Monday, August 03, 2009

Move It Mama Monday! Wii, My Weight, Everything

Oy! I've been busting ass lately, trying to lose those LAST 10 POUNDS, and have had no success. In fact, the scale is actually tipping in the opposite direction. I weigh more now than I have in a while. However...


My clothes still fit fine. And I can see more muscle definition in my legs, arms, and pretty much everywhere else. AND, most importantly, Hubster says I look goooooooooood.


I know, that last part is pretty shallow. I shouldn't depend on someone else's opinion of how I look to validate that I do look good. But the fact is, I can't see my own ass without a 3-way mirror and I know he stares at it all day when he's home, so I consult with the expert on that matter. If he likes it, it's fine.


But the not-losing-weight thing. What's going on there? I've increased the amount of water I drink, hoping to stave off excess water weight gain at those certain times of the month. I've upped my intake of fruits and vegetables, in an effort to fill up on healthy stuff and prevent me overeating meat and other not-so-good for me things. I'm certainly doing more activity around the house. I spent a few hours this week scraping the old vinyl linoleum off the kitchen floor, and let me tell you, that ain't no picnic. That activity alone should have caused me to sweat off a few pounds, but no, it didn't. I've put in over four hours at the dojo this week, 2-3 hours on the Wii (EASA and Wii Fit). I've spent two hours on yard work, three hours on dedicated house cleaning. I've been pretty much go, go, go all week.


And yet my weight has gone up, up, up. Huh.


One thing I've also notice is that I've been getting some seriously rough, dry patches of skin on my forehead. One minute, my face is fine, the next it looks like it belongs to a monitor lizard in molting season. This leads me to think that something is going on with my hormones, and since my weight fluctuation seems tied to my menstrual cycle, I'm wondering if that's what's going on here. It could be. Or I could be sneaking in a few too many bits of chocolate, that extra soda here and there, dinner out last week...


I dunno. All I know is, I don't want to starve myself, I do want to keep exercising, and I still fit into my favorite pair of jeans. Oh, and Hubster says I look gooooooooooood.


On to other things. I've found the more I play with EA Sports Active, the better I like it. Now that I'm no longer chained to that bloody 30 Day Challenge, I feel free to create my own routines. Remember how I said you couldn't get a decent cardio workout from EASA? Well, it turns out you can. What you do is create a new workout and fill it with the cardio activities and all the sports activities. I've made up three of these workouts already, mixing and matching the dancing, running, boxing, and other sports together. The workouts I make range from 18-30 minutes, burning from 90-140 calories. I find I tend to burn more calories than EASA predicts, which is good, though the workouts also run a bit longer than EASA predicts (not a huge problem there unless I'm tight for time that day). I'm usually sweating like crazy after one of these cardio workouts, so that's a good sign.


As for the strength training exercises in EASA, I've found I have to limit how much of the lower body exercises I do per workout. I can fill up a workout on upper body with no problem, cranking out reps of biceps curls, shoulder presses, etc. But do one too many sets of lunges and I pay for it the rest of the day, and probably the next. So, to make sure I get a lower body workout, I'm going to make some workout routines that mix just a few of the lunges and squats and jumps with the sports and cardio. It'll work like this: cardio/sport, cardio/sport, lunges, cardio/sport, cardio/sport, squats, etc. That's two aerobic exercises for every lower body exercise. And keep in mind the roller blading exercises in EASA count as lower body exercises, not aerobic.


Final thought for the day -- I wish someone would make an adventure exercise game. I recently got Wii Sports Resort, and I love it, but only a few of the mini-games offer any sort of exercise, and those, not as much as I'd like. I'd love to see someone come up with a Wii game that combines exercise with an adventure or game of some sort. Like say, an ancient Olympics game, where you represent one of the original Greek city states in a competition. You have to out run, out lift, out throw yourr opponents to win medals. Or something along the lines of the Lego Star Wars or Indiana Jones games, where instead of operating your character via a remote while sitting on your assets on the couch, your character only runs when you run, fights when you fight, etc. Isn't that what the Wii was supposed to do in the first place anyway?


Okay, that's it for me today. I'll be in Chicago next week, so I don't know if there'll be a Move It Mama Monday blog post or not. Will depend on my schedule while I'm there.

2 comments:

ComicBookGoddess said...

You're building muscle.

Muscle weighs more, and takes less calories to build.

So, it's perfectly normal that you're gaining weight. If you're at that point, you probably should be paying more attention to BMI.

Helen said...

The weight gain could be muscle weight, but I can't say. That'd be more muscle weight than I would expect to gain.

But... I can take some measurements and do a BMI check. Wii Fit's BMI is only based on weight and height.