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Day Twenty: Active Over Easy

The yo-yo continues to yo, and then yo again. Now I’m down about two pounds and again on course for breaking the 170 barrier? But will it happen? The last time I got close I suddenly gained a bunch of mystery weight. I’m not holding my breath that it will happen soon. If for no other reason, I worry the extra volume of air will add a few ounces.

Wii Fit Weight - October 26th, 2009

My Mii is doing a Carmen Miranda dance to express his youthful exuberance. Olé!

Wii Fit Weight - October 26th, 2009

After yesterday’s EA Sports Active workout I was told that things would get more difficult now that we’re in the back half of the 30-day challenge. It appears that this was a trick meant to psyche me out, since today’s workout was basically a way of saying “just kidding”. There were some squat jumps (which still tell me I’m doing them wrong) but the bulk of the workout was baseball, tennis, dancing, and boxing, none of which are super strenuous. Also, none of the activities used the balance board. Boo! I like it better when the sports games incorporate it.

I still haven’t gotten a replacement resistance band for the one that snapped yesterday. It should be arriving from amazon tomorrow or the day after. The band that I got is described as “heavy” so hopefully it offers a bit more resistance, and holds up a little better to repeated use. Since I didn’t have a resistance band, I had to pantomime the upper body exercises again.

EA Sports Active - 30-Day Challenge, October 26h, 2009

I wasn’t too miffed about being resistance band-less since today was a daily burn dumbell workout. I tried upping the weights from 10 lbs. to 25 lbs. for some of the exercises. That… didn’t work. So I dropped back down to 10. I may need to pick up some intermediate weights to bridge the gap. It’s not that I can’t lift the 25lb. weights, but I can’t do it with consistently good form, and I found myself jerking and contorting rather than focusing on the muscles I was supposed to target.

Dinner - October 26th, 2009

Dinner was chicken, quinoa, sweet potato, cauliflower, and some salad. The cauliflower wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. The sweet potato was tasty, but a little too hard. Otherwise, quite tasty.

Day Nineteen: Tragedies

I gnash my teeth in lamentation. It appears we are in the midst of an plumping trend. Perhaps yesterday’s debauchery is catching up with me. I may need to step up my efforts this week.

Wii Fit Weight - October 25th, 2009

For what it’s worth, the Wii Fit age is down. I was slightly better at standing perfectly still today than I have been in the past.

Wii Fit Age - October 25th, 2009

Today’s EA Sports Active workout focused on the upper body. It was during a shoulder press that tragedy struck.

Broken Resistance Band

Farewell enormous dental dam. We hardly knew ye.

This put a damper on the rest of the workout. I have another resistance band, but it’s got hard handles which makes it difficult to hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. EA Sports Active won’t recognize some of the exercises unless you’re holding the controllers in very specific directions. Also, the cable between the Nunchuk and remote kept getting caught.

I ended up finishing the workout sans resistance band, since it was too difficult to get the game to properly register a rep. Of course this turned the exercise into a laughable pantomime, so I’m sure the stats below are inaccurate.

EA Sports Active - 30-day challenge

Is anyone out there using an alternate resistance band with the game? Can you recommend one with handles that work well?

Day Seventeen: She Stoops to Conquer

After a couple of days of curious embiggening, things have finally taken a downturn. I was alarmed by the sudden hump, but pleased to see that overall my weight is down about a pound from last week. I suppose the downside of weighing yourself everyday is that you have a tendency to to overreact to fluctuations rather than keeping the trends in mind.

Wii Fit Weight - October 23rd, 2009

The balance board in its infinite wisdom decided I would be 24 today. I am old enough to have to look after myself, but lacking the context to make good decisions. I will eat nothing but ramen and drink nothing but Kool-Aid and vodka.

Wii Fit Weight - October 23rd, 2009

EA Sports Active knows me quite well. I am a force to be reckoned with on the basketball court. I would surely be in the NBA if it weren’t for one fatal flaw. Dribbling, like tying my shoes, is one of those skills I was never able to develop. Velcro solved one of those problems. But despite my best efforts, it could do nothing for the other.

EA Sports Active - 30-day Challenge, October 23rd, 2009

Today the trainer introduced the hold squat. This sounds filthy. In practice, it just means getting into a squat position and holding there for about a minute.

I don’t think it would have been a problem had it not been for all the jump lunging, inline skating, and basketball hopping that preceded it. My legs felt kind of burny and wobbly, and toward the end of the second hold squat I needed to use my hands to keep myself up.

One day I hope to be as mighty as this lady. She could squat all day long, and so she did.

Day Sixteen: Muffled Footfalls

Curses and double curses, I forgot to take a picture of my weight change since last time. The balance board never forgets, but she never lets you go back and fix your mistakes either. You have to live with what you’ve done – forever. So I’ll need to use the graph to illustrate that I’ve gained .2 pounds since yesterday. Crumbs.

Wii Fit Weight - October 22, 2009

My Wii Fit Age remains unmoving as the Sphinx, and just as inscrutable.

Wii Fit Age - October 22nd, 2009

The eighth day of the EA Sports Active 30-Day Challenge was focused on the upper body. But I’m finding the flimsy membrane of a resistance band to be less and less convincing with each workout. It tries to offer some tension, but really, who are we trying to kid here?

EA Sports Active 30-Day Challenge - October 22nd, 2009

I got a late start tonight, so I didn’t want to disturb the downstairs neighbors. This presented a challenge since EA Sports Active often asks me to leap through the air and remain hanging there for several seconds before crashing back to Earth. I didn’t want to skip to the workout and incur the wrath of the overly enthusiastic trainer, but I didn’t want to incur the wrath of an overly cranky neighbor either.

Fortunately I have a Dragonball Z Tapestry.

Dragonball Z Tapestry

Which I folded up, thusly.

DBZ Tapestry Folded

And so I was able to cheat gravity by introducing this puffy arbiter between my falling girth and the ceiling plaster below. Or so I thought. The thing kept getting tangled around my feet, sort of like the really scary Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy is attacked by Linus’ blanket.

I intentionally went easy on the kick ups, jogging, and jumps to keep from smashing around too much. This annoyed the trainer and probably cheated me out of some precious calories. To make up for it, I did some hula hooping afterwards.

A lot of hula hooping.

Spinderella, a hula hoop fantasia

Day Fourteen: Lunge-a-palooza

Gadzooks! Could at be that I’m not far from breaking into the 160′s? Whenever there’s such a major change from day to day I’m always inclined to think that it’s just a fluke. But here on the cusp of something that feels like a milestone, I want to believe.

Wii Fit Weight - October 20th, 2009

No such luck with the Wii Fit Age. Today I tried something a bit different on the one-legged balance test. I tried using my left leg instead of my right. Turns out this wasn’t the best idea. I only scored in 50′s, where I usually get in the 70′s – 80′s on the right leg.

Wii Fit Weight - October 20th, 2009

EA Sports Active was completely lunge happy today. Almost the entire program consisted of alternating side lunges with toe touches, alternating lunges, alternating reverse lunches, and balance board volleyball with lunges. My lunging abilities are going to be fantastic at the end of the 30-day challenge! I’m not sure what the practical applications are though. I guess I can lurch out of dark alleys and spook people.

EA Sports Active 30-day challenge, October 20th, 2009

Today’s workout also involved kick ups on the jogging track. Kick ups differ from running in that you try to kick your legs up high enough to strike own butt with your heels. As much fun as it is to kick your own ass , it’s also pretty tiring. I think I may have done it faster and sloppier than intended just to get through it faster.

Dinner - October 20th, 2009

Dinner tonight was a tasty chicken in a wine sauce with salad, quinoa, avocado, and bread. A Guinness was perhaps consumed as well. nom.

Day Thirteen: Unlucky Legs and the Urban Juror

The weight’s up by less than half a pound. I’ve alerted the media.

Wii Fit Weight - October 19th, 2009

The Wii Fit Age has let me maintain the illusion that I’m still in my twenties for just a little bit longer. The ennui is terrific.

Wii Fit Age - October 19th, 2009

Today commemorates the thirteenth workout of the project. An auspicious anniversary! Is it full of portents and omens?

I had jury duty today. The bus stopped a little less than a mile away from the courthouse, so I walked. After spending about an hour assembling all 100+ potential jurors in the courtroom, the judge told us all to go home and come back another day. I then walked about another mile back to the bus stop. Once I got home, I remembered that I had to do some grocery shopping. So I walked about another mile to Trader Joe’s. Difficult though it was, I was able to resist buying a mouthwatering tub of chocolate dunkers.

Today’s EA Sports Active workout was pretty thigh and calf heavy. I ended up getting a pain in my right calf that felt like a bruise, but didn’t leave any visible mark. Maybe a minor strain? At any rate, stretching and resting it for a bit seemed to improve things. The overall results of the workout weren’t too shabby, though I’m still a bit dubious of the calorie count.

EA Sports Active - 30-day challenge - October 19th, 2009

Following the EA Sports Active workout I did the arms and shoulders dumbell exercises from Daily Burn. I upped the weight to 10 pounds per hand, for a total of 20 pounds for most exercises. It doesn’t sound like much, but some of them were really tough. I wasn’t able to completely do the rear delt raise without dropping the weights down to five pounds. And I had to do modified close hand pushups rather than the real thing.

I was encouraged to find that I was able to do more reps with more weight than last week pretty much across the board.

I didn’t manage to record my food today. I cannot tell a lie, a pumpkin spice latte was consumed on the way back from the courthouse. Those are not especially good for you.

Day Eleven: Curse of the Temptress

Yesterday’s slight bump up in weight is followed by a slightly larger dip down today. I’ll take that.

Wii Fit Weight - October 18th, 2009

More than 10 years difference in today’s Wii Fit age. I assume this has nothing to do with the weight loss and everything to do with the fact that I did slightly better on an agility game.

Wii Fit Age - October 17th, 2009

The EA Sports Active workout today focused on upper body, and involved some cardio boxing with the balance board that was quite fun. There were still a lot of lunges, but not so much jumping.

EA Sports Active Challenge - October 17th, 2009

While I was pleased by the reduced emphasis on leaping, I do find the strength exercises a bit lacking. The game comes with what is essentially an enormous dental dam with handles. It provides some resistance, but very little. Also, it’s difficult to be sure if you’re getting the same resistance on both your right and left arms.

I’m also increasingly frustrated by some of the game’s motion detection snafus. At the end of some reps I’m told over and over to “STAY STILL”, despite the fact that I’m totally still. The way to make it move on? Shake wildly. I don’t think that’s the intended design. The trainer will sometimes criticize your form, but there’s no way of seeing what’s wrong with it.Unlike Wii Fit, there is no visual or audio feedback to let you know where the game actually wants you to be.

In addition, the language that the game uses suggests that you aren’t trying hard enough, which is infuriating. “I want you to go a little further on that rep.” seems to be the trainer’s way of saying “I don’t know if you finished that rep or not because my motion detection sucks. So I’ll just assume you didn’t, and criticize you.” De-motivating.

After EA Sports Active I sunk 25 minutes into Wii Fit Plus. Ah, Wii Fit. A less intense workout, but a much tighter package.

Wii Fit Time - October 17th, 2009

I’d just like to point out that 10 of those minutes come from 10-minute Super Hula Hoop. There are few things as humbling as being nearly brought to tears by a stitch in your side induced by a colorful hula hoop simulator that features an adorable Adolf Hitler Mii cheering you on.

In case your wondering, I did not pick Adolf to be my hula hoop coach. Somehow he’s infiltrated my Mii parade, so now he (along with Grace Jones, Admiral Ackbar, Captain Kangaroo and more) shows up on Wuhu island to make sure I’m getting a good workout. I suppose there are worse things he could be doing.

Today marked a landmark in Advanced Obstacle Course. I finally completed all four levels! There’s one relatively tricky part in the middle of the fourth zone. But aside from that, the rest of it is a breeze for me now.

Advanced Obstacle Course - October 17th, 2009

There was a mysterious package waiting for me when I woke up today. It was tightly sealed in bubble wrap and weighty indeed. It had come from a friend back east. Perhaps because I had been helping her with her thesis? But what secrets did it hold?

I will tell you this, the contents could be consumed in units of spiders and/or worms.

Serving Size - 1 spider, 1 worm

Check this thing out. Gummy spiders, gummy worms, sugar dusted jelly pumpkins, and enormous cookies as big as your face! What a terrifyingly tempting array.

Temptation

A bounty to be sure, but a bittersweet delight. Nothing would have pleased me more than to suck down all of the powdered sugar, butter, corn syrup, and oodles of sugar in this feast. But now was not the time to succumb to my old ways of gobbling up every delicious thing I laid eyes upon. I both thanked and cursed my distant friend for her well-intentioned sabotage.

I must confess to eating a cookie and a worm. I tried to resist, but they ensnared me in their wicked web of succulence. I’m trying to pawn the rest of the treats off on my roommates. Hopefully they will devour it all before I hear them singing sweetly to me once more in the gloom of night.

eeeaaaaattttt ussssssss. eaaaattttt ussssss. soooo yummmmyyyyy…

The call is coming from inside the kitchen.

Day Ten: The Lost Workout

My weight bounced up by a little less than a pound. It wasn’t significant enough to warrant a rebuke from the balance board. Despite the slight increase, it’s still lower than it was a couple of days ago.

Wii Fit Weight - October 16th, 2009

The Wii Fit Age on the other hand has skyrocketed up to 37. I attribute this mostly to a really poor performance on the second agility test. It was the one where you have to lean left or right to avoid obstacles, and I failed on one of the early obstacles.

Wii Fit Age - October 16th, 2009

I was very confused to see that EA Sports Active thought that I had taken Wednesday off. I was equally confused when today’s workout turned out to be the same one I did on Wednesday.

As it turns out, it didn’t save Wednesday’s workout, so I had to do it again. I guess that if you turn off the game on the results screen it doesn’t bother saving. Boo! I was surprised that it doesn’t save as soon as you wrap up the workout. I imagine a lot of people have probably quit at the end of their session thinking that they’d be okay.

So I ended up having to do the squat jumps and jump lunges all over again. I found the squat jumps easier today, but the jump lunges were still frustrating. I think part of the problem is that the game asked me to do 20 regular lunges before transitioning to jump lunges. So my legs were already tired from holding the lunge position.

EA Sports Active Workout - October 16th, 2009

Nevertheless, the results were all right.

I also did the daily burn dumbell workout for chest and back. Since the last time was a little too easy, I increased the weight by 5 lbs. per arm. It was still relatively easy, but I don’t want to overdo it an hurt myself. I don’t have a weight bench, so the flies and bench presses don’t have the full range of motion that they should. At some point I may get a cheap bench, especially if I increase the weight.

Day Eight: Leaping Lizards and Lugubrious Legs

A wise man once said no g-news is good g-news, unless it’s gary gnus. In keeping with that gentle spirit, there is no news to report on the weight front. Since it’s the exact same as yesterday, I feel like the balance board should reward me. It’s usually so pleased when things remain perfectly still.

Wii Fit Weight - October 14th, 2009

Despite the limited movement in my tonnage, the board saw fit to reduce my age by a couple of years. Perhaps that was my reward for keeping my corporeal heft motionless from one day to the next.

Wii Fit Age - October 14th, 2009

Moving on from Wii Fit to EA Sports Active, I have here a prepared statement:

EPH JUMP SQUATS & JUMP LUNGES

As we touched upon yesterday, there is an inherent dissonance between the idea on the one hand of being overweight, and on the other of flinging your body up into the air as high as you can. Yes, it’s good exercise. But it doesn’t make for good neighborly relations if you’ve got someone living underneath your stomping ground.

What’s more, I was being criticized the entire time for my pace and enthusiasm. I don’t know what I was doing wrong.

A jump lunge is performed by getting into a lunge position, jumping, and switching the placement of your feet in the air so that when you land you are lunged on the other leg. It’s a little tricky, but easy enough to pick up. The thing with jump lunges is you have to make the transition fast, or you land funny. I felt like I was doing them right, but every time I got a warning from the trainer that said TOO QUICK.

What was too quick? Did I jump too soon? I don’t think that was the problem. The problem seemed to be that I wasn’t suspended in mid-air like a tubby weather balloon for as long as it would have liked. Then comes the messages from the instructor, “I know you can do better than that” or “You’re not going to break a sweat with that pace.”

I’m sorry I’m not a buoyant as you’d like, jackass. I’ll suck down some helium next time and curse at you in munchkin voice, will that make you happy? I’m guessing not.

Aw well, here are the results:

EA Sports Active - October 14th, 2009

Wait… “Excellent timing and power on my jump lunges today?”

WHAT???

EA Sports Active is an abusive boyfriend. It tears me down with unrealistic demands, and then takes me out to its camaro. It tells me I’m the best. Promises it’s going to be better to me. We go out to the Pig & Poke and eat french fries with ranch dressing out of a cone, and it drapes its threadbare letterman jacket over me as I fall asleep drooling on the dashboard to the sounds of Bat Out of Hell.

And I’m never heard from again.

After finishing with EA Sports Active I moved on to the Daily Burn abs and legs workout. Since my legs were already sore from the squatting, lunching, jumping, and running that EA-SA had me doing, everything was kind of rubbery ad non-responsive. Still, I got through all of it except the squats, which just weren’t happening.

Since it’s been a week now, here’s an updated progress picture. Not a lot of change. Wearing the same goofy outfit for consistency’s sake. Probably should have used the flash since the sun was going in and out. Oh well, you still get the idea.

Progress Photo - October 14th, 2009

Have you had to do any of the leaping activities on EA Sports Active? Did they make you want to die, or actually die? Did the game recognize what you were doing properly?

Day Seven: Jumping Jehosaphat

Today the weight is up by a little over a pound. Overall it’s down from this time last week.

Wii Fit Plus Weight - October 13th, 2009

Wii Fit Age is matching up with my real age. I have no idea why. Maybe the balance board picks the age out of a bingo tumbler.

Wii Fit Age - October 13th, 2009

Today’s EA Sports Active workout introduced side to side jumps. Now, I’m sure that this is a very good exercise, but there is a flaw with it. This is a game targeted toward overweight people. And wile the trainer is clear that you should try to land softly on your feet, there’s only so soft you can land when you’re heavy and your legs aren’t super strong. Plus, I’ve got downstairs neighbors so I’m really hesitant to fling myself around the room. Moreover, I found the trainer was constantly criticizing me for doing it wrong. I’m not sure how you can screw up jumping, but apparently I was.

I was not excited to learn that tomorrow’s workout introduces jumping squats and jumping lunges. I’d be fine with jumping jacks, those I can do without knocking the plaster off the ceiling. I suppose I’m just grousing. Harumph.

EA Sports Active - 30-day Challenge (Day 3)

Today’s fancy feast was salmon steak, fingerling potatoes, salad, avocado slices, and tomatoes stuffed with turkey meatball. It was a pretty big meal.

Dinner - Salmon Steak, Potatoes, Tomato, Salad

I’ve been tracking my daily nutrition on dailyburn. I’ve found it relatively easy to stay within calorie goals, but I’ve had a difficult time hitting targets for protein, fat, and carbs. I seem to always be behind on protein, and too far ahead on either fat or carbs in a given day.

I guess that says something about the kinds of foods that I gravitate towards. Fat and carbs is a good summation of my favorite things.

I’ve been drinking a protein mix to try and get protein up without adding fat or carbs. Ideally I’ll reach a point where I don’t have to rely on that anymore.