Category: Exercise

No comments

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

  By ,

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.

4 Comments

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

  By ,

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.

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! Just Dance for the Wii

  By ,

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!

Tagged   
No comments

Move It Mama Monday! Another New EA Sports Active?

  By ,

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.

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! Combinations In Wii Fit Plus

  By ,

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!

2 Comments

Move It Mama Monday! My Jeans Are Tight!

  By ,

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!

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! I finished EA Sports Active’s 6-week challenge! Now what?

  By ,

Well, I finished the new EA Sports Active 6-week challenge two weeks ago, just before heading out to Farpoint. I was doing the medium level challenge, since I remembered how I’d fared doing the hard level challenge in EASA’s previous incarnation. I can say I did finish the challenge within 6 weeks. However, once again I did not lose weight. I was losing weight for the first four weeks, but then the last two weeks I had some problems. First off, I hit a high stress month, and I missed a lot of my regular non-EASA workouts as a result. Second, my hormones are all out of whack right now, probably a hangover from the previous quarter’s fertility treatments and my age. I’m 40, very soon to be 41. I expect my body to do wonky things like suddenly pack on 6 pounds. And the stress of so much going on this month did not help with my eating habits. I don’t care what anybody says, eating right takes a lot of work, and it’s hard to maintain healthy habits under stress.

But I completed the challenge, so my big question is, “Now what?” EASA recommends I do another challenge at the next higher level, of course. I’m not keen on that idea for a couple of reasons. The first is that EASA’s 6 week challenge requires four workouts every week. It’s hard for me to fit that in along with regular water aerobics classes and karate classes. Those classes take up my mornings most days, leaving me unable to do anything else until the evening. I could do 20 minutes or so of exercise in the evenings, but even that is hard to fit in. Princess has needed more supervision recently for her homework, which eats into my evening time. Plus, I really need to get back into cleaning the house. I can either do 20 minutes of exercise or 20 minutes of cleaning, but not both during the evenings. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’d have to live a very regimented life to do that, and that’s not possible with kids.

My other problem is that the workouts for the EASA challenge got longer the farther I got into the 6 weeks. Initially, the workouts where only 20 minutes long. Toward the end, they ran as long as 38 minutes. That’s a lot of time to devote in the evenings to a workout! And again, very hard to accomplish when I’ve got homework to supervise, a house to clean, dinner to make, children to read to, etc.

So what to do now? I figure with my schedule I could do 3 regular workouts a week, on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The Sunday and Wednesday workouts would be on days I have nothing else scheduled, exercise-wise, so I can afford to spend more time on a Wii workout. As much as 45 minutes, even. The Friday workout would be on an evening when I don’t have to worry about homework or cook dinner. That’s pizza and movie night, so I can easily squeeze in 20-30 minutes.

The question is though, do I stick with EASA for these 3 workouts a week, or do something else?

I’m thinking of doing something else. I’ve done EASA for 6 weeks straight, and while the latest incarnation is better than the previous, I am still getting bored with it after so many weeks. I’d like to cycle back to Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout and Wii Fit Plus. Gold’s Gym really lets me work up a sweat in very little time. And Wii Fit Plus would let me work on my core muscles and balance, as well as have fun with the games. So I’m thinking of using primarily those two programs on Sunday and Friday. I might still use EASA for Wednesday, but I’ll need to figure out if I’m going to build my own workouts or use some of the pre-programmed ones.

Of course, I could always check to see if there are any new Wii workout games out there. But for now, I’m moving back to Gold’s Gym and Wii Fit Plus. I don’t know if I’ll lose any weight with this, but the goal these days is to just keep moving and stay as healthy as I can.

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! Not today, folks

  By ,

I apologize for the lateness of today’s blog post, but the fact is I did no moving of it or anything else today. In fact, I pretty much skipped all my workouts last week getting ready for the Farpoint science fiction convention. I simply had too much work to do last week and I was just too dang fried today to exercise. In fact, I was so tired I went back to bed after seeing the kids off to school. Yeah, it was that kind of exhausting today.

So now I’m getting ready to go back to bed again. I’ll be good tomorrow — drink lots of water, eat lots of fruit and veggies, and do an hour or so of exercise at the dojo. But today, I just want to feel half-way human again.

I’ll blog about how I finished the EA Sports Active 6-week challenge next week. For now…

To bed!

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! Snap goes the exercise band

  By ,

I discovered a serious flaw in EA Sports Active last Friday, and it caught me completely by surprise. I suppose I sort of knew about this, because it happened before with the previous version of the game, but this time it happened right in the middle of my work out, and it kind of stung.

I’m talking about my exercise band snapping apart, of course. The original EASA came with a wimpy elastic band that I wore a hole in pretty quickly. It definitely wasn’t made to last. But I had a much heavier band on hand and was easily able to use that one with the handles EASA provided. It worked pretty well too, until Friday.

I was right in the middle of doing some squats when suddenly SNAP! The band ripped apart just a couple inches below one handle. The long end snapped right into my leg, thus the sting I mentioned earlier, while the left end just hung there, a now useless stub. I had to pause the game to fix the matter, swearing as I struggled to undo the handle from the short remnant of elastic band. When I had the handle reattached to the remainder of the band, the whole deal was a good six inches shorter. That was great for the exercises where I frequently had to double up the band to get enough resistance, but not so much for a lot of other exercises where the original length had been just right (i.e. providing enough to make me sweat). In fact, I’m seriously afraid that the band is no longer good for some exercises, like the shoulder presses, because too much stretching on the now truncated band may cause it to snap again.

Sigh. I guess I’ll hunt down a new resistance band, or a set of them, and maybe some extra handles too so I can swap back and forth between resistance levels. I’d like to find something sturdier than what I’ve been using, but I don’t know if I’ll have any luck with that. If I do find something, I’ll be sure to post a note about it here.

I’ve only got one more week left on the 6-week challenge, and I should be finishing up my final workout in that on Wednesday. Once I do, I’m going to evaluate the final results and maybe rethink my exercise routine. EA Sports Active has definitely provided me with a workout, but it may be time for a change.

Enjoy your Monday and go work up a sweat!

No comments

Move It Mama Monday! The real challenge of EA Sport Active’s 6-week challenge

  By ,

Well, I’m heading into the fifth week of EASA’s 6-week challenge, and it’s been interesting. I do like the new version of the game better. The exercises aren’t as painful on my knees and I especially like the fact that the game has a weekly weigh in to track my weight. Over all the game has improved, and it’s the only one I’m using right now for fitness on the Wii. And that’s the problem. It’s the only fitness game I can use right now, because the 6-week challenge demands so much time.

In order to compete 24 workouts in 6 weeks, I have to do 4 workouts a week (basic math, I know). And I thought that would be fine, especially with two of those workouts being done on days I don’t get any other exercise. But over the course of the last four weeks, a couple of things have happened. The first is that I was out of town at Marscon for three days and then came home entirely wiped out, so I missed my Sunday workout, and never got the chance to catch up on Monday. This is a real pain in the ass, because even now, a couple weeks after Marscon, I’m still one workout behind, and I can’t seem to find a day when I can sneak in a workout, because all sorts of screwy things have been going on with my schedule – parent/teacher conferences, prodding children to do homework, snow days, etc. Anything that interferes with me doing one of the two evening workouts I need to do forces me to do a makeup the very next day, which means I still haven’t caught up with that one workout session. And with 4 workouts a week, there are only 3 other days available to sneak in an extra workout. There is a reason why I didn’t choose those days to workout, and that’s because they are already full to the gills with other things to do!

So I’m behind by one workout and can’t seem to catch up. My second problem is that the workouts keep getting longer. As I progress through the 6-weeks, the sessions become more demanding, require me to do more sets and reps, and so on. I started out doing 20-25 minutes per workout, easy to fit into my schedule. Now I’m doing 30-35+ minutes a workout. Not so easy, especially when we once again look at those evening workouts. 10-15 minutes can be a huge deal in whether or not I get dinner on the table at a reasonable time, or manage to squeeze in story time with my girls before bed.

I’ve only got two weeks of the challenge left, so I will do my best to finish it, but I don’t think I will be doing another after this. I’ll have to wait until summer, when I my time is not as constricted by the demands of the girls’ school schedule and I can do more workouts in the morning. Actually that brings to mind a third problem, which ties into the other two – my enthusiasm is starting to wane. I hate exercising in the evenings, especially if the workout is tough. I’m usually dead on my feet by the time 5PM rolls around, and do not want to throw on my sweats and workout. As the workouts keep getting tougher and longer, I’m having to force myself more and more to stick with the program.

I know self-discipline is part of the challenge, but man. What I wouldn’t give to be able to set up a challenge that only required 3 workouts a week. Then I’d only have to worry about one evening workout, and that could easily be done on Friday, the day I’m least likely to be wiped out.

So, it looks like after this challenge, I’ll be doing something a little different with the Wii for fitness. I’ll probably still use EASA, but pick my workouts ala carte, and maybe throw in some Wii Fit Plus and Gold’s Gym Cardio Boxing, two other games I enjoy. In fact, I could easily see myself doing a session of each game once a week. That would round out my workout schedule quite nicely and combat the boredom.

But first things first. Finish up that 6-week challenge. We’ll see how I feel by the end of it.