We here at ShrinkGeek are clearly not the only folks excited about the latest fitness game for the Nintendo Wii, EA SPORTS Active. Nintendo announced on Monday that the game sold more than 600,000 units in the first two weeks of being on the market.
With numbers like that it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that Nintendo is already planning to roll out the first expansion for the game in time for the holiday shopping season.
In 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.
When I originally started my life of dieting twenty or so years ago the tools I had to help me do so were pretty much limited to a paper journal and a scale.
My how things have changed.
The modern dieter has a plethora of toys, gadgets, and gizmos available to aid in the weight loss process. There are paid sites like eDiets and Weight Watchers eTools, calorie counting applications you can download for your iPhone or Blackberry, pedometers and heart rate monitors, digital scales, electronic body fat measuring devices….The list goes on and on.
Developer Mark Rickert has decided to add one more tool to the arsenal by creating an application that utilizes everyone’s favorite new social networking service, Twitter, to track your weight online.
The 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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It has been often said that being optimistic is incredibly helpful when you are struggling to lose weight. Admittedly, it is hard to be optimistic when you are faced with choking down that eighth glass of water for the day or you are trying to learn to love vegetables, but the fact of the matter is that modern dieters have it easy. Not only do we have a plethora of products that are packaged to help us with portion control, but many diets these days are loaded with foods that are, quite frankly, delicious.
It wasn’t always this way, my friends.
I grew up in a dieting household. When I was growing up my Mother (and, by extension, her children) took part in just about every diet craze that was out there. I can recall tuna fish diets, grape fruit diets, diets that involved granular shakes, and diets that with daily calorie intakes that would have the Olsen Twins duking it out in a cage match over a Snickers at the end of the day.
But what I remember the most is the liver.
A lot has been said over the years about the medical benefits of eating liver. From a health perspective, it is one of the best sources of Vitamin A, a compound that promotes healthy vision, bone growth, and assists in fighting off infections. It is also thought to help regulate blood sugar and aid weight loss efforts.
It is also…well…liver.
Please understand – I don’t want to take anything away from those of you who actually like eating liver, but you have to admit that for a large number of people even the thought of eating liver is enough to bring on a serious case of the DO NOT WANTS. That being said, there was a time when it was a regular staple in our household. You see, back in the early 70’s the folks over at Weight Watchers decided it was so important to eat liver that it was REQUIRED that you do so at least once a week. My Mother cleverly disguised it of course. She never told us we were eating liver, but that we were eating braunschweiger. It worked for a while, too, but eventually one of us actually read the packaging when she brought it in from the store and the jig was up.
The other day my Mom gave me a Weight Watchers cookbook from the early 80’s. By this point in the program history they had moved away from requiring liver, but it was still a pretty big focus of the recipe book – so much so that Liver has its very own section. Now I’m all for trying new things, but some of these recipes sound downright revolting, but my “favorite” has to be the Fruit ‘N’ Rice-Filled Liver.
In fact, I’m so grossed out by this particular recipe I’m gonna share the love.
Image courtesy of ajimixx
Video game players do not have a reputation for being paragons of physical fitness (with the possible exception of freakishly strong thumbs). In recent years, though, there has been a growing trend of console based games that have gotten us up off the couch. From party games like Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, and Samba de Amigo to games specifically designed for physical fitness like Yourself Fitness and Wii Fit, the video game industry seems determined to help us shake off our couch potato reputation.
Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of these trends, many youth oriented activity centers are using video games to entice children into burning more calories. Not only are fitness centers like the YMCA installing consoles to appeal to kids, the school board of Stafford County, Virginia, has jumped on the bandwagon as well. Over a dozen schools in the district now have fitness centers with a “technology twist.”
It seems likely that this trend will only continue to grow. Despite its lack of “next gen” graphics and titles designed to appeal to traditional hard core gamers the Nintendo Wii was yet again the hottest selling console during the most recent holiday shopping season. It is only a matter of time before Sony and Microsoft jump on the bandwagon and expand their catalog of games that get us moving, and while they may not turn us into super models they might help to counter all those Doritos we suck down while playing.