Category: Move It Mama Monday!

Topics on health, fitness, exercise and how to get your assets moving, posted on Mondays

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Move It Mama Monday! Walking, karate and goals

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I’ve been playing Walk It Out! for two weeks now and can definitely say I’m addicted to the game. I’m so addicted that I got up early yesterday (Mother’s Day) to make sure I squeezed in an hour of playing/walking time before the kids and the Hubster kicked off the Mother’s Day festivities. I walked about 5 miles on my DDR pad and was very tired later in the day.

So Walk It Out! has become my new favorite exercise game. I have decided to alternate days of Walk It Out! with actually walking outside, since the weather has been so nice lately, and since walking outside will take me past the neighborhood tennis courts. I like to stop at the tennis courts when I run or walk to practice karate for 20 minutes or so before finishing my route. I haven’t kept up with my karate practice, which is bad, but after a week or so of getting up early to play Walk It Out! I’m finally feeling awake enough in the mornings to get back into the swing of things. And it turns out this is a good thing because I’ve recently been informed that the Hubster and I will be testing for 3rd degree black belt at the end of summer.

Wow. Who’d have thought I’d make it this far in karate? But I have made it and that means I’ll really need to stay on target with my practice. My biggest problems with practicing karate tends to be time and location. For months, I hadn’t been able to figure out a good time to practice. Honestly, it’s not something I prefer to do when the kids are home and running around because I need to be able to concentrate on what I’m doing. Plus I’m always afraid one of the kids is suddenly going to show up underfoot and get accidentally kicked or karate chopped.

As for location, the two best locations I know of are the local tennis courts and the Y indoor basketball court. Each is ideal for karate practice since they offer so much empty space to move around in. However, I can’t find time to do karate practice AND water aerobics when I’m at the Y, and as for the tennis courts… Well, they’re outside, and if the weather is sucky, I just don’t have the motivation to go out into the rain/snow/heat to do what I need to do.

I finally decided that the only way karate practice was going to get done was if I made it a priority and that meant doing it first thing in the morning. Thus I’ve been getting up early to walk and then practice. This is where Walk It Out! has really helped, because I’ve been able to train myself to get up early to play the game (it’s EASY to play and I enjoy it a lot, so I have no excuse not to get up and do it!). Making the transition from Walk It Out! to actually walking outside and then doing karate practice turned out not to be so hard. I’m still walking, which is still easy for me to do at an early morning hour, and once I’ve walked a mile or so, it’s not hard to convince myself to stop and do a kata. And hey, if that first kata goes well, why not try a second or even a third before I go back to my easy, enjoyable outdoor walk.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I’ve been able to get back into karate practice and early morning workouts in general by making it easy and fun. And I think that’s the attitude I should take when I approach any physical activity. Is it easy for me to do? In other words, can I just jump right in and get started, even when I’m half-blind with sleep? And will I enjoy it enough to keep doing it every morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30AM?

So far the answers have been “Yes!” to both activities. We’ll see how well I continue to do with my new workout schedule.

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Move It Mama Monday – Walk It Out!

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When it comes to working out, I have a couple of simple rules. First, find an activity that you really enjoy doing, and second, make it easy to do that activity.

Konami’s new fitness game, Walk It Out!, definitely plays by those rules. As the title indicates, it’s a game about walking. Yes, you heard me, a game about walking. No, seriously. You play the game by walking.

Okay, it seems like a ridiculous idea, I know, but when looking for new Wii games recently, I noticed that the reviews for Walk It Out! on Amazon.com were for the most part very positive. So I decided to give it a try. I know from previous experience that walking is a good way to stay fit, and that I enjoy it. It’s easy, very relaxing, and if I do it often enough, my legs really shape up. But I dropped out of the habit for a number of reasons – kids, schedule problems, pollen allergies, bum knees that hate cold weather, etc. Walk It Out! let’s me get in a walk without having to worry about any of those problems.

The premise is simple. You walk in time to the beat of the music. As you walk, you accrue points, which you can spend on various floating icons that appear in the landscape around you. This landscape, by the way, is called “Rhythm Island,” and it has plenty of places to roam around in. The floating icons that appear all over the place will unlock either landscape items like trees, houses, gardens, or cars; new music tracks to walk to; different parts of the island to explore; different routes through the island; different times of day for the environment; constellations in the sky (if you happen to walk at “night” on the island); and different colors in a rainbow. The rainbow colors don’t cost you any points, but if you collect them all, a brilliant rainbow lights up in the sky and you’ll be able to see for the rest of your walk.

It’s a very simple game. You just have to walk in time to the music. The better your timing, the more points you earn. If you miss steps, you lose points. According to the game manual, you can walk using either Konami’s DDR dance pad, the Wii balance board, or by attaching the nunchuk to your wii-mote and then tucking it into a pocket. I have not bothered with that last method, since most reviews by people who have tried it say it doesn’t work very well. Instead, I’ve been using my DDR pad, and it works just fine (although in the course of an hour of walking, I find the pad tends to travel across the room and I’ll have to pause the game and move the mat to keep from ending up under the couch). Hubster tried the game using the balance board and said it was a little tricky at first, but after a bit he got the hang of it.

Once you get walking, it’s easy to get around the island. Direction arrows will pop up at various points, allowing you to select which route you want to take. Not all routes are open at the beginning, but you can earn new ones by clicking on their icons. If you’ve already earned enough points, that route opens instantly. If not, the route falls into a que at the top of the screen and you keep earning points toward it. Once you’ve earned the points, you can go back and select that route again and it will be available. And this is the same method for how you earn points toward anything else in the game.

You probably do want to play this game with the nunchuk attached, since that makes it easier to look around the island. Use the toggle switch on the nunchuk to pan left, right, up and down, and click the button on the front to return your view to normal. I use the cross button at the top of the wii-mote to select direction arrows while I’m walking, though you can also click on them by point the wii-mote at them and clicking the A button. Clicking on the floating icons is a bit tricky until you get used to it, but it only took me a couple of sessions to get very good at it.

I’ve been playing the game every morning for the past week, and I enjoy it a lot. I’ve been having a hard time lately getting up in the mornings to exercise because I just don’t have the energy to face a serious bout on Wii Fit Plus or EA Sports Active. Much as I love those games, I cannot seem to drag myself out of bed for them right now. However, I can convince myself to get up and walk in my own living room, and that makes this game a huge WIN in my book. I’m the kind of person who enjoys exploring various environments. I love that the game environment can reflect the time of day that I step onto the mat. If I’m walking at 6AM, I get to see the sun rise on Rhythm Island. Of course, as I unlock the various clock icons, I’ll be able to choose what time of day I want to walk, but having Rhythm Island in sync with the real day works for me. I also love the variety of the landscape. The first session of the game starts out in a stadium, but I was very quickly able to move to the town outside, the beach, local parks, and even cross the river to the farm land and mountain lookout beyond that.

Playing with a second player can add to the fun. Last night I set up a second DDR mat and a friend and I spent more than half an hour marching in place in the living room, and we had a good time! We moved like the world’s worst high school marching band ever, but we were having fun. Of course, when Pixie and Princess played, they weren’t quite as thrilled, since Pixie kept pointing the camera view into the ground just to annoy her sister. So choose your walking partner carefully.

Now onto the one question I’m sure everyone will ask about this game: is it really a workout? Well, you’re not going to work up the level of sweat you’d get with EA Sports Active or even Wii Fit Plus. However, you will burn calories (after a session, the game will even show you how many calories you’ve burned, along with the number of steps you’ve taken and the distance you walked). I know that after playing for a week, I certainly feel a difference in my thighs, hips, and calves, so my legs are definitely firming up. And like I said earlier, I wasn’t getting up to play Wii Fit Plus or EASA, but for Walk It Out! I have gotten up 7 mornings in a row at 6AM and burned calories. And if you have any doubts about whether a simple walk will help keep you fit, you might want to check out the Campaign for Walking.

In summary, it does seem like a ridiculous idea to have a game just for walking, but it’s worked for me and I plan to keep playing the game for many mornings to come.

Good on ya, Konami! Now be prepared to expand that game for next year, because I know I’m going to want more.

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Move It Mama Monday! Rekindling old exercise flames

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I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks, exercise-wise. After Ravencon at the beginning of the month, I was completely wiped out and had a lot of work to catch up on so I skipped my heavy workouts at the Y and the dojo. Then last week I suddenly found myself without a car for most of the time, which also prevented me from getting to the Y and the dojo. Which means I’ve been doing all my workouts at home, mostly on the Wii.

However, I’d once again hit a slump in my love for Wii workouts. I run into this problem every now and then. The two best games for Wii workouts, in my opinion, are Wii Fit Plus and EA Sports Active. These are my workhorse games. However, I’ve run into some problems with them lately.

For starters, I had gotten a little bored with Wii Fit Plus. Wii Fit Plus has plenty of games, but a limited number of yoga and strength exercises, thus the reason I bought EASA. I figured I’d do the bulk of my cardio in Wii Fit Plus and the bulk of my strength training in EASA. And this would have been ideal but I snapped my strength training band for EASA a couple of months back and hadn’t been able to find a good replacement in the local stores. The one replacement band I did find turned out to be way too short, causing the handles to dig painfully into my hands and making certain exercises impossible to do in EASA.

So what to do? Fortunately for me, one of my good friends, Mich, has worked with both games. She recommended I go online and order a package of Therabands to replace the band for EASA. This turned out to be ideal. The Therabands come in varying degrees of resistance, and each package holds about 6 yards of elastic band. So no problem getting a band to fit. I just cut one to the length I need. I also decided to buy a pair of weight lifting gloves to protect my hands from the resistance band handles. This has worked like a charm!

As for Wii Fit Plus, Mich mentioned how much she enjoyed the bike ride game. It is, after all, the only game that allows you to roam free all over WuHu Island, the setting for Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort. I had played the bike game a few times, but had abandoned it in favor of the running games because I thought the running games made me work up more of a sweat. But I liked the idea of being able to explore the game environment, so during my next workout, I decided to try the bike game again. If nothing else, being able to steer around on my own while hunting for flags would help stave off the boredom.

Well guess what I found? After successfully completing what I thought was the highest level of the biking game, I unlocked the “Free Ride” mode! I’m sure everybody else in the universe knows about this mode, but yours truly was completely in the dark about it. If you’ve been in the dark too, the Free Ride mode lets you roam the island for 30 minutes without having to hunt down any of those flags. There are 20 little striped balloons tucked away here and there that you can ride over and pop, but they aren’t the main point of the game. Instead, you can just roam wherever you like.

And I like that a lot!

So suddenly I’m biking on WuHu Island every chance I get. And now with my new elastic band and gloves, I can get back to strength training in EASA. I’m back to enjoying my Wii workouts, which is good, and I’m putting in more exercise time, which is even better. Yes, I’m sure I’ll hit another slump again, but I’m predicting by the time that happens, the new version of EASA will have come out, or I’ll find another workout game to add to my collection. In the meantime, I’ve been browsing around the Wii Fit Forum, finding out about all sorts of little Easter eggs hidden in Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort. Naturally, I am now tracking those items down in both games. Oh, and Wii Sports Resort can cause me to work up a sweat as well.

So I’m in love with my Wii again and enjoying every minute of it!

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Move It Mama Monday! Me and my Wii games

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You may have noticed there was no Move It Mama Monday post last week. That’s because I was 3/4ths dead after getting through RavenCon and Spring break with my parents visiting.

But it’s a new week now and I finally feel human again, so I’m starting to get back into the swing of things. And part of getting back into the swing means me evaluating what I want to do exercise-wise.

Lately, I’ve been spending more and more time on Wii Fit Plus with the occasional round of Just Dance. In fact, on Friday evening, we had a friend, Mich, come over for dinner and after eating quiche and pie and ice cream, we all decided we needed to work off a few calories. So we popped in the Just Dance game and 45 minutes later we had a room full of sweaty, exhausted people. I think we danced to about 13 songs, each running a little over 3 minutes. Hubster was so sweat-soaked, he had to change clothes afterward. Fortunately, Mich and I recalled previous bouts of Just Dance and dressed for the evening in sports bras, t-shirts, and sweat pants.

So Just Dance is on my list of favorites right now, but it’s a game I prefer to play with other people. Not as much fun doing it by myself. Wii Fit Plus is ideal to do by myself, but I’m hitting game fatigue with that one, having played it so much lately.

I’d like to get back into EA Sports Active again, but can’t until I get a new exercise band and some gloves. I’ve ordered said items and they should show up in a week or so, so that will take care of that problem. I’ve also gone ahead and ordered Walk It Out! because I’m itching to try a new game. I’m hoping this will keep my active and entertained through the summer, when it’s harder for me to get to the Y because the kids are home.

There’s one new game coming out next month that I’m very curious about – All Star Karate. It looks like the first Wii exercise game I’ve seen that actually combines some story-telling with the workout aspect. The screen captures on Amazon make me think this will be a decent workout, akin to Gold’s Gym Cardio, but with more variety. However, I’m a little put off by the feature of being able to “slap sensei whenever he nods off.” Being a black belt, I can tell you the last thing you want to try is to slap the instructor. Whoever came up with that feature of the game obviously knows jack shit about karate.

But, I may still get the game next month or in June, since it does boast other appealing features like being able to program your own katas. In the mean time, I’m going to try to get back into EASA and see how Walk It Out! works. I’ll post a review on the later when I’ve had a chance to play with it for a while.

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Move It Mama Monday! Different standards for women and men?

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Wouldn’t you know it? The very same day last week’s Move It Mama Monday came out, discussing research that indicates women need to exercise an hour every day to maintain a normal body weight, I saw another article in my local newspaper about how men need only exercise 30 minutes a day to lose their beer bellies. WTF?!!

I’m not sure what irritates me more – the fact that Tribune Newspapers can’t seem to agree on how much exercise a person needs to do to lose or maintain weight; or the fact that the two articles seem to imply two different standards of exercise for women and men.

Do men really only need to exercise 30 minutes a day, 3 or 4 days a week, to lose those extra pounds? That’s what the Tribune article seems to say…

“The best exercises are those that reduce total body fat, cardiovascular and aerobic programs. Running, swimming, cycling and tennis are all for burning off the fat. And it doesn’t have to be every day; 30 minutes a day, three or four times a week will result in noticeable weight loss…”

So what’s the deal? I’m wondering if it’s just simply a matter that no one has yet been conducted similar research on men and weight loss as was done on women. Perhaps this is simply a case of one reporter looking at the latest findings published in JAMA while a second report writes up what’s been accepted as tried and true for the last decade or so. Or maybe women do need to work harder than men to lose weight?

I don’t know, but I sure wish someone would figure things out. It seems like every time I turn around, ever more conflicting information is published about healthy diet and weight. Between snack food and fast food industries that makes it too easy to eat your way to oblivion and a lack of definitive information on how to avoid such a morbid fate, it’s no wonder so many people are overweight in this country.

Again, all I can advise is to stay as active as you can, find activities you enjoy, get outside as often as possible, and eat as healthy as you can. Thought what’s healthy these days is anybody’s guess, it seems.

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Move It Mama Monday! An hour a day keeps the pounds at bay?

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How would you feel if someone told you you’d have to exercise 60 minutes every day of the week to maintain a normal weight? Would you panic? Would you shrug your shoulders and say, “Yeah, that’s what I do already?” I ask because apparently that’s the latest word on exercise for women according to an article recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (link to video clip on the report).

The article I first read from Tribune Newspapers stated “women should work out 60 minutes a day, seven days a week, to maintain a normal weight over their lifetime.” This particular study looked at women whose mean ages started at 54 and went up from there. They monitored these women’s weight and activity level for 13 years and found that 60 minutes a day of exercise every day was most effective in controlling weight gain… but only for women who started at a normal BMI.

I’m not sure what this means for those of us who aren’t in our fifties or older yet. Can we get away with exercising less? Or do we need to get into the habit of an hour a day now? I do know the authors encouraged women of any weight level to continue exercise regardless of whether or not that exercise would affect their weight, due to other health benefits such as heart health, blood pressure control, etc.

What most interests me is that this study looked at exercise only, not exercise and diet. In other words, the women in this study ate a normal diet, rather than some special diet designed to help them lose weight. This appeals to me because while I strive to eat healthy, I don’t cut out sweets and junk food entirely. I am very fond of dessert, chocolate, and most of all, chocolate dessert. I do try to get 3-5 helping of vegetables and fruit a day and drink lots of water, but I’m still eating my daily bit of meat and I refuse to give up my tea and coffee with milk and sugar. In other words, I like to enjoy my food, and I’m not going to count calories or try some weird-ass diet to stay eternally thin.

I would be willing to exercise an hour every day, however. And in fact, I pretty much do that already: two hours a week of water aerobics; four hours a week of karate classes; 30 minutes five times a week or more of Wii Fit or Just Dance or some other fitness game. Yeah, I get up and move around, and for the most part, I have maintained my weight. While I do weigh a bit more than I’d like, I’m still below a BMI of 25, which is what this study was looking at as “normal weight.”

So I exercise. But can everyone do that much activity every day? I work at home, and I will be the first to tell you I have a certain flexibility to my schedule that a lot of people I know don’t. How does someone who works a 12 hour shift 4-5 days a week find time to work up a sweat 60 minutes every day? What about those people I know who get up at the ass-crack of dawn to head into work and do not get home until after dark five days a week? And they still have work to finish before they can go to bed? How do those folks get in an hour of activity every day?

It’s hard to figure out. People are required to spend so much time working these days, especially in this economy where jobs are scarce and replacement employees are readily available. I have no easy answers for people who are caught in that kind of crunch. I can only suggest that you get in as much fun physical activity as you can, eat as healthy as you can, and try not to stress about the weight. Be reasonable and do what you can when you can. That’s the only advice I can give.

For the scientifically minded, you can find the abstract for the article in JAMA here.

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Move It Mama Monday! Just Dance for the Wii

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Oh my. I have a new favorite workout game for the Wii. Just Dance!

I ordered the game two weeks ago, looking for something a little different that I could add to my Wii workouts. I’d heard some mixed reviews on this game, but thought it would be worth a try, especially when I read one review that mentioned even their 3-year-old was able to play along. Being mommy to a 3-year-old who wants to play Dance Dance Revolution but can’t because she keeps accidentally stepping on all the wrong controls on the dance pad when I try to navigate the game, this made Just Dance particularly interesting to me. I figured I’d get a game I could play with the kids in the evenings while getting a little physical activity in.

Well I got more than I bargained for! The day we got Just Dance, I popped it into the Wii and told the girls to grab Wii-motes. We went through the first four songs, trying out the game, and before I’d gotten through the second song, I was sweating. More than I sweat for DDR, even! Just Dance has players follow along as a dancer on screen goes through various dance moves to popular songs. The game to me straight back to the parties I used to attend in college, where a bunch of students all piled into one apartment living room and frantically danced their asses off until they collapsed sun-up the next day. The dance moves are terrific, and very energetic. Unlike DDR, where you have to hit the right spot on the arrow pad at the right time, you’re mimicking actual dance moves on the screen. The dance styles and music range from 1950s rock and roll to recent hits and dance moves. So far the girls and I have danced to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Ring My Bell,” “A Little Less Conversation,” “The Surfing Bird,” “Cotton-eyed Joe,” and “Move It!” (the theme song from the Madagascar movies). We love it!

Pixie, my darling 3-year-old, has managed to win a few rounds of the game even though she holds the Wii-mote in the wrong hand. She just gets up and shakes her little tushie and waves the Wii-mote around, and every now and then manages to hit enough of the moves just right to win. Princess is hooked on the game, especially since she thinks the dancer in “The Surfing Bird” looks just like one of her uncles (I have to admit, the guy could be a dead wringer for my brother-in-law). And me, I’m just tickled to have something fun that causes me to sweat that much!

We played the game Saturday night with Mich, a friend of ours. I was worried that we might be causing her to have a heart attack, but she was having a blast. Players are able to drop in and out of the game at any time in the “quick play” mode (don’t know about “challenge mode” yet), which meant we could swap off or take a break as we needed to. Mich and I did agree that next time we needed to be better prepared to play, by wearing sweats and sports bras. These dance moves are not under-wire friendly, and I seriously worried that I might bust a bra while busting a move.

Over all, I highly recommend the game. Yeah, it’s only got 30 songs, but they’re very cool, the graphics are a candy-colored acid trip, and you’ll work up a sweat while having fun. I’m thinking of playing the game in the mornings along with a short EASA workout, to combine strength and cardio in one session. I’ll let you know how it works!

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Move It Mama Monday! Another New EA Sports Active?

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I found this article earlier in the week, discussing the newest version of EA Sports Active coming out this fall. It looks like the new version will incorporate a new leg strap as well as an arm strap and heart rate monitor. No more remotes required to do the workouts, and if that’s the case I’m hoping it may possible to use hand weights instead of resistance bands for the workouts. I’ve broken two resistance bands using EASA and have had a bit of a time finding replacement bands that are long enough and sturdy enough to use with the game.

Supposedly, the new EASA will also be able to download new content for the PSP version. No work yet on whether the Wii version will also be able to do so. I’m hoping so, otherwise Wii owners who play EASA will be up in arms.

Other improvements I’d like to see, but that weren’t mentioned in the article…

  • More stretching exercises. A lot more stretching exercises, in fact.
  • More warm up and cool down routines. The EASA More Workouts only has one routine for warm up and one for cool down, and doing those for six weeks straight got old real fast.
  • Yoga routines. With the new wireless leg and arm remotes, I think this would be the ideal time for EASA to incorporate yoga into it’s workout options.
  • Bring back some of the old games from the original version of EASA, including the baseball, basketball, tennis and volley ball games. I put together entire workouts that were nothing but those sports games and they gave me a real workout. I’d love to see them brought back.
  • An option to pre-program EASA for a certain number of workouts a week based on what the user wants. The 6-week challenge demands you do 4 workouts a week for six weeks straight, which can be a little tough to work in if you do other forms of exercise during the week. I would rather have done 2 regularly scheduled workouts in addition to my water aerobics classes, karate classes, and other Wii workouts. Granted, I can still do that by picking the 6-week challenge workouts on my own from the menu and going through them in order, but the pre-programmed function would have been nice to have.

Keeping that last comment above in mind, I’m thinking of working EASA back into my morning workouts, maybe twice a week, interspersed between Gold’s Gym Cardio, Wii Fit Plus and DDR or the new Just Dance game that I’ve ordered. I don’t like to get bored, obviously, and mixing things up like this will give me plenty of ways to keep active.

If anybody has comments on working out with any of the above games, or with any games I haven’t mentioned, post them below. I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about working out with the Wii.

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Move It Mama Monday! Combinations In Wii Fit Plus

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Last week was an interesting week, exercise-wise. If you recall, I made the decision to switch up my schedule, saving my writing time for the evenings after the girls were in bed and using my mornings before the girls got up to exercise on the Wii.

That plan sort of worked. Last week I was still recovering from being sick with a sinus infection, and then Princess came down with some sort of stomach bug, and then we had a snow day so all my usual carefully laid plans went right out the window. I did manage to get on the Wii to exercise most mornings, but many days that was the only exercise I got, and I’m really striving for 2-3 periods of exercise each day. Those periods include: early morning Wii session before everyone else gets up; daytime fitness class at the Y or dojo; and half an hour or more outside working on the yard and garden. I only managed to get all three sessions in on one day, Friday. I must admit I felt tired when Friday evening hit, but I also felt good. Thanks to getting up early, the day’s schedule had gone well and I got in plenty of activity and even some fresh air. But that was the only day I accomplished all my physical activity. Most of the week I only got to workout on the Wii, and I was frustrated with that because those workouts were not as challenging as I would have liked.

Then I stumbled across a comment on the Wii Mommies forums about the “Combine” feature in Wii Fit Plus. One mom noted that when she combined the preset routines in Training Plus, she got a really good workout that burned 200 calories. That’s far more calories than I’ve usually been able to burn using Wii Fit Plus, so I decided to give this a try.

Sunday morning, I popped in Wii Fit Plus and went straight to Training Plus. I selected the Routines option and hit the “Combine” button where I picked six of the routines available and told Wii to let ‘er rip. Forty-two minutes later, I had actually worked up quite a sweat and burned 146 calories. Amazing! By combining the various routines, I was able to go through all areas of Wii Fit Plus – cardio, balance games, yoga and strength – and I even had fun in the process. The combined routines mixed everything up so I did a little of this, a little of that, and never got bored.

What I really liked is that I did all that exercise, burned plenty of calories, and still managed to take it easy on my knees. It’s that time of the month, folks, and with my hormones in full swing, my knees are really killing me. Wii Fit Plus is about the only home exercise I can do that won’t leave me crippled for life during this time. But compared to EASA and Gold’s Gym Cardio, Wii Fit Plus seemed seriously lacking in the calorie burning department.

Well, no longer. I’ll probably spend most of this week doing combined workouts so I can continue to take it easy on my knees. With luck, I’ll be able to work up a sweat every morning, and then go on to my next exercise period ready to rock and roll. We’ll see how this works out!

If anybody else is using Wii Fit Plus and has thoughts on the Combine function, let me know. Or if you have any tips on getting the most out of Wii Fit Plus, feel free to leave them here. I still think Wii Fit Plus is the most fun of all the fitness games I’ve tried, but I really want to sweat with it. If you can help me figure out how to do that, I’d be very grateful!

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Move It Mama Monday! My Jeans Are Tight!

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Uh-oh. It seems I need to slim down a bit. Normally, I do not worry about the number on the scale. But today I put on my jeans and they were tight. Not so tight I can’t zip them, but tight enough that I can’t get down on the floor, play with the kids, and then get back up again without a bit of struggle. That’s too tight in my opinion. And that means I need to focus a bit more on my eating and exercise habits.

I was doing pretty good with EA Sports Active for the first 4 weeks of the 6-week challenge, but then I hit a week where my hormones went all wonky. Two things happened then. I packed on about 4 lbs of water weight and I got massive sugar and salt cravings. I knew what was happening, but that didn’t stop me from throwing my healthy diet out the window so I could gorge on salty snacks and drink way too many sugared drinks. Now I’m paying the price for that.

I was sick on the couch all last week, so now that I feel better I’m going to restart my exercise and healthy eating plans. Starting today, I’ll be getting up at 6AM to exercise with Gold’s Gym Cardio and Wii Fit Plus on the Wii for 45 minutes or so. I did 6 weeks straight of nothing but EASA on the Wii so I’m a little bored with it right now. Gold’s Gym always makes me sweat and Wii Fit is good for fixing my balance and thus my knee problems as well.

In addition to this, I’m going back to my usual two diet rules. First, eat 2 vegetarian meals a day. Second, drink a glass of water before I drink anything else. I’m not giving up my 2-3 cups of tea a day, but drinking the extra water always seems to help slow down the appetite a bit.

I’ll be doing a denim check each Monday as well, trying on the same pair of jeans I tried on this morning to see how they fit. Again, it’s not about the number on the scale. It’s about eating healthy, getting plenty of exercise, drinking lots of water, and FITTING INTO MY JEANS!