Category Archives: Fitness Programs

ShrinkGeek vs. The EA SPORTS 30 Day Challenge : Week 2

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EA Sports ActiveI’ve made it past the first big milestone in the my experiment with the EA SPORTS Active 30 Day Challenge by completing 10 workouts.  As a reward I got a new trophy and an “attaboy” video from Bob Green in which he explained that they were going to be increasing the difficulty of my workouts from this point on.  I’m much more comfortable with how the program works and I’m learning the proper way to move to maximize the benefit I’m getting from my workouts.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve become a total EA SPORTS Active fanboy I thought I’d take some time this week to share my thoughts on ways I think the game could be improved.

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ShrinkGeek vs. The EA SPORTS Active 30 Day Challenge : Week 1

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EA Sports ActiveIn addition to the game itself, EA SPORTS Active comes with two additional accessories – A leg strap and a resistance band.  My first half an hour or so with the game was spent reading the instructions on how to use these two contraptions.  The resistance band has two canvas hand grips that will need to be attached to it but the process is fairly straightforward.  The leg strap, however, was a bit more convoluted.  I don’t feel it was difficult to figure out at all, but finding the right placement on your leg so that it’s comfortable AND doesn’t slide is a bit tricky (at least it was for me).

Once I proved I was more intelligent than some rubber and velcro I fired up the game itself.  EA SPORTS Active does not use the default Mii avatars that are standard in the Nintendo Wii so when you’re setting up your profile you’ll need to create a new one.  I don’t consdier this a bad thing, personally.  One of the features I do not like about the Nintendo Wii in general is the overly cartoonish facet of the Mii’s and how they dominate many of the games from Nintendo itself.   Call it a psychological hang up if you will, but the Mii’s make me feel like I’m playing a game designed for children and it just doesn’t work for me in Wii Fit.

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Gaining Momentum

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Weight Watchers MomentumGive me the opportunity to do so and I will sing the praises of Weight Watchers to anyone who cares to listen.  I’m not going to rehash my entire Weight Watchers story here, but I firmly believe that the program saved my life in a very literal way.

Weight Watchers has gone through several changes since I started the program.  Heck, there have been a lot of changes since I became aware of the program back when I was a kid (you know, back when if you were following Weight Watchers you had to eat liver every week).  While they haven’t done anything quite that extreme with the latest iteration, they’ve made a few changes that, in my opinion, have really added value to the diet and made it even easier to live with on a day-to-day basis.

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Taking Strides Towards Fitness With The Nintendo DS

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Personal Trainer : WalkingI feel like I need to put a disclaimer out before I write this particular post, and so I shall.

Despite appearances to the contrary this site has not been taken over by the Nintendo Fanboy network.

What sparks me to state that before continuing is that I’m about to heap praise on Nintendo yet again for supporting video games that promote health and fitness.  This time, however, they’ve done something that I personally wouldn’t have seen coming.  This new contender in the “getting gamers healthy” game is for the Nintendo DS.

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Getting “Active” With The Wii

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EA Sports ActiveIf there is any one console on the market today that has the greatest potential for helping video game fans get in shape it would have to be the Nintendo Wii.  The interactive nature of the motion detecting controllers practically forces you to actually get up and move while playing many of the popular games available on that system (I mean, you COULD sit on the couch while playing Tennis in Wii Sports, but that might just make you a  toolbox).   Nintendo took the fitness potential of the Wii one step further back in 2007 with the release of Wii Fit and the game buying public couldn’t get enough of it.  The game and balance board combination was so popular that one creative individual came up with a website just to track when and where it was available.  Soon similar games followed, including one from fitness expert Jillian Michaels (of The Biggest Loser fame).

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Trials and Tribulations of Telecommuting

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Image Courtesy of roland

Image Courtesy of roland

Ah, telecommuting.  That dream within a dream for the working professional.  While most of us are stuck in traffic or trapped behind a cube wall while the person next to us listens to “Come On, Eileen!” for the tenth time the telecommuter is sitting at home, sipping home brewed coffee in their pajamas and basking in the serenity that is home life.

Well, that is how we envision it is, anyway.  The truth of the matter is that working from home, while it has many advantages, is not quite the golden apple that those of us in the cube farms picture it to be.  While the telecommuter may not have to deal with Lundberg face-to-face, he or she has to deal with a whole variety of productivity hurdles that someone in an office is safely isolated from;  Kids, pets, door-to-door salesmen, distracting spouses, telephone solicitors, and the perception that the fact that working from home is not really “working” and as a result you should somehow be expected to drop whatever you are doing at a moments notice to deal with the latest non-work related situation that has cropped up in your life.

There is one other major challenge that the health conscious telecommuter has to deal with.   Staying in shape.  Having just finished a period of over four years in which I was telecommuting about 80% of the time I can assure you that while it is easier to avoid the weekly doughnut trap in the break room there are a whole series of roadblocks to being healthy that appear when you start working from home.  If you find yourself fortunate enough to end up with a telecommuting opportunity there’s a few things you can do to help minimize the negative impact on your physical AND mental well-being.

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In Defense Of The Walking Dude

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Randall Flagg from "The Stand"When I started out this project I specifically picked a group of folks who I knew had some very different takes on the whole weight loss and fitness field.  I did this for a variety of reasons, but primarily I did so because I know there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution when it comes to weight loss and fitness and that having multiple perspectives on certain subjects is a great way to help our readership find out what works best for them.

Take, for example, the article that Rafe wrote the other day about doing something other than walking in order to get in your daily exercise.  It’s a fine article, and the exercise he mentions certainly seems challenging, but in reading it I felt the need to write a response and give you all the “other side” of the coin.

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Two Quick Updates

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The Muppet Show's NewsmanThe Virgin Healthmiles program that I wrote about in this post now has a membership program that individuals can sign up for.   The initial fee is $29.99 and that includes the first month, and just like your typical MMORPG there is a monthly fee after that of $12.99.  Considering the fact that you can earn up to $500 in rewards in a year you only have to make it to Level 3 to see a “profit” from that in your wallet (and you’d most definitely see one on the scale).  For more information check out the information and registration page on the Virgin Healthmiles site.

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Virgin Healthmiles Program Offers Free Loot For Exercising

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Virgin Healthmiles LogoI like free stuff.

Generally speaking, I don’t like exercise.

Oh, I like the way I feel after I’m done exercising and I like the fact that when I exercise on a regular basis I lose weight and have more energy, but as a general rule I don’t sit around my house and think to myself “Gee, what am I going to do tonight?  Oh, I know!  I’ll exercise!”

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New York Star Wars Fan Forms Jedi Exercise Academy

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New York Jedi

Promotional image from NewYorkJedi.com

If you’re anything like me, the days and weeks (nay, years) after you saw Star Wars for the first time were filled with hours and hours of running around the house making lightsaber noises and basically acting like the Star Wars Kid.  While Luke Skywalker may or may not have been your favorite character, there was still something innately awesome about making running around with a flash light and making those “swoosh” noises while you did battle with invisible hordes of Storm Troopers.

Back in those glorious days of your youth you probably never gave a second thought to the fact that, in acting out your own lightsaber duels, you were burning lots of calories.

Well, New York Fitness Guru “Master” Flynn has, and he’s turned those thoughts into a series of classes designed to not only teach the students how to re-create the fight scenes from the Star Wars films but to burn calories in the process.  According to Flynn, “A 150-pound person can burn more than 400 calories after an hour of fencing and more than 600 through martial arts,” and his lightsaber classes are a combination of both.

He also points out that not everyone in his classes is a fan of the Star Wars franchise and that most of his clients are women.  Sounds to me like a great opportunity to not only get in shape but perhaps make a few social contacts as well.

For more information on the lightsaber classes or for information on how to enroll check out the New York Jedi website.