This is the original trailer from Nintendo for the Wii Fit. I watched this and the game looked like fun.
It looked like fun until I watched this parody of it…
I don’t know if the Wii will be any good for exergaming, but I’m willing to try it out. Sometimes something simple is better than the most complicated games.
The Bowflex is an exercise machine that uses flexible rods for resistance. It’s a small machine that folds up nicely and is relatively light weight when compared to weight machines that use weights for resistance. When I was looking for a weight training solution, I looked at Bowflex machines in the sporting goods stores. I decided against them because they were too tall for my basement and because it looked like a royal pain in the butt to switch between exercises.
Plus, it was EXPENSIVE. The cheapest Bowflex machine I could find was almost $600. I just wasn’t willing to spend that kind of money on flexible plastic rods. It looks like that initial price tag wasn’t the only thing to worry about with Bowflex. According to some of the people who have bought them, there’s a lot more to worry about. That financing offered by Bowflex is a little more complicated than it appears:
2/16/2007 – Silena writes:
I am a physically handicapped woman confined to a wheelchair. I was encouraged by my physical therapist to consider purchasing a bowflex after being told that my insurance could no longer pay for my therapy and the small monthly payments of $28.00 a mo. would make it affordable to maintain my physical strength. My problems began when they started doubling my pmts. without telling me. By the time my pmts. exceeded $120.00 a mo. I was left with no choice but to stop making pmts. What really upsets me is the fact they knew what my income was when I ordered this item. They knew I could not pay more per month and they still approved me knowing they were going to raise the pmts. My account was turned over to collection and my credit is ruined, and I will never be able to pay it off because it is still collecting interest.
You can read all the complaints here:
In the end, I bought an Apex weight bench, but it’s no longer available. Apex does make this Deluxe Standard Bench that is very similar, but it’s about $50 more than what I paid last year. I’m still using my weight bench off and on and the cost of the bench and the weights was less than half of what I would have paid for a Bowflex and even takes up less space.
Should you buy a Bowflex? When there are so many other options out there that are just as effective and less expensive, I think it’s best to steer clear of them.
Every week, I’ll be giving you some direction for how to actually KEEP your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight or get more active. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.
Last week I asked you, no begged you, to take it easy on yourself. I know you have a New Year’s Resolution to finish, but honestly you can’t finish it in a week. You had three options last week: Take it easy, overdo it or give up. Let’s figure out what to do this week based on your performance last week.
I Overdid It
If you jumped into your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and get active, you might have overdid it. Your muscles are sore and you feel like you’re STARVING. If that’s the case, STOP IT! Seriously, right now, throw whatever plan you had to lose weight out the freakin’ window. I’m not asking you to give up on your resolution, I’m just asking you to stop abusing yourself and move on to the “I Gave Up” section.
I Gave Up
I can’t tell you how many January firsts started with a strict New Year’s Resolution plan that ended up with a Twinkie binge by January third. Okay, that’s a lie. It was one year. The other years, I binged on something else.
If you find yourself in the position of giving up, that’s completely fine. Seriously, you don’t have to kill yourself to get healthy. All you have to do is pick yourself back up, time after time. Instead of going back to your old ways, try my New Year’s Resolution plan. You’ll be one week behind, but that’s just fine. Start from here and move on:
Evelyn Underhill said,
“Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.”
I’m not saying that eating poorly is evil, but if you use this idea for every time you eat poorly, you WILL succeed at weight loss.
I Took It Easy, Just Like You Said
The first thing I want to say is, “Good Job!” It is SO hard to take it easy, despite how it sounds. Here is your plan for Week 2:
Learn Serving Sizes and Calorie Counts
If you followed last week’s plan, you wrote down everything you ate. Excellent work. I want you to do that again this week, but this time, I want you to put the calorie counts next to all the food you ate. That means you need to measure and you need to start learning the calorie amounts for all of your favorite foods.
This is a week for education. You need to train yourself what a cup of rice looks like. You need to train yourself to know how many calories are in a Big Mac.
This is NOT a week of deprivation. You still need to eat just like you would eat before. All I’m asking you to do is to WRITE DOWN everything you eat and its caloric amount.
Eat Your Veggies and Fruits
This week, I’m going to recommend that you add two or three servings of vegetables to your diet every day. There are little check boxes on the forms for you to check off vegetable servings. You need to check off at least two servings a day. According to the USDA, you should have between 3 and 5 cups of vegetables a day. One cup is a mighty big bite to swallow, so I divide servings into half cups. Here’s a good list of veggies to try:
All I’m asking is that you make sure you eat 1 or 1 and 1/2 cups of vegetables or fruit every day.
Increase Your Exercise
I’m still telling you to go slow and easy. When I did this, the second week was actually HARDER than the first week, not because I increased my mileage, but because I wanted to increase it MORE. It was so frustrating, I complained about it on Twitter:
Here’s the run I was talking about:
And I was pushing myself too much that week. This week, I want you to increase your walking mileage to 0.75 miles five days a week. I want you to do it at the same time every day. If you want, you can increase your speed to really get yourself sweating, but if you end up sore the next day, you MUST slow down. It’s more important to exercise every day than to push yourself. Consistency is key. You need to learn the habit of exercising every day and that is WAY more important than going fast or covering a lot of miles.
Give Yourself Kudos
If you are still working toward your New Year’s Resolution, then you need to give yourself kudos. There are little boxes on the forms every day to give yourself a shiny sticker. Each day that you stay on the program, you need to acknowledge yourself and how good you are doing.
See you next week!
The Short Version:
DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat, including the measurements (i.e. 1 cup of rice) and calories.
You are allowed to ADD two or three servings of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
Increase your mileage. Walk 0.75 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
Give yourself kudos for coming this far.
We started the New Year out with a BANG! If you got an iPod Nano for Christmas, spend the extra 20 bucks and get the Nike+ so you can easily upload your runs. You don’t need a Nike+, however. You can manually enter how much you run every day. Click over to Runner+ to see all the results.
Hansenvl61 took the Level 1 challenge with exactly 10.0 miles last week!
For the second week in a row, Pooh won the Level 2 Challenge by running 19.06 miles this week. Good job! Bad form, deadz00m, you exceeded the max mileage for Level 2, so you were kicked out of the running.
Sarybabes won the Level 3 challenge with her 29.2 miles last week. Uncool, deadz00m and IMama. You went over the limit for this challenge. You should have withdrawn from this race.
deadz00m was a newcomer this week and kicked some Level 4 butt with his 38.75 miles.
Not only did deadz00m win Level 4, he finished off Level 5 with his 38.75 miles.
Welcome to the Level 6 Challenge, mangaman, you’re the winner this week with your 74.15 miles. Excellent work!
Congratulations to all the competitors! Join us at Runner+ and show off your mileage!
If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for this week’s challenges:
Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.
Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.
Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.
Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.
Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.
Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.
A study that was funded by Nintendo determined what I had already learned on my own: the Wii is fun, but it’s not a good workout.
They have measured passive gaming (finger twiddling) with active gaming (like Wii Sports) and this is what they found:
In a typical week … active gaming rather than passive gaming would increase total energy expenditure by less than 2%.
I found that out myself back when the Wii first came out. I tested various games with my heart rate monitor.
On the whole, the Wii Workout isn’t that great. It’s not quite intense enough to get your heart rate up for an extended period of time and it isn’t too much of a muscle workout. Is it exergaming? Not really… Is it better than any other gaming console for getting you out of the couch? Heck yeah!
I don’t consider the Wii to be a workout, but it’s a fun game to play and gets the family playing together more than any other video game I’ve seen. I really had big hopes for the Wii and exergaming, but this year has been more of a disappointment in that realm.
The best exergaming I found over the last few years has been the Nike+ and a free membership to Runner+. Running on the treadmill every day to beat strangers online has gotten my heart racing FAR more than the funnest of video games.
Via: Techdirt: Nintendo’s Own Study Show Wii Not So Great As Exercise
Every week, I’ll be giving you some direction for how to actually KEEP your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight or get more active. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.
Did you make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight? It’s a very popular resolution. I’m sure there are statistics to tell us how many people all over the U.S. decide to lose weight at the first of the year. The only problem is that for years, I made that resolution, but in the pit of my stomach I worried that it was going to be like last year.
No, this year is going to be different.
I would say that to myself every year as well.
It took me a long time, but I finally realized that those big New Year’s resolutions were actually part of my weight problem.
I would promise myself that I would lose weight this year. I would go on a strict diet. I would exercise until my muscles hurt. I would be diligent about everything and in the end, it would be too much. Something about restricting my diet that much and suddenly increasing my exercise would set off a survival instinct in my mind. I would become obsessed with whatever food the particular diet had restricted.
Then I would binge.
This year, if you have resolved to lose weight, please do me a favor. Don’t go on a restrictive diet. Seriously, just don’t do it. Don’t exercise yourself to exhaustion either. Really, do you think it’s going to work when it didn’t last year?
Let’s try something different.
Don’t change your eating habits just yet. Just write down EVERYTHING you eat. Don’t judge yourself when you do it. This week just write down everything you eat. If you want to do something good for yourself, ADD some veggies into your diet. Don’t take anything away from yourself, just add something healthy.
Here is a Microsoft Excel Form you can download and print up to write down your food:
If you aren’t spreadsheet saavy, you can order a Starling Fitness Journal here:
Exercise?
Yeah, I want you to exercise. I want you to think about what you would have done this week. Did you have a book that you were going to follow? Did you have a plan that you wanted to torture yourself with? That’s great!
Cut it in half.
Honestly, no matter what you were planning on doing, cut that plan in half. I want it to feel hilariously easy. I want you to feel frustrated because you’re going so slow or doing so little. Next week, you can do a little more, but this week keep your workout out short, slow and EASY.
If you want to know what I did to get started, I walked 0.5 miles on the treadmill five days a week. A half mile felt like NOTHING. It was very frustrating and after a couple of days, I wanted to increase my mileage, but I didn’t. My goal was consistency. I wanted to exercise every day at the same time. Learning that consistency was WAY more important than killing myself trying to rack up the miles.
You won’t lose any weight this week.
Sorry. No massive weight losses that make the commercials so appealing. You might even gain weight, but don’t let that stop you. Next week, we’ll be doing a little more and after a week as easy as this, you’ll actually be willing to do a little more.
As always, check with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise regime.
The Short Version:
DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat.
You are allowed to ADD a serving or two of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
Start exercise slowly. SLOW, SHORT and EASY. Whatever you were thinking of doing, cut it in half. Recommended exercise: Walk 0.5 miles five days this week.
Check with your doctor.
We ran from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve and we’ve got a jump on the New Year’s Resolution thing. If you got an iPod Nano for Christmas, spend the extra 20 bucks and get the Nike+ so you can easily upload your runs. You don’t need a Nike+, however. You can manually enter how much you run every day. Click over to Runner+ to see all the results.
jkendall took the Level 1 challenge with a total of 8.71 miles last week! Uncool, Casio! You know better. You went over the max mileage this week, so you should have withdrawn from this challenge. A special welcome to our newest runners, Gadagong, HunterA and Toasters. Thanks for joining up with us and I hope you like the challenges!
Pooh won the Level 2 Challenge by running 18.8 miles this week. Good job! Bad form, scotwills and AirRobi, you both exceeded the max mileage for Level 2, so you were kicked out of the running.
zaders won the Level 3 challenge with his 28.02 miles last week. This was his first time running with us and he beat us all! Good job!
Excellent work by marco this week. He won the Level 4 Challenge with his 37.44 miles. pierantf was right on his tail with 37.11 miles. A difference of only a third of a mile can push you over the edge in this game! Keep on running!
anderu kicked some Level 5 butt with his 49.54 miles. Good job, buddy! You deserved this win!
xray999 ran nearly unchallenged this week and took Level 6 by running 58.92 miles last week! Good job you long distance runners!
Congratulations to all the competitors! Join us at Runner+ and show off your mileage!
If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for this week’s challenges:
Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.
Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.
Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.
Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.
Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.
Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.
It’s Christmas Eve, but that doesn’t stop us from running over the holiday. It’s a great time to start running before the New Year’s Resolution people hit the streets (and gym). If you get an iPod Nano for Christmas, spend the extra 20 bucks and get the Nike+ so you can easily upload your runs. You don’t need a Nike+, however. You can manually enter how much you run every day. Click over to Runner+ to see all the results.
DietMe took the Level 1 challenge with a total of 9.99 miles last week! The REAL competition was in the middle, though with the cosmetic queen at 9.39 miles, KMKMom at 9.36 miles, and jkendall at 9.33 miles. Good race, people! A special welcome to our newest runner, Hansenvl61. Thanks for joining up with us and I hope you like the challenges!
Dacapo! won the Level 2 Challenge by running 19.91 miles this week. Good job! Bad form, sbanfield, you exceeded the max mileage for Level 2, so you were kicked out of the running. A special welcome to our newest runner, Blxm. You were also kicked out of the running because you exceeded the max mileage for this level. Since it’s your first time running with us, I won’t give you a bad form.
Mihai won the Level 3 challenge with his 28.44 miles last week. It was a well-deserved win, Mihai! Good job!
jameswood won the Level 4 Challenge with his 39.58 miles. He and marco were duking it out all week. Excellent work, people!
SLBplus won the Level 5 Challenge again with his 44.26 miles. You are just kickin’ it this holiday season!!
mkimes reclaimed the Level 6 challenge by running 58.68 miles last week! Keep up the running, folks!
Congratulations to all the competitors! Join us at Runner+ and show off your mileage!
If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for this week’s challenges:
Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.
Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.
Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.
Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.
Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.
Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.
Something about the Christmas season makes people exercise less. I don’t know what it is because I have kicked my running up a notch again this week. If you have had trouble winning these challenges, this is the week to start running again. You’ll hit the front of the pack pretty easily. Click over to Runner+ to see all the results.
DietMe took the Level 1 challenge with a total of 9.97 miles last week! A special welcome to our newest runner, Boricua. She took third place on her first try! Thanks for joining up with us and I hope you like the challenges!
Anderu won the Level 2 Challenge by running 18.57 miles this week. Good job! Bad form, scottwills, you exceeded the max mileage for Level 2, so you were kicked out of the running.
I won the Level 3 challenge again with my 28.3 miles last week. For the first time in almost a year, I did a long run last week. Luckily, I didn’t hurt my toenails this time.
I’m okay with winning the Level 3 challenge, but there is NO excuse for me winning the Level 4 Challenge with my measly 28.3 miles. tetartfred was so close to beating me. Should have worn your Nike+ while you were Christmas shopping, buddy!
SLBplus won the Level 5 Challenge with his 48.08 miles. RicC, bad form, man! You should have dropped out of Level 5 and joined Level 6 when you exceeded the max mileage.
Talk about a photo finish! xray999 won Level 6 by running 47.33 miles last week! After chasing her for weeks, he finally beat out mkimes by only 0.10 miles! Ironically, if RicC had joined the correct level, he would have won this challenge.
Congratulations to all the competitors! Join us at Runner+ and show off your mileage!
If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for this week’s challenges:
Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.
Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.
Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.
Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.
Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.
Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.
I fully expected to hate this video from VideoJug. Life explained? I had a hard time believing that a video entitled, “How To Get Rid of Man Boobs” would be useful or objective.
Guess what? It WAS:
VideoJug: How To Get Rid Of Man Boobs
Their tips were thorough:
These tips are the same whether you’re trying to get rid of man boobs, saddlebags, beer bellies or thunder thighs. The only way to tone a part of your body is a three-fold approach of healthy diet, aerobic exercise and weight training. Anyone who tells you any different is selling snake oil.
VideoJug also has a ton of other videos. I’ve included a video showing weight training for the chest area after the break: (more…)
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