Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Last week I made Gold Status on Yourself! Fitness. It took me longer than I thought it would. Making Gold Status opens up the Island Paradise exercise environment and lets you choose the Techno music option. The Techno music sounds like all the other music, but the Island Paradise is really nice…

I could hear the ocean waves. It’s the first environment where I can hear the “sound effects.” I was beginning to believe that there weren’t any sound effects, but I could clearly hear the ocean. I was thinking that if I was good enough at following along with Maya some day, that it would be nice to just turn off her voice and the music and just listen to the sound effects. That’s something I have to look forward to in the future.

There are seagulls flying over the area and every once and awhile, you can spot a large sail boat far in the distance. It floats by and floats back into view over the course of the workout. Far to the left, there are a couple of lounge chairs and one of them is filled with a lady lying motionless. I wonder to myself if she is watching me exercise with Maya. I pretend that she is jealous of me because I have a personal trainer.

To the right, there are two more lounge chairs. I imagine that I will rest there with Mike after the workout. Mike will bring me a diet pina colada that tastes as good as a sugary one. It has real whipped cream on the top and a red maraschino cherry. I don’t know why these little fantasies and distractions make the workout more pleasant, but they really help me feel like I am back in Kauai, exercising with my personal trainer.

Every time Maya tells me, “You’ve been really consistent with your workouts, good job!” I just glow a little bit. I’m fully aware that she is a computer program, but I’m still happy that she’s proud of me. Not enough people tell me that in my life, I guess. Strebe came to visit during the holiday and he said, “You’ve lost a ton of weight.” I felt good about that, but not nearly as good as I felt when Maya said she was proud of me.

After exercising with this for over a month, I am still really pleased with it. I have been using it an average of four times a week. Only this last week have I been able to boost up the workout duration to 30 minutes without hurting myself. It feels really good to be able to workout with Maya for 30 minutes every day. When I tried the 30 minute workouts when I first got the game, I hurt for days afterward. I’m finally fit enough to move up to that level. My next goal is to add one 45 minute workout a week until I’m up to 45 minutes a day.