Category: Exercise

Nothing exciting going on in the realm of exercise this week. Instead, I’ve been working to keep up with my usual routine while I deal with work and Girl Scout cookie stuff. I’m more glad than ever that I have the option of working out at home. I’ve spent plenty of time on the elliptical machine and with Wii Fit Plus, Walk It Out!, EA Sports Active 2 and Just Dance. I haven’t been able to get to karate class as often as I’d like, due to work conflicts, and I deliberately skipped my usual swim and water aerobics session on Friday so I could stay home and write. But even when I don’t get out of the house, I do still make the effort to pull on my sweats and get moving.

Apparently this effort has paid off. I’ve definitely dropped a few pounds, and in spite of the stress I’ve been sleeping very soundly these last few weeks. I get tired during the day, but I don’t feel jittery like I sometimes do when stressed out. I just want to curl up for a nap.

I’m looking forward to the summer when most of the things stressing me will have fallen by the wayside. Plus the warmer weather will mean I can get back outside to work in the yard and practice karate. I keep meaning to start practicing at the gym, but again schedule problems have interfered with those plans as well as with my usual routine.

I’ll survive. I’ll keep moving, keep exercising, and I’ll stay in shape, regardless of the stress.

I made a resolution this past New Year’s Day to lose ten pounds. Ten pounds is all that stands between me and what I weighed before I had kids. I’ve made this same resolution before and have never been able to keep it, but this year I hoped I had found new tools to make my goal possible.

The tools in question are my new iPad and the LiveStrong calorie counter app I installed on it. Since Christmas Day, when I got the iPad and installed LiveStrong on it, I’ve been pretty consistant about tracking how much I eat and how many calories I burn through exercise. The LiveStrong app allows me to tell it how much weight I want to lose each week and then calculates a daily calorie goal to help me drop the pounds. I discovered pretty quickly that if I burned a certain amount of calories each day, I could eat more, so I set a personal goal of 500 calories a day burned through exercise to allow myself to enjoy a few luxuries like a cup of hot tea, a piece of chocolate or an extra muffin or bagel for a snack.

Well, what do you know? It looks like I’m actually losing the weight. Since Christmas day, I am down 7 pounds. I’m hoping by the end of March, I’ll be able to say I’ve lost all 10 pounds and I’m keeping them off for good. I’m giving myself an extra month to say that because I know my weight tends to fluctuate with my cycle and because I know I’ve got some very stressful weeks coming up, which will affect how much I eat and how much I exercise. I’m trying to stay in control of that, but sometimes I do break down and treat myself to a bowl of ice cream when I’m having really crappy day.

Exercise-wise, I’ve been using the Hubster’s elliptical machine, going to karate class, swimming and doing water aerobics. Plus I’ve worked to throw in extra exercise sessions on the Wii, mainly with EA Sports Active 2 and Walk It Out! Walk It Out is a particular favorite right now because it’s low key exercise that lets me blow of some stress without exhausting myself. With all the stress I’m dealing with right now, that’s kind of important.

So anyway, that’s the update on my weight and fitness goals. I’m going to squeeze in a little exercise now and I’ll let you know next week if I manage to drop another pound.

So last week I mentioned that I had picked up a copy of EA Sports Active 2 and I was not happy with my purchase. The leg sensor, which straps around the right thigh, kept cutting out, making the game impossible to play. After attempting 6 times to play the game and only getting it to sort of work twice, I decided last Thursday to take it back to the store and see if I could get a refund or an exchange.

Target customer service was very understanding about my problem with the game and said since they still had more copies of EASA 2 in stock, I could exchange my non-working copy for one of those. I have to admit, this was not the answer I wanted. After having read so many reviews of the game complaining about the exact same problem I was having, I wasn’t certain a second copy would work any better than the first. But since this was Target’s return policy, I was stuck with it. I went back and picked up the least battered copy of the game I could find. The tape on every copy had been cut through for some reason, and some of the boxes looked like they’d been torn. Again, this did not give me a happy feeling. But I did the exchange and walked out with my new copy. As soon as I got home, I set it up and tried it out.

My heart sank when the leg sensor immediately refused to work. But I decided to do a little trouble-shooting. I swapped out the batteries, rebound the sensors and….

It worked. The damned thing actually worked.

I got through a 15 minute workout without a single hitch. The leg sensor, once it had new batteries and had been rebound, worked and it kept working. I’ve completed two other workouts since then and still haven’t had any problems.

So now I can give an opinion of what the game is like when it works, and that opinion is, it’s a great workout game. It’s definitely more workout than game, which is fine. I wanted something that concentrated on strength training and EASA 2 definitely does that. It still uses the elastic bands with the nylon handles instead of hand weights, and you do still need to hold the Wii-mote while doing most of the exercises. But the game gives a good solid workout.

My favorite change to the new version of EASA is the trainer-generated workout. If you want a workout but don’t want to build your own and don’t feel like participating in any of the pre-programmed challenges, you can now tell EASA 2 to create a workout for you using a few simple guidelines. Simply tell EASA 2 what you want to focus on (whole body, arms, legs, core or cardio), how long you want to work out, and how hard you want to workout. Then once you hit the “generate workout” button, EASA 2 will put together a workout based on that info. If you don’t like the workout it comes up with, you can tell it to generate a new one using the same guidelines. The workouts are created on the spot, not pulled from some prepared list as far as I can tell, so you never really get the same workout twice. I like that. I always hated being stuck with the same 2 or 3 workouts for particular areas. Even more, I hated trying to scroll through the loooooooooooong list of prepared workouts EASA had, just to find a particular one I wanted to do that day.

So I’m now happy with my purchase. I will say EASA 2 needs to do some serious quality control and make sure that all future editions of the game do not have such serious technical problems as this one did. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as spending a good chunk of cash on a game only to have it not work as advertised. Or in this case, not work at all!

Final work – great game, but make sure you understand the return policy of the store you buy it from.

Huzzah! I have lost 6 lbs since Christmas. Thanks to time spent on the Hubster’s elliptical machine and the LiveStrong calorie counter app on my iPad, I’ve been able to finally shift those few extra pounds. I’d like to lose another four in the next month or two. We’ll see if I can make that happen.

But since I have lost 6 lbs., I decided to reward myself. I didn’t want to buy anything food related, which would have defeated the purpose of losing weight to begin with, and I didn’t want to buy new clothes because frankly, my closet is full of cool t-shirts and jeans that I already like and I have no need for anything really fancy. So what to get?

Well, I just happened to be in Target earlier last week and I just happened to see they had EA Sports Active 2 on sale! A game that normally costs $100 was available for $60! I was really itching to try the new EASA, but hadn’t taken the plunge because of the price, so when I found it on sale, I snatched it up immediately. It was the perfect way to reward myself, I thought. It’s something I wanted and it would help me continue to stay fit.

Then I got the game home and tried it out. Can you say EPIC FAIL, boys and girls?

Here’s the deal. EASA 2 comes with 2 sensors and a USB receiver. One of the sensors goes on your left forearm and tracks your heart rate as well as movement for that arm. The other sensor goes on the right thigh, in lieu of the nunchuk which is how EASA previously tracked leg movements. The USB receiver gets plugged into the back of the Wii console. All very simple to set up. I had everything ready to go in just a few minutes and was ready to start up the game. I made my profile, browsed through my workout options, and picked a program to try. Then I ran into a big problem

The right leg sensor kept switching off.

Every time the Wii console lost contact with the leg sensor, it would stop the entire game and wait for me to fix the problem. Fixing it usually consisted of jiggling the sensor until it lit up again. Then I had to select a button on the screen to continue the workout. Not really a big deal if this only happens once or twice, but this happened to me 7-8 times during the workout, and that got damned annoying real fast.

So I decided maybe the problem was the batteries in the leg sensor were drained and I dug up some rechargables and made sure they were fully charged and tried them the next day.

Well day 2 was even worse than day 1!! I couldn’t even get through the second exercise! The leg sensor dropped out a dozen times in a row during the warm ups. It was so bad I finally quit the session. And when I did that, EASA 2 said, “You need to try harder!” because I only managed to burn 5 calories thanks to the stupid leg sensor.

Try harder?! Why don’t you try harder, ass-hat?!

Sorry, I got a little carried away there. So anyway, I went online to see if anybody else had encountered this problem and discovered that yes indeedy! Lots of people have had problems with the leg sensor on EASA 2. Suggestions for trouble shooting included changing the batteries in the sensor, unplugging and replugging in the USB receiver while the Wii console is off, “re-bonding” the sensors in the settings section of the game, or returning the game to the store and asking for a replacement.

I did the first two items on the list above and this morning tried playing the game again. I got farther through before I started having problems, and was able to actually complete the workout, but once again the leg sensor just kept dropping out. It caused me to lose a race in the game because it dropped out so frequently during that event, and it drove me nuts during mountain climbers later on. But I did manage to finish the workout.

When I was done, I went into the setting section of EASA 2 and “re-bonded” the sensors. Rebonding essentially means asking the Wii to look for the sensors again and re-register them. I don’t recall bonding the sensors the first time I played the game, so maybe that’s part of the problem. I won’t be able to say for certain until I try playing the game again.

But in any event, this is a major, MAJOR flaw in an otherwise fantastic game. And I really hate this because the new EASA 2 has some new features that I really like. For starters, I don’t have to hunt through the list of workout programs anymore or put together one of my own when I work out. Instead, I can simply tell EASA 2 what I want to focus on and how long and hard I want to work out and it will generate a program for me. And if I’m not keen on that particular program, I can simply hit the “regenerate” button and it will devise a different program. This is pure genius, in my opinion. I hate trying to figure out what to do on my own, and I hate having to hunt through a lengthy list to figure out what program I want to do that day. It’s much easier to simply say, “I want to do arms today for 20-25 minutes, and I want a medium level workout,” and then just watch that happen.

Another thing I like is heart rate monitor. The leg sensor may be complete crap, but the heart rate monitor is great! The game shows my heart rate while I play and lets me know what effort zone I’m in. This info is then used to calculate how many calories I burn while I work out. Brilliant! And the heart rate measurement looks pretty damn accurate to me, too.

Warm up and cool down has also changed. Now instead of being bored out of my skull with the same routine at the beginning and end of every workout, EASA 2 calls up a couple of exercises and stretches from a list and adds those to the workout. EASA More Workouts always used the same routine each time, which drove me nuts, but EASA 2 gives me more variety, and that’s important to me when I work out.

Finally, the journal is still there in EASA 2, although I don’t intend to use it since I use Live Strong to track my eating and workout habits. And there’s a 3-week and 9-week challenge that users can try. I won’t be doing either of those since they both require 4 days a week to complete and I’m not committing that much time each week to just one game. I mean, face it. I swim, I do karate, I use the elliptical machine, I do a bit of yoga… I got plenty going on. What I need is the occassional strength workout, which the new EASA 2 can give me thanks to it’s “Generate workout” function.

But only so long as that leg sensor works.

Here’s my final thoughts. Don’t spend $100 on the game. While the game is fantastic, the leg sensor is a huge no-go in my book. Had I known what a total failure the leg sensor would be, I wouldn’t even have spent $60 on the game. $30, maybe, but only if I had some guarantee that the leg sensor would only crap out occassionally during the game and not screw up an entire workout.

So fix this leg sensor problem, EA! You almost have the perfect game, but that leg sensor is holding you back. Fix it and I’ll love you enough to continue to buy future versions of EASA. Ignore it and I’ll spend my hard-earned money elsewhere, I promise.

Oh, and one more thing, EA? For the next version, add in a yoga program. It really is the only other thing you’re missing to be perfect. But fix that leg sensor before you do it!

Well, it’s been about four weeks since I got my iPad and the LiveStrong calorie counter app, and it’s been four weeks since I started hopping onto the Hubster’s elliptical machine almost everyday to burn up excess calories. Have I seen any progress in that time?

Yes. Yes, I think I have.

I weighed myself on Sunday and was surprised to see a number on the scale I didn’t think I would ever see again. Frankly, it looks like my weight is down by about 5 lbs., though I’m a little hesitant to say this weight loss is permanent. I want to lose another five before I start celebrating.

However, I have seen some other changes that make me think I’m on track to getting back to my normal (or what used to be normal) weight. Mainly, I’ve discovered that tracking what I eat has made me very conscious of things like portion size and how frequently I snack. I’ve started eating less simply because I know I’ll have to enter everything I consume into the calorie counter, and I hate seeing my goal for the day broken because I just couldn’t resist that one little candy bar. So snacking is down.

Meanwhile exercise is up! I can eat a little more if I burn a little more, so I’ve been extra vigilant about getting up very early and hopping onto the elliptical for 30 minutes to burn some calories. I’d like to do more exercise during the day after that, but between schedule issues and the house being in total chaos while my floor is being tiled, that hasn’t been possible. Still, those issues should be sorted out soon and I’ll be back to doing more swimming, karate, yoga, water aerobics, etc., while also getting that morning burn from the elliptical.

For those of you who think I’m already thin enough, thank you. I know a lot of folks look at me and say, “You’re too damn skinny already! Stop it!” Well, I am in fairly good shape. My only concern is how well I fit into my jeans. When the jeans get snug, I get uncomfortable, and I hate that. Plus, I’m too damn cheap to buy new jeans, so I have to continue to fit into the old ones. So don’t worry, I won’t lose too much weight. Just enough to make sure I don’t have to buy new clothes anytime soon 😉

Right now, at this very moment, my entire downstairs is torn apart and there are workers installing tile in the front half of my house. This means that everything that would normally go into the front half of the first floor is currently shoved into the back half of the first floor, including all our appliances. The lack of floor space downstairs is frightening to say the least, and of course with people working on the house, I have to stay home, so exercise is limited to just one activity right now…

The Hubster’s elliptical machine.

Hubster has been on a major exercise kick these past several weeks, logging in hours on the infernal contraption elliptical machine. And it’s paid off, big time. He wasn’t very overweight, to be honest, but he had this small spare tire that was really starting to get on his nerves, so he made the decision to get rid of it once and for all. That meant no watching TV unless he was on the elliptical machine in our living room, working the hell out of it. The end result is a much trimmer Hubster, and a Cynical Woman who cannot keep her hands off of him. Meow!

Seeing how well the elliptical worked for Hubster, I decided to give it a try myself. I know for a fact my best method of losing weight is to run, but I don’t get many chances to do that these days, due to schedule conflicts with other fitness activities and still having one small child at home on odd days of the week. The elliptical machine, I know, is the next best thing. However, the elliptical machine is BORING. Honestly, you just stay in one place, pedaling and pedaling and going absolutely nowhere! There’s no scenery, no people to wave at as you run past, no evil slavering dogs to run from. Truly, horribly boring.

So to combat the boredom, I did what the Hubster does. I pulled out something from our DVD collection and popped it into the player. My choice was the complete series of “FarScape.” I love “FarScape,” but missed a lot of episodes when it originally aired. Now I have the chance to correct that. And not only does this keep me entertained while I’m on the elliptical machine, but watching Aeryn Sun/Claudio Black tear up the screen really inspires me to work a bit harder. Face it, wouldn’t we all like to look that good in a black pleather jumpsuit and jack boots? And since I’m such a big ol’ FarScape fangirl, I know I will get out of bed early just to watch a little TV while I exercise. Early being 4:30AM, since my schedule is really busy right now. I’ve been doing this for a week so far, and I think I can already see results. I’ve lost a pound of weight so far, and the muscles in my legs and arms are definitely firming up. We’ll see how I look after a month.

For now though, I’m going to work up a sweat by staying out of the tile installers’ way. I can’t wait to get the rest of my house back!

Huzzah! Move It Mama Monday is back! After several weeks off due to too much work/holidays/family visits/laziness, it’s time to get back in the saddle and start the new year. Of course a new year means New Year’s resolutions and a new exercise regime and new vows to eat healthy and drink lots of water…

Okay, how many of us are really going to do all that? At least past the month of January?

Yeah, a lot of hands just went down, didn’t they?

No worries. I’m not judging. I’m with you. I’ve been there, done that with the whole New Year/New You thing. It lasts for a while, until it doesn’t and then it’s back to the bad old eating habits and exercising maybe when we get the chance. That’s how life works. Exercise and good eating are fun and exciting at first, but then they get routine and boring. So how do we we keep ourselves going? How do we make these exercise and diet resolutions stick?

Well, in my case I’m trying something new this year. I’ve downloaded the Livestrong calorie tracker app on my iPad. The calorie counter allows me to set a calorie goal for the day, then input what I eat and how much I exercise and then tells me if I’m on track or not to meet the aforementioned goal. I’ve been using it for about a week, and so far it seems to be working pretty well. It took me a couple days to cut back on the eating (which is no surprise given how much holiday food there was in the house), and to increase the amount of physical activity (also no surprise considering we had 3 extra people in the house and no time for me to even hop on the Wii). But now I’m consistently logging it at or under my daily calorie goal. I threw in a short extra workout in the early AM, choosing to do 15 minutes on the elliptical machine we have. It’s not a long workout, but it’s intense and it burns quite a few calories in a short time. And since I can see what I eat, I’ve also upped how many fruits and veggies I get each day.

Like everything else, tracking my calories is fun right now, but it will also get routine after a while. But hopefully, having a visual record of my progress will help me stick to my fitness resolutions this year. And those resolutions are…

Don’t be a big, fat slug.

Yep, that’s pretty much it! Have fun and let me know if you made any fun resolutions yourself for this year!

Ugh. It’s Monday. I’ve had insomnia the last three nights and last week I had some weird virus thingy that pretty much sucked the life out of me and left me with aching joints, a sore throat and the chills. All of which has added up to a week with no exercise. No karate, no water aerobics, no Just Dance… Nada, zip, bupkis.

The last exercise I did was on last Monday when I went to the Y for my weekly swim. I got in a good 15 laps. Then on Tuesday I was feeling sort of puny. As I was getting ready for karate class, my stomach kicked in and said, “Oh no you don’t!” So I ended up putting my gi back in the closet and spending the rest of the day in bed. Honestly, it wasn’t a major bout of the flu. It was just this annoying sense of feeling unwell, accompanied by the aches and chills. Just enough to knock me out of my game, but not enough to leave me feeling guilt-free about not exercising. I kept thinking all last week that I’d get right back into the exercise mode because I really didn’t feel all that lousy. Just a little off. But then another symptom would pop up – sore throat, head ache, mild stomach cramps – and there I’d be lying in bed again, not wanting to do a damn thing, let alone exercise.

Then the insomnia hit. It’s a hormonal thing, apparently, timed with my menstrual cycle. This means I can sort of predict when it will happen, but have no cure for it. I tried an over-the-counter sleep aid. All that did was leave me groggy and useless the next day. I tried just lying in bed. I was awake for hours and ended up groggy and useless again the next day. I know I ought to just get up and do something until I feel sleepy, but I’m afraid that would leave me even more wide awake, and I’m so tired I really don’t want to drag my sorry ass out of bed. I just want to lie there, and hope the Hubster doesn’t flop onto his back and start snoring like a bear again.

Anyway, I’ve just finished up my work for the morning and I’m contemplating what to do next. Should I exercise? Should I just curl up and nap? Decisions, decisions.

Let’s see if I can’t force myself through a few rounds of Just Dance, maybe a little stretching. Then I’ll take a hot bath and nap for a bit. Or maybe, I’ll actually wake up and do something useful. We’ll see.