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

Hi,

I enjoyed your reviews on the Xavix system. I felt they were the best on the web. I was wondering if you are going to CES 2007 and if you will be checking out and reporting on the Xavix booth.

Both my wife and I exercise daily because of the Xavix. It is much more fun than other methods.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Ronnie

Ronnie,

Yes, we ARE going to CES! We’re actually leaving today to catch the pre-show press events. I am going to visit the Xavix booth to see if they have anything new. BTW, they finally have the Lifestyle Manager available, which is a scale that connects to the Xavix and keeps track of your weight, etc.

• xavixstore.com – XaviX Lifestyle Manager

I did a comparison of Xavix to the Nintendo Wii for The Gadgets Page:

• The Gadgets Page » Xavix Vs. Nintendo Wii

Some of the conclusions I came to won’t apply to you because you have already invested in the console, but you might find it interesting.

Thanks for the uplifting email. I really appreciate it. Sometimes I feel like I write Starling Fitness just for myself because I hardly ever hear feedback from the readers. I can see the stats, but they are quiet people who hit the site every day. For all I know, they just look at the pictures… It’s really nice to get a positive email from someone who has read my entries.

Thanks again,
Laura Moncur

I know I’ve been talking about the Nike + iPod a lot lately. That’s because they keep impressing me. They are truly the only thing that has kept me running this holiday season. It’s bloody cold outside here in Utah and the treadmill can be mighty boring. I need a little extra incentive to keep my feet moving and Nike + keeps giving it to me. The latest? Nike + New Year’s Resolutions:

• NIKE+ : Resolutions

By using my Nike + iPod, I can track how many miles I run in January. My resolution?

I stopped going to Weight Watchers a few months ago, but I have honestly had trouble staying motivated. Every time I feel myself slipping, I use the threat of having to go back to the meetings. I learned a lot from Weight Watchers, but I really don’t want to go back to the weekly meetings. If I don’t run 30 miles in January, I have to go back.

What’s your resolution?

When I first got my Nike +, I noticed the feature in their software to challenge your friends to a race. I thought it was really cool, but I didn’t have any friends with a Nike +, so I just ignored it. After reading the forums, however, I noticed that Nike had set up a whole section of their running forums to find people to race with on challenges. Just in case you missed it, too, here’s the link:

• Support Forums : Challenges

I have to admit that this has become my favorite feature of the Nike + software. I did my walk this morning and as soon as I was done, I ran to the computer to sync my iPod with the computer. As soon as it was finished, I logged onto Nike + to see how I rated on the challenges I’m participating in. For the first time ever, I was in second place. Of course, all of that could change the minute the other challengers sync their iPods, but for a brief moment, I am in second place. I took a screen shot of it just to remember it!

I have had a really hard time with motivation to exercise lately. I had set up goal after goal on my Nike +. I made them really easy goals. All I had to do was run three times a week and I would make it, but it just wasn’t working for me. The minute I joined these challenges, my motivation sky-rocketed. I would look at a runner who was maybe one or two people in front of me and I would try to beat their mileage. My competitive streak just kicked into full gear right in the middle of the Christmas season. Whoever said that it was hard to keep up with your exercise program in December hasn’t been challenged on Nike + yet.

If you have a Nike +, you’re really doing yourself a disservice not joining a challenge or two. If you don’t already have one, I’ll be honest, you don’t need one. You don’t need an iPod, Nike + or even high tech sportswear to stay fit this winter. All you need is the will to do it. Try challenging a friend to log your runs by hand. See who can run the furthest from now until New Year’s. Get a jump on your New Year’s Resolution and start exercising now!

This just in from Jim in Tampa, Florida, Bike-O-Vision has created a series of DVDs that allow you to envision riding the world on your bike. They are very similar to my walking DVDs. You ride your exercise bike in front of your television and watch the beautiful scenery go by. It’s like really being there, except you don’t have to freeze in the cold or sweat it out in the humid heat.

• Bike-O-Vision Cycling Spinning DVDs

These videos are exactly what I wanted to exist a year ago when I started filming my own walking videos. You can see them here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Walking Videos For Sale

It’s great to see that other companies are doing the same thing. I haven’t been able to record bicycle rides because the vibration is so intense that the video was unwatchable. I’m so glad that a professional company is getting this footage and making it available to all of us!

Thanks, Jim!

Here it is. I tested the Nintendo Wii with my heart rate monitor. We played Wii Sports, Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and Rayman Raving Rabbids. This commercial gives you a pretty good idea of how much movement you will be doing when you play. There is a scene where the mom is running in the game and she can’t help but move her feet. That exact thing happened to me. We were playing Rayman and I had to run as fast as I could to deliver a bomb to a bunny instead of letting it blow up in my face. You run by moving your arms up and down as if you’re jogging. You could do it sitting down, but you really are faster if you stand up. I couldn’t help but run in place. Mike said, “You don’t need to move your feet.” I shouted back, “Shut up!” and got the fastest time of anyone else. Moving your feet makes you move faster too and my heart rate monitor read 129 bpm.

On the whole, however, most of the games didn’t get my heart rate any higher than it was while I sat on the couch watching others play. Tennis, bowling and baseball on Wii Sports didn’t really do anything for me. The boxing, however, got my heart rate up to 127 bpm. It was a little frustrating, however, because it didn’t feel like my punching in the air had anything to do with what was happening on the screen. Worse still, Dan knocked me out in only three rounds. I hate to lose.

Monkey Ball Banana Blitz sucks. Sorry… I really hate to say it because I have LOVED Monkey Ball on the Xbox, but the mini-games are NOT intutitive at all. They really didn’t use the Wii controller well. None of the games got my heart rate up at all except the Monkey Boxing. Ironically, the Monkey Boxing was way more responsive than the boxing on Wii Sports. If you like boxing, I would totally recommend Monkey Ball. Every time I threw a punch, my monkey moved it’s arms. It may not have hit the other monkey, but it at least tried, which is more than I can say for the responsiveness of the Wii Sports boxing.

The hands down favorite, however, is Rayman Raving Rabbids. From cow throwing to shooting bunnies, it was the most fun. It didn’t bring my heart rate up at all except on “Bunnies Don’t Give Gifts” where I had to sprint with the bomb and the “Bunnies Don’t Know What To Do With Cows.” If Rayman wasn’t a cardio workout, it definitely did something for my arms because the next day, Mike, Dan and I had arm soreness. Stacey was tough, but I think she works in at an insurance company where she has to lift thousands of claim forms every day or something…

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!

Valerie from iPortion was the first to send me a link to this video game bike controller.

• I Make Projects – VR Bike Simulator

I was so excited about it, but the specifications looked out of my league, so I emailed Mike, my personal hack-king. This project is very clever, but the components probably won’t stand up to heavy duty use. If you ride your exercise bike as much as I do during the winter, then you’ll probably have to reattach or readjust parts of this controller from time to time. You may even need to replace the most vulnerable components with repeated use.

More importantly, my house is very small, so my exercise bike sits in the living room. There’s no way that I’m going to let a Frankenstein video game controller sit in the living room with the Christmas tree and the puffy pillows. Sadly, I’m far too vain to even try this really cool controller, but that doesn’t mean that people with bigger houses can’t make something like this work. It might be ugly, but it looks like it works pretty well.

Elaine left this post on my entry about Nike clothes being so elitist:

• Starling Fitness » Why I’m Angry At Nike

“I have this experience every time I go to REI and most of the outdoor shops locally, not so much with tops as with bottoms. What, a woman with some hips can’t go hiking?

“I really need a pair of rain pants to keep cycling in the fall/winter, and I’m totally dreading the experience. (Suggestions welcome, actually.)”

The cool thing about REI (unlike Nike) is that they listen. They left this comment on Elaine’s weblog:

• emergency weblog » links for 2006-11-14

“I read a commentary of yours from 9/3 regarding REI not having any rainpants to fit you (Why I’m Angry at Nike). Please keep your eyes open at REI (especially REI.com) beginnig in Jan. 2007! I hope you will be pleased. If you have any questions please email me – I am personally working on this project. Take care!”

Next time you feel hopeless about the way you’re being treated, remember Elaine’s experience. She let the world know what she needed and the world listened and responded.

A big kudo to REI for releasing plus-sized exercise wear!

My sister and her husband sat in line for nine hours outside in the cold, November weather to be one of the first people to get a Nintendo Wii. Me? I talked to them on the phone and called a few stores around town to see if their prospects were better there. The next day, they invited us over to play with their new toy. We played Wii Sports, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and Rayman Raving Rabbids. The next day, Stacey called me:

“Hi, how are you doing?”

“My arms are killing me!”

“Dan has been complaining all morning. You guys are wimps.”

For two days, my biceps and forearms twinged with pain whenever I picked anything up. Three out of four of us were seriously given a good workout by the Wii games. The reason is the new Wii Nunchuck controller. To punch out the monkey, you need to actually punch with the controller. To run away from the bunnies, you need to move your arms up and down really quickly like you’re running. There was a lot of hype around those Wii controllers and after playing with them for over four hours, I can tell you that none of it was hype. They really are as cool and fun as Nintendo tried to tell us they were.

Since we played Rayman Raving Rabbids more than any of the others, there must be something about psychotic bunnies that really entices me to run fast, play hard and throw cows. I was disturbed by the idea of shooting bunnies, blowing them up and pushing them off the dance floor, but after a few minutes of torture at their hands, I had no qualms about delivering that burning package of explosives into the hands of one very psychotic bunny.

I’m itching to play more so I can do a full review. I guess I should have been out in the cold with them waiting for my own Wii. I had no idea it would be so fun…

You are looking at a computer hack that turns your favorite puzzle game, Tetris, into a weightlifting activity. It may look like PVC pipe and buckets right now, but this is a prototype for a new type of video game.

• Tetris Weightlifting

Tim Tucker, a computer design engineer with a Masters from Indiana University, created this apparatus to play Tetris and has released the information to build one yourself. Wondering how it works? He explains it here:

• Tetris Weightlifting – How It Works

You pull one handle to move the block left or right and pull both of them to drop the block. There’s no explanation on how to rotate the block, but as far as weight-lifting ideas goes, it seems a lot more entertaining than just sitting there and lifting weights.

Exergaming is an idea that has been difficult to catch on with the big console companies like Playstation and Xbox. It appears that we are going to have to create this for ourselves in our basements and workshops. Good idea, Tim! Hat’s off to you!

Via: DDR and Video Games: Not Quite Enough?

When I first started exercising, it was always a struggle to find any exercise clothes to fit me. I remember finding some plus-sized shorts and tops at K-Mart once. I was so grateful that they had my size that I bought EVERYTHING that fit me, despite color or fashion. I just wanted anything to fit me and I am STILL grateful to K-Mart for that day. Even though I’m down to regular sizes now, I still hit K-Mart first to give them a chance at my money.

Wendy Bumgardner at About.com has a great entry about Plus-Sized exercise clothes:

• Plus-Size Walking Clothes

Having enough workout wear is essential. I always set out my workout clothes the night before so I don’t have to make decisions when I’m half-asleep. I just throw on the clothes and get moving. I always make sure I have at least seven outfits so that if I want to exercise every day this week, I can. I don’t want to have to worry about doing laundry before I can workout and I NEVER want to have to wear the same sweaty clothes two days in a row. I did that enough in junior high dance class for a lifetime.

Don’t let the fashion designers tell you that you can’t workout just because they refuse to admit that you exist. Fashion designers aren’t fitness experts. Find a company that makes clothing that fits you and reward them with your loyalty.