I honestly thought it was a bunch of marketing phooey.  Since then, I’ve learned better.

I now know that video games make working out a lot of fun, and that one (me) can lose weight by using them. Thus far, I’ve lost 25+ pounds, with my next weight goal coming up in the next couple of weeks. As we hear through the ECA’s Gamers for Health initiative, video games help hundreds of thousands of you lose weight too. They’re that good of a catalyst.

As I’ve discussed, exergames also act as a gateway for many of us, getting us to try other activities, like running as I did. Each season offers a different set of challenges and opportunities for active play inside and outside one’s house.

As the year has progressed, and I’ve gotten thinner, lighter and more fit, the number and breadth of my goals has multiplied. Each week seems to bring a new goal, and each few weeks seem to open up more goals being achieved.

In the last seven days alone I ran a 6.2 mile race – yes, that’s how long a 10K is – and fit into a size smaller jeans. Earlier this year it would not have been possible. Simply *not* *possible*.  Before last week, 6.2 miles was for crazy-insane DISTANCE RUNNER people to run (in my lay person’s estimation); it was not a distance that a *normal* jogger would do (when I did jog, as I considered myself). Now I’m looking forward to running other 10K races THIS FALL and wondering how long it will take me to scale up to run a half marathon. Um, yes. I *did* just write that.

As I just mentioned, I also fit into a size smaller Leavis 501s. Now, for me, this particular size jeans is important, because it was the size I used to steal from boyfriends in college, my 20s, my 30s and now from my husband. They may be a bit snug, but I can fit into them and button them all the way up. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t pull them up one leg all the way. So Dear Husband better either buy more jeans or watch out, as they’re going to start migrating over to me. Perhaps I’ll simply buy a couple of pairs for myself. Hm. We’ll see.

So would any of this be possible without exergames, as a friend recently asked? My early August assessment is, probably not. I still get up off the bed, couch, chair or floor to Zumba and step, which make up the bulk of my weekly workouts.  All of the other fitness and goal achievement flows from it.

How is your workout routine going in this steamy month?

Related articles

• "Video Gamers": New Book on Video Game Players and Culture (prfire.co.uk)
• Paging Dr. Mario: Are video games a health scourge or saviour? (life.nationalpost.com)

Rest Day

Image by Roslan Tangah (aka Rasso) via Flickr

This is my first post about inactivity. I thought I should make note of it, because, unlike the rest of my blog, it’s about intentional inaction, which does not come easily to me. And, please note, this picture (-->) is not me...but it sure looks like she's reaxing, doesn't it?

Basically, I’ve always been the type of person who has very intense periods of relaxation when they do in fact happen.  Friends who have travelled with me on vacation have been shocked at how inactive I can become, because I’m normally multi-tasking up a storm. Once someone I was travelling with threw a hairbrush at me in order to try to rouse me from lying on my bed in utter exhaustion so that we could go bar hopping. It didn’t work.

Not that the rest of life stops when I take a moment out of one aspect of the daily/weekly/whatever grind/plan/whatever. I still have work, chores and fun activities planned for the day, but there will consciously be no planned exercise.

I’m taking the time out because tomorrow morning I’m running my first 10K (6.2 mile) ever. It’s stunning to me that this is in fact happening, because up until a couple of months ago, I couldn’t run more than a mile without dropping. A friend and I signed up for the race and are carpooling. Our Dear Husbands and Dear Children will be there to greet us at the finish line. My goal is simply to finish while still moving forward. Wish me luck!

 ***

In other news, next Tuesday my friend and author Christina Bost Seaton will be posting a guest blog post here! Come check it out! It’s all about finding balance in life, which is also the subject of her book Say Ciao to Chow Mein: Conquering Career Burnout.

Related articles

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• Relax Already: Make a Cup of Tea (fitsugar.com)
• 8-Week Beginner 10K Running Schedule (fitsugar.com)
• 8/5/11 - Friday - Importance of Rest and Recovery/Avoid Overtraining (midwestfit.com)

One Central Log

Until recently, I used my Wii as a repository not only of my weight fluctuations, but also of all of my workouts. While it doesn’t allow for extreme differentiation, it does allow one to log workout length and relative exertion level. I’d been using it as my diary of sorts for my ongoing weight loss campaign. But as I’ve begun supplementing my video game workouts with outside runs, I’ve fallen off the Wii log. Now it’s willy nilly whether I catalogue workouts at all, and if so with varying levels of specificity.

Ultimately, the scales tell us where the weight is and the video games and distances tell us how the endurance is improving. But having a central log is good for ongoing mental check ins and being able to minutely decipher why something is working better or not at all and thus change the program.

Different people use different logs. One friend uses a floral spiral notebook that she sprays with perfume once a week. Another friend uses one of those black and white lined notebooks people used in school in the 60s. A number of people keep a religious log on their computers that they update daily. Whatever works for you works.

Not everyone keeps track on a daily basis. Some folks find time to log throughout the day. Others make sure they write things down the same time every day.  A number of people like to do weekly updates to keep lose track of their progress.

I’ve found that the Wii log generally works for me, but I’ve been considering moving the entire thing into a computer program so that I can log sleep (or lack thereof), eating and drinking, time of month (TOM) and dramatic events that I can look back on to know why my workout one day wasn’t as long or useful as another.  I’ll let you know how the new log is going as we move along.

Do you use a log? If so, what kind and in what format? How much information do you log? Have you found it useful? If so/if not, in what way(s)?

Related articles

• How To Manage And Track Your Running (fitnesstroop.com)

Gateway Effect

Image via Wikipedia

The first time I heard the term gateway effect was during the lead up to the Games for Health conference in Boston in June. Ben Sawyer, who runs the org and the conference, sent an email asking folks to think about health and games and examples of gateway effect.

I had absolutely no idea what the man was on about, so I looked up the term via Google. Ooookkkk….for those who Google it as well, you’ll notice that hundreds of thousands of links will come back for marijuana and how its gateway effect can lead one to becoming a hard core drug user. Ahem.  That was obviously not *exactly* what Ben was getting on about.

Yet his meaning quickly became clear.  At the conference, numerous side conversations led to many references at the podiums about the need to find and document examples of exergaming leading their users being active in other ways. The Robert Wood Johnson folks and Shellie Pfohl, Executive Director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, were particularly eloquent in discussing the phenomenon.

At the time, I didn’t have any examples, because ECA works with gamers, who are using exergames for their own sake. The other type of folks we deal with in ECA’s Gamers for Health initiative are folks who want to work out, and opt for exergames instead of other activities. So we rarely see or hear about folks whose use of exergames have opened them up to other types of exercise.  Yet that’s exactly what my exergaming experience seems to be doing for me.

Until two weeks ago, I solely worked out with exergames five or six days a week, as I’ve chronicled somewhat through this blog. So far it’s allowed me to shed about 22 pounds, and the scale number slowly, yet consistently keeps dropping.

But then a funny thing happened. I read “Born to Run” and recalled how much fun running had been in my youth (a really long time ago). I needed and bought a lovely new pair of all purpose shoes that happened to be of the barefoot running variety. Then, at lunch last Tuesday, which was a day that didn’t require a workout in my EA Sports Active 2 challenge, I literally figured “why not” and went for a run for the first time in seven years. On mountainous dirt roads. And I came trotting back 3.88 miles later. It was amazing.

Since then, I’ve run a few times. My longest run thus far has been 4.11 miles without getting winded nor achy. Each run day, I wake up excited to hit the road and see if I can make it as far and as fast as the time before. Each time, I run farther and faster - each time.

Yet none of this would be possible without the exergaming, which got me into shape and keeps pushing me into better shape. Both physically and psychologically, exergames have opened up a completely new world and perspective on life – that’s their gateway effect on me and it can be yours too. Try it. You’ll like it.

Related articles

• Roundup of current exergaming deals (arrowdynamicmom.wordpress.com)
• Turn Your Workout Into an Adventure With City of Epic (escapistmagazine.com)
• Prescribing Wii Fit? (physical-activity-pharmacy.com)

Week "Away"

Some of you have been asking me what’s been going on, because I haven’t posted since leaving for the Games for Health conference in Boston last Wednesday. Basically, my bad.

First, to catch you up on the conference: Games for Health was fantastic. There were loads of interesting people doing fascinating work and networking to collaborate on even more nifty projects in the future. I’m still wrapping my head around all the panels, talks, discussions and ideas that were incubated there, as well as all of the incredible folks I was able to connect with.

Second, I’ve been under other deadlines this last week - hard deadlines that crept closer as I procrastinated with other work. Then, upon returning from Games for Health, the deadlines were there waiting for me with big neon smiles. Monday morning was do, or due, day.  So I put everything else aside, including exergaming, so that all my productive time could be focused on my Monday deadline like a laser beam. Well, it worked and I got the project in on time.

That being said, I didn’t work out for a week. Last Wednesday was my last full body exergame workout. I’d originally thought I’d workout at the conference but I wanted to spend all waking time at the actual conference and I didn’t want to exergame in front of people, because I didn’t want to look goofy and/or sweat. I’m simply too shy professionally. Then, with the deadline looming, I didn’t want to divert any attention from the project.  And you know what? It was ok. Life and balance mean that sometimes one must shift focus, but that doesn’t mean that one’s overall “penumbra of foci” shifts.

My body seems to be happy with what I’ve been doing with it overall, and it’s still 20 pounds down from my starting weight. So my weight is the same as it was last week. I must say that I’m pretty happily shocked with that fact, as one would assume that the weight would start creeping back up as soon as the exergaming stopped if even for a short respite.  But such was not the case, at least for this short break.

I also started a new 9 week program on EA Sports Active 2 today and worked myself up in quite a sweat.  So I’m back at it and working toward goal #3, which is another 10 pounds by the third week in August.

So onward and downward!

Related articles

• My Anytime Fitness Date (krisgetshealthy.com)
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Weight Loss Goal #2

Weight Loss Goal #2 for me has been to have lost twenty pounds by the Games for Health conference in Boston this week, where I'll be speaking on a panel. I'm happy to report that I've met my second weight loss goal, now being down just over twenty pounds.

Weight Loss Goal #3 is losing another ten pounds by the third week in August (30 pounds total), so I have motivation not only to continue exergaming, but to keep losing!

I'm labeling this set of goals "Weight Loss Goals," because I've come to realize that I've developed other goals along the way during this campaign and challenge: strength, fitness, endurance, health, beauty and fashion. I'll post more about them all as the year progresses.

How has your year been going? Have you been meeting your goals? If not, what's been holding you back? If yes, what helps you stay the course?

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• Aerobic Exercise Alone Does Not Lead to Weight Loss (drsharma.ca)

Oi

I was feeling pretty good about my weight loss thus far, then saw pictures of myself at a friend's recent birthday party and now understand how much farther I need to go. Le sigh. :-/

Breastfeeding

*Warning* If you do not want to read about breastfeeding, or such makes you uncomfortable, do not continue reading this post.


Breastfeeding (BFing) is one of the biggest nutritional and physical gifts a mother can give her newborn. For more information on its benefits, Google “breastfeeding benefits” and start clicking links; two of the best resources are Kellymom and La Leche League. 

Unfortunately, not every mom/baby pair takes to it. Many issues can be overcome by a lot of determination by the mom, but not all can be. Similarly, social and professional pressures make exclusive or even regular BFing quite difficult for many women. We see these difficulties reflected in the declining BFing numbers as babies age. According to the CDC, nearly 3 out of 4 women try to breastfeed when their children are born, but that number plummets to approximately 13% of women continuing to breastfeed their infants at 6 months of age.

Knowing the benefits, as well as the pressure to stop, many governmental agencies have begun to nurture BFing in general, as well as extended BFing (meaning longer than 6 months), through a slew of relatively new BF-friendly laws. They’ve introduced amusingly named “baby friendly” hospitals, which make me wonder whether all other hospitals are “baby toxic” and one should keep one’s child out of them. Many states allow public BFing and mandate employer lactation support. Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go, especially in terms of public knowledge, and many women don’t know their rights.

I was not one of those women.

Many months before Dear Child was born, I knew the state laws in my and neighboring states. I knew the pros and cons, and looked forward to sharing the experience with Dear Child. Dear Husband was also supportive and very much on board. Dear Child just turned 22 months old, and we just stopped BFing entirely.

One of the plusses of BFing is that it’s supposed to help women lose their pregnancy baby weight. I saw that result in myself and my friends who were able to BF consistently and continuously for months. In the first six weeks, breastfeeding helped me take off the 30 pounds I put on during pregnancy, which is a fairly typical result.

(Thus far during this exergaming process, I’ve been calling the weight I wanted to take off my “baby weight.” However, I was until now too embarrassed to admit that the weight was put on in the years leading up to pregnancy. So they’re better categorized as my “married weight.”)

But after that first post partum weight loss, BFing women are discouraged from losing weight too fast – no more than a pound a week. The theory is that losing weight fast puts too many toxins once stored in your fat cells into your breast milk to be fed directly to your baby. I can’t speak for many other moms, but that was one of my props for not losing weight, let alone not losing it too fast.

Since beginning exergaming a few months ago, I’ve also noticed that my body hasn’t allowed me to lose weight very fast. I think it’s due to BFing.  There were a few days when I was too preoccupied to eat very much of anything, and I continued to exergame. Yet I didn’t lose any weight. I think, and I can’t find any studies to back up this theory, my body held onto the weight because it knew I was still feeding my child and presumably was trying to keep that supply consistent. Again, I can’t prove it, and can’t find any studies on it either, but I hope someone does study this hypothesis. I for one would be very interested in the results.

But now I’m speaking as a former BFing mom. Dear Child and I stopped at 22 months last week. I thought it might take a month or two to but our new routine seems to be working of snuggling while reading and drinking milk. I actually seem to be more saddened by the end of BFing than Dear Child, which I’ve heard is fairly common (another thing to be studied by clinicians). But my emotionality goes along with the general nausea, sleepiness and dizziness, which I’m told is caused by the hormonal changes, which must be pretty drastic.

I’m also wondering whether the weight loss plateau last month was caused partially because we stopped Dear Child’s second to last BFing, whether weight loss will plateau a bit now, and whether losing weight will become a bit easier moving forward. As with everything, we’ll see!

If you have any feedback, BFing stories, etc, please post a comment here or feel free to email me. I’d love to hear from you.

Related articles

• Breastfeeding FAQ (enfamil.com)
• How hard is it to lose weight after having a baby? (johnisfit.com)
• Breastfeed mums 'forced to quit' (bbc.co.uk)
• Breastfeeding Questions & Concerns (enfamil.com)
• Successful Weight Loss - Losing Weight After Pregnancy (warmanfu.wordpress.com)
• Recovering from Childbirth (enfamil.com)

Viruses

Last week's technical debacle pretty much fried my nerve ends that had not already previously dis-attached since the bridge going out incident. After my last blog post of 4/20, I was more than ready to settle in for a quiet Easter weekend. Alas, such was not to be the case...

Unfortunately, Dear Child had caught a bug from someone someplace in our township and came down with what will forever be called "that first stomach bug."

Who knew (other than more experienced parents) that a child could throw up once, not eat for three days and then poop enough for five well-fed adults? One simply does not intuit that from childfree life. Nor does one know that one can become best friends with a pediatrician who LOVES to hear your anxious voice at 3:30 am night after night after night...

One learns so many things during a child's "first stomach bug."

I did not know that the banana, rice, apples & toast (BRAT) diet excludes apple juice. It seems that the juice form of the fruit has the opposite effect on human stomachs (natch).

I did not know that Pedialyte comes in yummy flavors and can be made into groovy ice cubes.

So much learning, so little time...but thank God the bug was programmed to run its course in approximately 36 hours, which meant that Dear Child was better for Easter. My nerves sang in jubilation and were ready to catch up and get ahead on a number of projects big and small, when....

My computer came down with its own virus someplace from someone, which will always be known as the "Vista Security 2011 Fiasco." At first, being technically naive, I believed that I need to buy Vista Security to stop getting pop-ups warning me of breaches in my McAfee Firewall.

After days of ignoring, then searching the desktop, then trying to buy the program, I realized as I was reading the terms of purchase that there were typos in the online document. Now, typos we see everywhere, even in this blog, but this was supposedly a Microsoft agreement. There is no way in this universe that Microsoft would ever, and I repeat ever, have a typo in one of their contracts. They're about as anal as I am about contracts. And there are more Microsoft lawyers looking at the same documents before they go live.

So I knew something was afoot.

Upon a quick Google search, I had what I needed: numerous website giving me instructions on how to wipe the virus from my computer. Yet none of them worked.

Finally, I called McAfee and paid the $90 to have them take over my computer and clean it for me. That $90 was money extremely well spent.

Dear Child and computer are both healthy again. My exergaming workouts continue. Weight loss carries on. And now, ten days later, I'm able to catch up and get ahead on projects that are stockpiled. God willing, we'll be free of other such viruses and seriously horrible impediments for quite some time.

Gloomy Day Blues

Today I'm having the gloomy day blues.

After it was eighty and bright yesterday, the rain returned and the temperatures have gone down to the high forties today.  On top of that add an entire family of snotty allergy sufferers, all doped up on Claritin, and it makes for a day when the To Do list looks insurmountable and working out feels, well, blech.

We all get these wish I could stay at home and snuggle into a sweater or bed kind of days. It's easier to do when one is a toddler. One simply needs to rub one’s eyes and say "Seepy" a few times for the parental units catch on and solve the issue. But for us adults, the To Do list calls and we plow forward, while really wanting to fall asleep in our chair.

I wonder what the equivalent is in the Middle East. They don't have overcast or allergy filled days - ever. Sure, it gets hot, but it's dry heat and SUNNY. I wonder if, for folks there, it's the sand storm blues.  But I digress.

Yesterday’s weekly weigh in was relatively satisfying. I hadn’t gained any weight, and I hadn’t lost any either. I’d been a bit freaked out because a mid-week weigh in had shown a ten pound weight spike. But that was inconsistent with all other weigh ins last week, so I’m happy to claim the status quo weight.

It feels like my body isn’t necessarily at a plateau, but rather regrouping before the next series of losses. After working out, and losing weight, steadily for about four months (and fifteen pounds), I think my body deserves the momentary rest to regroup. Lord knows I do. But then, that’s probably the gloomy day blues talking.

I wonder what you all do out there to brighten up on days like today? Do you give in to the ache to sleep, or do you power up with caffeine?

Feel free to email me or comment here. I'd love to try your tricks and report back in a future blog post.

The Biggest Loser Challenge

When I began the Gamers for Health exergaming initiative, my driving force was to use The Biggest Loser (TBL) exergame. I had watched the show in awe, and would sometimes get quite emotional about the physical and emotional hurdles the contestants would conquer. When I was a jock, oh so many years (decades!) ago, I’d had many coaches like Gillian, but my most effective coach had been one whose quiet approach was quite similar to Bob. For those of you who have never watched the show, they are the two main trainers, and there are presently two more who seem to kick ass through kickboxing cross training.

 In the last couple of weeks, I’ve catalogued my nervousness and sense of loss as my months with EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2) came to a close. I really dug that video game. And it dragged me to the edge of my abilities to help me extend my limits. It was my uncomfortable comfort zone, and I loved it.

Last week, I began The Biggest Loser Challenge (TBLC) for Wii. Going into it, I made a couple of mistakes that impacted my workouts. First, I didn’t use my balance board – big mistake. Second, I programmed my profile to give me 40 minute workouts – also a mistake. Again, after EASA2, I was ready for a workout to meet or surpass my current fitness level, and that would pull me to new levels of sweat and pain. These two miscalculations cost me a week of weight loss, but gave me a week of new knowledge. If you’re used to running sprints, changing to a slow job is not gonna push you to further fitness levels.

Yesterday, in a sense of desperation before running screaming back to EASA2, I created a new profile and used the balance board to measure my weight. The simple addition of the balance board opened up a whole new level – a “secret level,” if you will - of the workouts. For some reason, doing pushups on the balance board had sweat dripping off me onto the board, whereas those same pushups on the floor only worked my muscles. The balance board did something to throw the regular pushup into hyper overdrive. It was a whole different animal.  Basically all of the exercises yesterday were like that.

Comparatively, last week I sweat a little bit, but got really concerned that I wasn’t getting a good enough burn. My weight also didn’t seem to be moving anywhere, and instead went up a couple pounds, which broke my one pound a week losing streak and had me a bit freaked out. I’ll discuss this more in another post this week. I was glum, disappointed and told those who asked that I really didn’t want to dismiss TBLC, so I needed to go all out on the workout this week to give it another chance.

Well, the addition of the balance board and the extra time in the workout did the trick. Last week, I’d programmed in 40 minute workouts, which took me about 48 minutes to complete. Yesterday, I programmed in a 50 minute program, which actually took me 1 hour and 9 minutes. It’s an understatement to say that I sweat and had shortness of breath. I SWEAT, was GASPING for breath at many points in the workout and my heart raced. It felt like I sweat out five pounds, which for me is a big compliment.

I look forward to seeing how the workout goes tomorrow, and whether I can complete as many sets with the precision of “a yoga master.” Hopefully there will be a lot of sweat involved. Buy it.

Full Disclosure: THQ gave me a copy of The Biggest Loser Challenge to try out and use.

Running to Catch Up

This past month has been quite a doozy of multi-tasking, with bridges going out, ear infections and other like stuff. The picture that may or may not appear at the beginning of this post? It's part of the To Do list. Thanks Shana for the advice on how to begin posting pics.

So, moving forward, I have a backlog of some topics that people would like answered, many dealing with fitting exergaming into an already packed lifestyle, and some more technical - like how to program a step aerobics class into Wii Fit. I'll be moving through them one at a time, but would also like input from you. Feel free to comment here, or email me, and let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to cover regarding fitness, exergaming, life balance, or such like.

Thanks, and it's off to work out with Bob in The Biggest Loser 2 for Wii!

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Parenting Induced Stress

Stress comes in many forms, but one could argue that none is more intense than that brought on by parenting and the real and imagined worries engendered by it.

As noted in an earlier post, The Great Bridge Episode of 2011 (TGBE11) was uncomfortable for me, but created Exodus levels of stress regarding how it could impact my child, especially in a case of potential emergency. We couldn't just walk off the property; and even if we could, quickly getting to a hospital was nearly impossible during TGBE11.

This week has opened my eyes to similar stress arising out of possible illness.

You see, my child rarely gets sick, but is allergy prone, as are both me and Dear Husband (DH); but while I and DH can take medication to deal with the symptoms, my child's doctor had prohibited her taking them due to her young age.

Well, this week, she had teary eyes, running nose, drooling, occasional coughing and what I thought were weird bites. We kept talking to her doctor every day and he said she was okay and simply teething and had regular allergies, and that all of the symptoms arose from those two things. Then at night, when we called night after night with different symptoms, he'd talk us through each one and again say she wasn't communicable, she wasn't sick and that it was just allergies and teething loop back to the beginning.

Then, last night, she was up (as were DH and me) all night for the third night in a row, moaning and screaming in fear and pain. It was scary.

We brought her into his office this morning. Turns out those big bites, they're hives; her seasonal allergies are that intense. She also has a horrible ear infection. Oh, and she is indeed teething. All three things together are the perfect storm of hideous symptoms, impossibility of sleep and "general malaise." Within 30 minutes of taking the prescribed Claritin, her hives began to subside and her teary eyes began to close in comfort. Hopefully the antibiotic will help the ear infection soon as well.

Parenting is hard, and intense, and scary, and immensely rewarding all at the same time. It consumes one's energy as much as one's heart and soul. So while I continue to work out, I also acknowledge that life is larger than just one piece like exergaming, and we all try to piece things together as best we can.

Fear & Food (3.24.11)

Image via Wikipedia

I was whipping along, happy in my weekly progress and slowly plowing through my first personal goals, when life, as it is sometimes apt to do, threw my weight loss a curve ball.

As is not often the case, it could not have been anticipated, as many have called what happened an act of God. You see, last week the East coast saw some rain. Make that buckets full of torrential rain and you might have the correct idea. We were impacted, because Dear Husband was travelling for work and the bridge we use to access the outside world was literally washed away. All of last week I would stand looking at the whitewater that was the river between us and, well, everything else. And did I mention that our cars were safely nestled in our garage on our side of the river? :Sigh:

So my child and I were stuck at home alone with no route of vehicular egress and I was stressed. What if anything happened and we needed emergency services? What if something happened to me and my child was stuck alone? What if, what if, what if?

While I continued to religiously do my EA Sports Active 2 routine, with my child trying to do it alongside me, I needed to attend to my child’s needs, bridge repair coordination, work and keeping Dear Husband abreast of the situation, which seemed to change most hours of most days: more rain, sleet, snow, ice, walk bridge, walk bridge warping, and the list went on and on. It’s one thing to be concerned and handle inconveniences; it’s a completely different experience to go through those same things as a parent.

After my child went to bed at night, I’d have a beer (or two), replay the day, try to get ahead on things for the following day, plan out potential crisis aversion and….emotionally eat. It’s not like we have much unhealthy stuff in the house (shucksthank God), but as with anything else, something in moderation like a few cheddar bunnies turns into something else entirely when one goes off the reservation – like consuming an entire box of cheddar bunnies in one sitting.

End results: Dear Husband is home, bridge is completely repaired, child is happy and healthy, my EA Sports Active 2 trainer is happy that I completed all of the required workouts last week, I was tremendously productive in work, I got very little sleep and ate waaaayyyyyy too much. So at this week’s weigh in, I was up two pounds instead of down one.

Final analysis, I am happy that everyone is healthy; things could have been much worse (our hearts and prayers are with the people of Japan and the Middle East); we’re grateful for our friends around the world who offered immediate support; and I have a new understanding of emotional eating in general and my emotional eating in particular. It’s something I’ll watch out for in stressful situations, but will also embrace as a short term necessity. So long as one gets back to the cycle of healthy eating, exercise and healthy choices, all is not lost – in fact, insight makes us all winners.

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EA Sports Active 2 Wii Part II (3.14.11)

This is the second in a two part discussion of EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2), answering some of the questions I’ve been getting on this particular product. I want to reiterate that I love the product. It’s pretty hard, and the circuit is always full of loads of squats and strength training.

Now, to get back to answering direct questions…

People ask about time commitments. The challenges require you to work out 4 days a week, taking 3 rest days. The 21-day challenge workouts start out at around 20 minutes and scale up over the 21 days to 40 minutes in length. The 9-week challenge workouts start at around 35 minutes and scale up beyond 45 minutes in length. Presently I’m five weeks in and my workouts are averaging around 45 minutes. I generally do the regular challenge workout and add a second workout to get my time over an hour. So that can mean, for example, a 20 minute challenge workout plus a hard forty minute mountain gravity workout, or a 40 minute challenge workout plus a 30 minute step aerobics class.

Other than the challenges, there are a lot of other options. I’ve tried out a bunch of their other single session workouts that are pre-programmed into the disc and particularly like the mountain gravity and core upper body workouts. They also have one, whose name I forget, but it’s basically the “ya wanna try to kill yourself” workout - that one really makes you sweat. Additionally, you can ask the trainer(s) to create a new workout targeting the body area or type of exercise you want. And then there’s the ability for you to create your own workouts using all of the exercises they offer. I’ve used this to create multiple step aerobics classes for myself that I use routinely.

EASA2 also allows you to go online, workout with groups, find additional exercise options and there’s an online help component too. While I haven’t used any of the online resources, I hear from many people that they’re as great as everything on the disc.

As I mentioned above, weight training is integrated into all of their workouts. They give you a stretch band to use, along with handles, but for someone looking for instructions on everything related to video games, I was flummoxed on how to set the thing up. Probably from a company standpoint, it seems intuitive that someone would know, but I’m admitting here that this someone looked at the handles, looked at the band, looked for instructions and continuously went through that loop. It took me two weeks to realize that I simply needed to tie the ends of the cord around one loop of the offered hand holds. Let me simply say that the strength workouts are much easier once one has attached the handholds.

The program often tells you to lengthen your hold on the band to make the workout easier and to shorten it to make it more rigorous. I’d like to add that if you have them, you can also substitute free weights for the fitness band. While I have free weights, I haven’t gone there yet, as I get a nice burn from using the fitness band.

While I love EASA2 for Wii, and would suggest that it’s great for most people, I would caution folks with bad joints to use something a little less strenuous to start. The constant squats, mountainclimbers, running and jumping could be very intense for someone with bad joints. For such a person, I’d advise starting with, for example, a Gamercize stepper, Wii FIT or Just Dance 2 in order to build up the muscles around one’s joints before trying EASA2.

Buy It.

Full Disclosure:  EA gave me a free copy of EA Sports Active 2 to try out and use.

EA Sports Active 2 Wii Part I (3.10.11)

I’ve been using EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2) on the Wii for about eight weeks now. First I tried the 21 day challenge, and presently I’m in the middle of the nine week challenge. The game offers many things to most people, and in general it’s an extremely well rounded kick butt workout.

First, they set all action in what they describe as a desert health spa. All activity is virtually outside with clouds, fountains, mountains and dirt paths. I like it. At least for me, it feels more open and airier than some exergames that have solid backgrounds or interior roomscapes.

Second, you can choose your fitness level. They offer easy, medium and hard levels for all of their workouts, which is generally really nice as you can calibrate your 21-day or 9-week challenge to where you feel you are in the fitness spectrum.

I hear from bunches of people who start out on the easy level, which is still quite physically challenging, and move on to medium and hard for their subsequent challenges and workouts. The only difference I can tell between the levels is number of repetitions in each set, which also effects time – the easy workout level being shorter than the hard.

So, for example, an easy set of the dreaded mountainclimbers could be 40 reps, the medium 45 and the hard 55. On a side note, it’s extremely helpful for you to add the yoga pose called “child’s pose” directly after a set of these, as well sets of the straight arm plank, in my humble opinion and I do one every time.

People often ask what I’m doing and on what level. Both my 21-day and 9-week program have been on the hard level, my presumption being that my body will (hopefully) quickly tone up to handle it. During the first week I generally thought I was going to die, especially if I had multiple sets of mountainclimbers, pushups or straight arm planks in a given daily workout. Now eight weeks in, I can make it through three or more sets of the above exercises without collapsing, cheating or falling over. The child’s pose mentioned above really helps my ability to stand back up after a quick stretch.

There’s a lot to say about EASA2, most of it good. I’ll be talking about time commitments, strength training, the online components and more in my next blog post.

Again, we’d love to hear about how things are going with you. Feel free to drop me a line at jenn at theeca.com.

Full Disclosure:  EA gave me a free copy of EA Sports Active 2 to try out and use.

Trust (3.1.11)

Today was my official weigh in day, and I was down another pound – that’s eleven overall for those of you keeping track. The first couple of weeks, I weighed myself at different times of the day, with different clothing on, and it should go without saying that I also weighed myself every single day. In talking to other women, I found that that’s totally normal for a woman starting up a new fitness regimen. For the male gamers I spoke with, whose last weigh in was at their last attended annual physical, this compulsiveness seemed a bit *interesting.*

In any case, as the weeks have progressed, my weigh ins have become more spaced out. First it was every other day, or only to check in with myself; then every few days; and now generally once per week. I also calmed down about what I put on for the weigh in, since it was all about the same size, thickness, and thus probably weight. Eventually, I realized that my weight would fluctuate both up and down throughout the week, and that every Tuesday, seemingly like clockwork, I’d get on the scale at one pound lower than the previous week. Amazing.

The first few weeks, I felt like I was hanging onto a ledge by my fingernails. Would this work? Did I need to do ninja-crazy four hour workouts to see minimal results? Would my body “allow” me to shed the pounds? Again, this is obviously a woman speaking. Overanalyzed and unscientific.

Dear Husband would tell me that it was all about numbers in versus numbers out. But as women gamers know, it never seems quite so easy to us. But with time, I’ve learned that slow steady progress is scientific, and predictable, and trustworthy.

All of this has engendered trust in exergaming and in the process; and I’m now beginning to look forward with hopeful anticipation to reaching my next goal(s).