Move It Mama Monday! What Wii game should I get next?

Well, I've had a week with Wii Fit Plus, and I do enjoy it, but I have to admit to some disappointment. For starters, I was expecting to be able to access all the different exercises and games in the "Make My Own Routine" section. No such luck. For some reason, Wii Fit Plus only lets you build personal routines using the yoga and strength exercises it seems, in spite of the fact that the mini routines already built into the game include the original cardio games and the new Wii Fit Plus games. I was also hoping for more cardio activities in the new Wii Fit Plus, but there seems to be a real lack of those. The closest I've found to new cardio games is the bicycle game (which lets you race all over the island searching for flags to tag before racing to the finish line) and the rhythm kung fu, which really isn't all that cardio intensive. There is a variation on the running in the My Wii Fit games, which offers new routes to run and then quizzes you on what you saw while you were running. That's nice, but would it have killed Nintendo to include new boxing and step routines? Aside from the Island Lap in the run, the boxing is the most cardio intensive game they've got, and I do it so frequently I can pretty much do it with my eyes close now. And the step routines never, NEVER change. These two things both need a serious update.

Having said that, I'm thinking of picking up yet another Wii fitness related game, and I'm trying to decide which one to get. There are four I have my eye on, including:

ES Sports Active: More Workouts - True, the original game did kill my knees, but EASA definitely has more upper body strength building exercises in it, and I like the sports drills. It's a bit expensive ($36.99 on Amazon.com), but I hear the new version includes stretching exercises, which would be a serious bonus. The game is only available for pre-order right now. It comes out 17 November.

My Fitness Coach - I've seen this online before, and wondered about it. Apparently, if you've got a step, a balance ball, a heart rate monitor, and hand weights, you can get a real workout with this game. I have all these items, so this would seem like a good choice. The game doesn't make much use of the Wii balance board according to reviews I've read, and it's an awful lot like a gym workout, but those people who like it swear by it. It also includes stretching exercises, again something I would like to see show up in exercise programs. The cost on this one is much lower, $19.49 on Amazon.com.

Gold's Gym Cardio Workout - the companion game to My Fitness Coach. This one does use the balance board, and looks to have lots of boxing games in it, along with some other exercises. The emphasis does seem mainly on boxing, from the reviews I've read, but as I mentioned above, the boxing in Wii Fit is one of the most intense cardio workouts available in that game, and I get a decent workout from that, so I'm not adverse to trying more boxing games. This one also gets pretty high ratings, and the price is $19.49 on Amazon.com.

Yoga - a fitness game that looks to include as much game as fitness. From what I've read online, you can choose to play the game whereby you explore the yoga temple and unlock new yoga challenges as you seek to gain the level of yoga master. There are a variety of settings to work out in, and the game definitely uses the balance board to check your balance and steadiness in each pose. The pluses on this one? I like yoga. I think it's a great strength and stretching workout, and this game looks to offer many more poses than the ones that show up in Wii Fit. I really like the idea of having an exotic environment to explore as well as a game goal to achieve while I work out. The cons? I hate the look of the stick-thin supermodel who's the spokesperson for this game. Honestly, I'm a generous size 12. I work out and I eat healthy and I have been a size 12 since my early teens, and all I can think when I see a model that thin is, "Someone's been starving themselves!" Thus I despise having emaciated runway models tell me how to be fit and healthy. It smacks of hypocrisy to me. If she shows up a lot in the game, it's going to be a real turn-off to me. Like EASA More Workouts, this game isn't out until 17 November, and it's the same price($36.99 on Amazon.com).

After looking through all this, I think what I'll end up doing is order My Fitness Coach and Gold's Gym Cardio Workout at the beginning of next month. The fact that I can get both these games for only a few dollars more than one of the other two games, and the fact that My Fitness Coach and Gold's Gym Cardio are already available make them the obvious choice. I'll try them out, see if I get the kind of workout I want with this combo, and then reconsider how badly I might want the other two games.

Move it Mama Monday! Wii Fit Plus

So I was sick two weeks, and not getting much moving around done, certainly not getting any serious exercise done. This is to be expected when one is sick. The general idea is to rest rather than run one's self into the ground. But resting for two weeks left me feeling like a big squishy slug. Not a feeling I enjoy.

Still, I couldn't seem to throw off the lethargy from being sick. Then Wii Fit Plus showed up in my mailbox, and suddenly I had the urge to get up and move.

I've been waiting for Wii Fit Plus ever since I found out about it earlier this summer. I pre-ordered my copy at the beginning of the month, eager to try it out, and then waited and waited and stayed in bed sick. I just happened to be in a slow recovery phase when the game arrived, so I decided to try just a few minutes, because you know I've been sick and I don't want to overdo it. 45 minutes later, I was sweating and woozy and addicted to Wii Fit Plus.

Obviously, I enjoy the new game. After having worked with the original Wii Fit since last February, I was getting bored, which is never good for a fitness routine. The preview shots and videos of Wii Fit Plus intrigued me and made me curious to see if Nintendo had done a massive overhaul of the game. There were certain deficiencies in Wii Fit that I desperately wanted to see corrected. Did Nintendo fix these things?

Eh, yes and no. The two biggest changes in Wii Fit Plus are the new Training Plus games and the My Wii Fit Plus category in the training options menu (that's the menu you go to after you select Training at the main calendar, you know, the one with the piggy bank waiting for you to choose what to work on that session). The Training Plus games are a combination of balance, coordination and brain games with a bit of aerobic workout thrown into some of them. These games are in a separate category from the original Balance games that came with the original Wii Fit (lest you worry, all the original games and exercises are still included in Wii Fit Plus). Among other things, the Training Plus games include Rhythm Kung Fu, juggling, the chicken flying game, a marching parade game, a bicycle game that allows you to determine where you go on the Wii Fit island (I like this one just for the fact that I can finally explore the island on my own!), a snow ball fight, and several others. A few of these games have caused me to sweat a bit, namely the Kung Fu and the bicycle game. Most test the brain, balance and coordination.

As for the yoga and strength categories, those are still the same but with 3 new exercises each. Personally, I would have rather seen at least 5 new exercises in each, but 3 isn't bad. Nothing has changed in the aerobics category that I can tell.

Then we come to the My Wii Fit Plus category. Selecting this option takes you to a "locker room" where you're given a variety of menu buttons to choose from, including Wii Fit Plus Routines, My Routines, and Favorites. The Wii Fit Plus Routines are preprogrammed routines that focus on particular areas for you to work on - balance, arms and shoulders, etc. You have to poke around a bit to see what each one really does, since some of the titles don't really tell you much (there's an over-indulgence routine that I discovered is supposed to focus on calorie burning, and a Shape routine that looks like it's supposed to focus on the waist line). None of these routines is more than three exercises/games long, and none lasts longer than 8 minutes. The advantage of these preprogrammed routines is that they do let you get through the exercises faster. Without the routines, you do spend a little extra time selecting individual exercises and going through menu options before actually getting to an exercise. With the routines, you zip from one exercise to the next. That's a bonus in my opinion because it means a 45 minute workout could actually only take 50 minutes to do as opposed to an hour (those of you who have used the original Wii Fit will know what I'm talking about). Also, the routines allow you to mix things up, going from yoga to games to aerobics and back without having to do a lot of switching around in the menu. Again, this speeds a workout along greatly!

One thing about these routines is that they all seem to select exercises or games at the beginner's level, as opposed to the advanced level. I haven't set up any of my own routines yet (something I'm going to try this week) to see if I have the option of using the advanced levels of things like the running, cardio boxing, etc. I'm hoping so.

Other things that have changed in the Wii Fit Plus. Wii Fit Plus now tells you how many calories you burn while working out. I have to admit, they show me burning far fewer calories than I would like. Also, Wii Fit Plus gives you the option of setting a calorie burning goal for each day. Unfortunately, any activities you do outside Wii Fit Plus aren't counted toward that calorie goal, although when you list them in the Fit Credits menu, they are tallied up there and added to whatever you've done in Wii Fit. But during the actual workout, they don't show up.

One more interesting option, you can now change players while working out. In the yoga, strength, cardio and balance games menus, at the very bottom right corner is an option to switch players. Doesn't look like you can do this in the My Wii Fit Plus, but if you want to work out with someone, you now have the option of switching back and forth on every exercise. I don't know yet if this means you can finally have another person's Mii race with you on the 2-person race. That would be nice, especially since my girls like to race me when I'm working out. But it does mean if I want to spend an evening doing a workout and the kids want to play along, I can let them (though that option has its own hazards).

The whole game has a slightly revamped look. The colors are bolder, the appearances of the personal trainers are a bit different, though both are still rather mannequin like. My biggest question is whether or not the Wii Fit Plus is still as snarky as the original Wii Fit. That's something I'm sure I won't find out for a few weeks. When I first started using the Wii Fit, I recall it being very supportive with all its little comments, but then one day when I suddenly put on a few pounds (it was water weight, can't do a damned thing about it at my age), Wii Fit got all persnickety and demanded I explain why I had suddenly turned into the Fat Lady at the circus. It did not help that the stupid thing didn't even give me the option of listing "water weight" or "hormones" as one of the reasons why I had packed on 4 lbs over night. I haven't used Wii Fit Plus long enough to see this come up yet, but if it does, I'm going to be sadly disappointed. No one, and I mean no one, likes to be sniped at for things they can't control. (BTW, I have noted the Wii Fit Plus does seem to feel the need to get a little snippy if you miss a day for your fit test. That bit of snark has apparently not changed a bit.)

Over all, I like it. I would have liked to have seen more exercises added in the yoga and strength section, especially exercises that targeted the upper body. I also would have liked to have seen new cardio activities added. But the routines are a great idea and I'm looking forward to setting up my own. And I have to admit it, I really like the new games. If I'm not feeling well, I can at least get up and do the games, and while they may not give me a heart pounding workout, they will at least get me moving and that goes a long way toward making me feel better when I've been sick a while.

Move It Mama Monday! Still feeling ill

I don't know what I caught, but I've been out of it most of the past week. I managed to get to the pool on Monday and had a great swim, then I was flat on my back Tuesday and Wednesday. I did a light workout on Thursday and felt exhausted afterward, so that's been pretty much it for exercise since then. I've slept so late some mornings it isn't even funny, and I've been doing most of my work from bed. Every time I think I'm getting better, I end up feeling crummy again. So who knows. I'm going to continue to take it easy on the exercise front for a while.

In other news, I ordered the new Wii Fit Plus, which became available today. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new game is like, and will give a report here as soon as I've had a chance to hop on the balance board and play with it. Then I'm going to have to figure out how to work it into my regular workout schedule.

That's probably the big thing on my mind, fitness-wise, these days, aside from being sick. I've settled into a new work schedule since the kids started back to school, but I'm still figuring out the exercise schedule. I want to hit the pool at least twice a week, the dojo three times a week, and that leaves two days a week for Wii Fit or running. I'd throw in a few extra workouts, but I also need time to clean the house. Ugh. I despise house cleaning, but it's got to get done, so I'm trading the time I had hoped to set aside for fun little mini-workouts to do the cleaning instead. We'll see how that works. I figure if I do three house cleaning sessions a week, I might be able to steal back one morning for a Wii Fit mini-workout, but we'll have to see.

And that's all that's going on right now. Going to rest a bit more today, and see about doing a light workout tomorrow. Have fun!

Move It Mama Monday - Hai Karate!!

Damn, I own a lot of weapons. That picture you see above is all my gear for kobudo class. Kobudo is a form of martial arts weapons training, closely related to Okinawan karate. Last Saturday, Hubster and I tested for our 2nd degree black belts in kobudo, and I'm happy to say we passed.

The Hubster and I have been taking martial arts classes for about eight years now. In addition to our shiny new 2nd degree black belts in kobudo, we also have 2nd degree black belts in karate. We study both karate and kobudo under the same instructor, and Princess trains at the dojo as well. Pixie is chomping at the bit to get started. I think she may begin classes this January. So we're obviously a karate family.

When we started karate classes eight years back, Hubster and I were still pre-children, so we had the luxury of being able to go to six classes a week together. Hey, we were young, we were excited, and we were all fired up about having the chance to beat the snot out of each other in a fun, friendly environment. I trained all through my pregnancy with Princess and had a blast in the process. Then after my first child was born, Hubster and I kind of slowed down on classes. We switched to each of us going to four classes a week, with one of us in class each evening and one of us at home with the baby (there were two classes on Saturday, so we both took a class that day and just handed off Princess at the door).

After Pixie came, things slowed down even further. Let's face it, taking care of kids takes a lot of time, and can make it difficult to keep to a regular schedule of exercise. These days, I try to make it to 3-4 classes a week, but many times it's only two. Between doctor's appointments, sick kids, and work deadlines, it can be hard to make it to class. Thankfully, our current dojo offers day time classes, which is good for me because I pretty much shut down physically and mentally after 5PM each day.

I also have trouble these days finding the motivation I need to practice. But this past week, I discovered once again the truth of one of my rules for doing exercise when I feel like crud. Just go out there and do it. I don't have to do it for long. If I go out with the plan of doing just five minutes, then that's great. Usually, if I get out and do five minutes of any activity, that five minutes will likely turn into twenty, thirty, or even forty minutes, and before I know it, I'll have done a whole workout. And on those days where I do five minutes and I still feel like crud, then I'm obviously not feeling well and I can call it a day. But I have to do five minutes first. This works for classes too. If I can just get to the class and do five minutes, I'm usually good for the rest of the hour. In fact, I don't think I've ever left class once I've gotten there. I just turn off the brain and do what my instructor tells me to do until class is over and then hey, look at that! I worked out for a whole hour.

Anyway, I followed the five minute/go to class rule all last week, and got in enough practice to do well on my kobudo test this Saturday. And now that I've got my shiny new 2nd degree black belt, I've suddenly got a little more motivation to practice and go to class on a regular basis. So if you happen to see me walking around, carrying any of the instruments of destruction shown in the above picture, you know what I'm up to.

Hai, karate!!

Move It Mama Monday! I'm Free!

Ah, school is finally started! Both Princess and Pixie are out of the house all day, and I have the place to myself. Once I get the kids off to their respective schools, I can take off and do whatever I want. And what I want to do is...

Huhn. Good question. What do I want to do, now that I can go exercise without being saddled with two kids?

Well, for starters, I want to get in a lot of karate practice. I've got a test in a couple weeks, and I need to brush up, rebuild my endurance after so many weeks of vacation and visiting relatives and other general discombobulation.

What else would I like to do? Get back on track with my physical therapy. My knees are better than they were when I stopped doing EA Sports Active, but they still crack and pop too much for my comfort. So back to daily therapy we go!

Get back on EASA. Yes, I actually do miss that knee destroying game. I'm hoping if I eliminated the lunges, I can get back to using the game on a regular basis, maybe a couple times a week. It's got a lot of fun games, plus upper body exercises, and I do work up a sweat on that game.

Actually, I'd like to get back in the habit of doing two workouts most days; a main, hour-long workout in the morning and a mini cardio workout in the afternoon. This is for two reasons. First, I really do need the activity. Without the kids to chase around, I will probably spend a lot more time on my ass working at the computer. Not good for me in general. Second, I get the sleepies in the afternoon. That extra 20 minutes of aerobic activity, whether it be walking, DDR, or the elliptical machine, will help combat that, and hopefully keep me perky and alert all afternoon.

I considered adding "lose weight" to my list of goals for the fall, but I'm thinking no. Rather than be concerned about how many pounds I'm packing, I'd rather focus on how much (healthy, non-knee destroying) activity I get and on how much healthy food I can eat. I am trying to move more to a vegetable focused diet, with two out of three meals having fruit and vegetables as the main course, and fruits and vegetables as snacks during the day. Besides, I can lose weight, but invariably, sometime around mid-cycle, my body packs it back on in water weight. So I'm wondering if I should take a slightly different approach to my workouts.

Maybe, during the middle of my cycle, when I'm most likely to pack on the water weight, I should do mostly cardio activity - karate, running (yes, I have found I can run again), elliptical, DDR, swimming, etc. Then during the rest of my cycle I can split my workouts between cardio and strength. I'm hoping the extra sweat I get from the extra cardio will help me fight off that water weight, but again, I don't want to focus on losing weight, just on being healthy.

So that's the goals for the next couple of months. Next Monday, I should have something to say about finally having a week to get back to the Y!

Move It Mama Monday! Sidewalks?!

For a long while now, I have bemoaned the lack of sidewalks in our area. We have a bit of sidewalk in our own little patch of suburbia, as well as a bit of running trail, but those only run intermittently through the neighborhood, and fail to connect us to any other patch of suburbia, which is kind of a problem.

Our neighborhood sits right off a very busy four-lane highway. Very busy. This road has no sidewalks along it, and the shoulders are rather narrow. The traffic along the highway is constant, and deadly fast, and I don't often seen anyone dumb enough to walk along the side of the road to get anywhere. It's just too dangerous.

If it were not for the lack of sidewalks along this stretch of highway, though, I'd be able to walk to the nearest grocery store (about 2 miles away). I'd also be able to walk to our local library and our YMCA (about 3 miles away). This would be great, in my opinion. If I walked to the grocery store once a week to get dinner for Friday, and walked to the Y 2-3 times a week to work out, I'd never have to worry about those 5-10 extra pounds I can't seem to lose. They'd melt away! Plus I'd almost never need to drive, since those are the three places I go most often during the week. I could just walk there, and save money on gas! Imagine that.

I mention all of this because Hubster just recently read that our local government is looking at putting in a stretch of sidewalk along that very busy highway. What they're looking at doing won't stretch as far as the library and Y, unfortunately, but it would stretch past the local grocery store. Also unfortunate, that prophesied sidewalk will only be on one side of the road, the side opposite where my little patch of suburbia is, so I'll have to figure out how to cross a four-lane highway to reach it, because I'm betting no one is smart enough to figure out we'll also need cross walks and signals too.

But still, it's progress, and it looks like there will be more sidewalks going up through our county, and I can't see that as a bad thing. Maybe some day, before I day, I'll have all the sidewalk I'll need to get around this area.

In other news, I do finally seem to be losing weight. It's a combination of water weight and fat, but still, my assets do appear to be shrinking. As I mentioned last Monday, I am taking a month off of EA Sports Active, since my weight gain and knee problems started about the time I started using that game. Instead, I'm going with a combination of Wii Fit, karate, walking, a bit of running, the elliptical machine, and Dance Dance Revolution. In the last three weeks, I've lost four pounds. When school starts up next week and both kids head off for the day, I'll be back to swiming and lifting on a regular basis again, and that should really help kill those extra pounds, I hope.

So how are you all doing with your waist lines? And what would you do if you had sidewalks in your neighborhood? Would you take advantage of them and walk everywhere? Or do you already have them and use them?

Move It Mama Monday! Dear EA Sports Active

Dear EA Sports Active,

I want you to know, we've had a lovely couple of months together. Really, I've had such a great time with your 30 day challenge and daily journal. But I think it's time we take a break. Now before you panic, this is a break, not a break-up. It's just that I need some time away from you to figure things out, like why my knees have been feeling like crap ever since we've been together, or why I've done nothing but gain weight since you came into my life. I know, these are difficult questions, and you're not necessarily at fault. In fact, I don't want to blame you, but I need to start looking for solutions to these two very troubling problems, and that means cutting back on possible contributors. Again, notice I say possible, not definite. I'm not blaming you. Really, it's not you at all, it's me, me and my bum knees.

I expect you won't see me for about a month. While we're apart, I want you to know I will be revisiting old friends, and yes, that includes Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution. I know you may not be comfortable with this, but I want to be upfront and about what I'm doing. And you are certainly free to hang out with whomever you choose. I don't want you to be jealous, but I've always felt close to Wii Fit, and my knees are certainly more comfortable with the balance board than they are with your lunges and jumping, so I think maybe this is the right thing to do.

Again, we've had a wonderful couple of months together. All those training exercises, the upper body workouts, the volley ball and the tennis and other games... All that will remain very precious to me, and I'm certain that at the end of a month you and I will be seeing each other again, although maybe not as much as we had been seeing each other before. After all, Fall is coming up, and with the kids going back to school I'll be hitting the Y more often to swim and lift real weights...

Oh, I'm sorry! Your weight training program is great, really! You should be proud of it!

Anyway, I have to go. I've got a weigh in at the balance board coming up, and I don't want to miss that. Wii Fit gets so prissy if I miss a weigh in. I'll see you in a month, I promise.

Yours truly,

Helen

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.

Move It Mama Monday! Off Kilter and Out of Sorts

I had thought last week was going to be a better week. After last Monday's post about getting more sleep, I had promised myself I would do exactly just that - get to bed early, get up early, get my work outs in, be productive, etc. In fact, the week started off pretty good.

Then the rest of the week went to hell in a handbasket. Unexpected stress from an unexpected source showed up and knocked me completely out of that good groove I had going. I ended up staying up way too late on Monday night, and then suffered through insomnia most of that night, which completely screwed my getting up early Tuesday morning. I was so frazzled from this stress that I was out of sorts the rest of the week. Determined to somehow get back on track, I dragged myself and the kids to the dojo on Tuesday morning. I wanted to get there early rather than late, so I spent all morning packing lunches, gear, weapons, etc. and we headed out as soon as I had the car loaded up. Well, we were early all right... 45 minutes early! We stayed and worked out and Cassie got her class done, but I was so tired and out of it by the time my class started that I headed home. The rest of the day wasn't much better. To decompress, Hubster and I stayed up to watch Stranger Than Fiction. We loved the movie, but once again were up way to late. I slept late the next morning too. By then my whole routine was in shambles, so I spent the next few days scrambling to get stuff done. I wore myself out Thursday scraping vinyl linoleum off the kitchen floor, then chiseling away the glue and backing left behind. I was so sore after that, I slept way late Friday morning.

I decided to force myself back on schedule Saturday, and have done well since then. I've been more productive this weekend than I was all last week. But I still feel the effects of being off kilter. It showed up in my karate class Saturday morning where I suddenly developed three left feet and several extra (and quite useless) thumbs. I felt like my body was fighting itself the entire class. Then my knees ached so badly the rest of that day that I pretty much retired to bed for the afternoon, slathering on the Ben Gay and popping the Alieve like no one's business. Yesterday morning, I got up early again, felt better, but still wasn't back to my old self. After 40 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution, I tried to do some Wii Fit Yoga. I've never had worse scores. I was just completely off kilter.

So this week wiill be dedicated to getting myself back on schedule and getting back in tune with my center of balance and coordination. I've reworked my daily schedule and my exercise plan to help with that, making sure I get enough, but not too much, exercise. Meanwhile I'm going to start back up with my physical therapy to see if I can fix my knees. I really don't want to suffer through another afternoon like I did on Saturday.

So that's where we're at right now, just trying to get our act back together. We'll see how I'm doing next week.

Move It Mama Monday! Early To Bed, Early To Rise?

Today's post takes a look at some aspects of health beyond just exercise. In particular, sleep.

Last week, I had a couple of good days where I got everything on my to-do list done. However, the very next day I was dead on my feet and couldn't drag my ass out of bed at my usual butt-crack of dawn wake-up time.

Coincidence? I think not!

My to-do list tends to be pretty full, and I'm getting to the point (hell, I'm past the point) where I'm tired of trying to get it all done. For the past year, I've been shedding certain activities and being very choosy about what new stuff I will do. But it seems I still need to trim a few things from my daily grind (if only to make it less of an actual grind).

What to cut though? One of the things I added to my to-do list was 15 minutes of house cleaning a few days a week. The house definitely looks better. I mean amazingly better, like better to the power of 10! And I only invested maybe 2-3 extra hours of cleaning time. But I didn't take anything else out and that's probably why I was wiped out the day after I did any house cleaning.

What can I ditch? I have to (read want to) keep up with the podcast and the cartoon. I must keep up with e-mail. I really want to keep up with my exercise. And the kids need my attention through out the day. Is there anything I could drop?

One thing I'm going to try is re-instating the bed time rule. This is the rule which states I must be in bed no later than 10PM, no matter what. I've learned from hard experience that if I don't go to be at least by 10, I can't get up at 5AM the next day. And getting up at 5AM is what allows me to get a jump on my day and actually be productive.

I'm also thinking of assigning certain major tasks to certain days. Like take one day just for cartooning, and one day just for recording and producing the podcast. In fact, I've already started on this plan by taking Sunday to write as many blog posts as I can for the week. Yep, this post was written yesterday, and I'm hoping to knock out one more before I go to bed.

Unless 10PM comes first. Then I'm going to bed no matter how much work I have left to do today.

Move It Mama Monday! So How Many Plants Have I Killed?

I know, I know. I'm running late again. I apologize. The Hubster had a paper to write this weekend for a big important conference, so my little blogging adventures kind of got pushed to the side by a double helping of weekend child-rearing activities. It's okay though. I'm here now.

Anyway, I thought I'd talk a little about Operation Kill A Lot Of Plants, since I haven't mentioned it in a while. So far, most of the plants are doing... okay. Not terrific, but not dead. For some reason, a few of the plants had a delayed growth spurt and are only just now graduating from sproutling to actual plant. The vegetables we planted aren't exactly producing a bumper crop, probably because I started the seeds so late. I have been told that next year I need to start my seeds in February, which leads me to wonder where the hell I'm going to keep all those tiny plants for the two plus months I'll have to wait until we're past the final frost (which I have been told is on Tax Day in April). I also may have not helped things by trying to make a homemade pesticide out of apple cider vinegar, dish soap and hot sauce. That recipe came out of a gardening book I have, and I thought it would help kill the leaf eating pests we've been having problems with. Well it did, but it also caused the plants to shrivel up and nearly die too.

In spite of my attempts at planticide, we do have a few ears of corn coming up, but the bugs got one and now the others seem to afraid to come out of their husks. We have the odd tiny green tomato and banana pepper hanging on the plant. The herbs have done the best, though for some reason my basil took forever to hit puberty (do plants do puberty? I dunno).

The best grower by far has been the beans we planted. I have no frikkin' clue anymore what kind of beans we've planted, but they grew like weeds, trailing all around the tomato cages I set up around them. We harvested about 25 pods and got enough beans out of those to feed myself and both girls one serving of beans each. They turned purple when I boiled them (the beans, not the girls), and the girls thought that was a little too weird so yours truly is the only one who would eat them. For the record, if I die suddenly in the next few days, it was probably the beans.

The rest of the yard isn't looking too bad, except for the one side where the Hubster planted a slew of creeping juniper a few years back. I hate creeping juniper. Weeds get in there and the only way to kill them is to reach into the prickly, scratchy branches of the juniper to pull them out. I tore up my arms good this past weekend and only managed to weed about a square foot. I've still got another twelve square feet or so to go. Joy!

But the flower garden in the side yard looks good, as does the small herb garden in the back, plus a few other odds and ends I've managed not to kill over the years. Here are a few photos I took a week or so ago.

Princess, standing by the towering Russian blue sage in the side flower garden. I've also got some calla lilies in there, plus some daisies, yarrow and button flowers and a few other things I can't recall the names of.

The containers of herbs on the back deck. Note the delightful chalk art the kids drew for me!

Our vegetable container garden. The big bushy thing is the beans I ate that are probably going to kill me. And next to that is our stunted corn.

A mixed pot of sunflowers, colieosus, and marigolds. Probably the weirdest combination of plants ever thrown together, but they're doing pretty good. Nothing's blooming yet, of course...

This is not my garden. This is Norfolk Botanical Garden, about an hour from where I live. Norfolk Botanical Garden is gorgeous. I wish I could get my yard to look even a little bit like it. Yes, they teach gardening classes there. Would they help improve my black thumb? Probably not. Drives me crazy.

Anyway, that's what's going on with Operation Kill A Lot Of Plants. It's not a roaring success, but we are getting outside and digging around in the dirt, and I consider that a sign of success, even if all we manage to grow is a bunch of purple beans that kill me.

Move It Mama Monday! Clean House Or Exercise?

Oy, this almost didn't get out today. I got hit with something yesterday that involved a very painfully swollen lymph node in my neck, plus a ton of other aches and pains all over my body. I'm thinking this was a result of too much work, too much working out, and not enough sleep. My knees have been bothering me all week. Those last couple of workouts on the EA Sports Active 30-day challenge were not easy on the jumping and squatting and lunging. Plus, I switched to the heavier weight band the week before and that probably contributed to the sore arms and shoulders. Top all that with a day at the beach, a day at a friend's pool party, and some massive deadlines that had to be met, and I was one beat mama Sunday. No wonder then that I slept through my alarm and dragged through this morning.

However, I did perk up enough to get some exercise in. Given my knee problems, I opted to forgo EA Sports Active today and stuck with a combination of Wii Fit and DDR. I love the workout mode in DDR. I set the target number of calories I want to burn and then fail badly to hit the right arrow combinations as I stomp mercilessly all over the mat. My DDR skillz suck, but I do work up a sweat, and the kids get a laugh out of watching me flail around like a demoniacally possessed monkey on speed. In fact, on at least one occasion while I shook my booty to the cadence of DDR, Michael did consider calling in a priest to perform an exorcism on me.

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about today. Today, I have yet another wrinkle in my routine to iron out, and that would be house cleaning, or the lack thereof. I try my best to keep this place neat, but I suck at house cleaning the way I suck at DDR. Yeah, I can do it, but once again, I flail around like the aforementioned demoniacally possessed monkey on speed.

My problem with house cleaning is not that I don't know how to do it, but that I don't know when to do it. We all know there aren't enough hours in the day, right? Well my hours in the day start at 5AMish (like some others I know), and usually end around 11PMish (though I'm trying to get back to that 9PM bedtime, really I am). In between those times, I write, cook, exercise, fold laundry, play with the kids, cartoon, blog, do more writing, record, podcast, do even more writing, work on art commissions, promote my work, etc. I have a hard enough time some days finding time to clean ME, let alone the house, so the house work sort of falls by the wayside most days. I do try to keep up with the kitchen and the vacuuming and the laundry, but that's about as good as I can do. I just can't seem to find half an hour more in my day to do a simple chore like dust one room, and frankly, even if I did dust one room, then I have to remember which room I dusted so that if I remember to clean again the next day, I don't end up dusting the same room twice.

I had signed on at one time with Fly Lady. Fly Lady is cool. Here is a woman who's worked out a system to get housework done in bits and pieces. She is encouraging, she is helpful, she has her act pretty much together. For a few months, I was doing good following the Fly Lady system. The problem was, those few months occurred prior to the birth of Pixie, and once Pixie was born, it was all down hill from there! I think the reason Fly Lady worked for me at the time was because I was nesting (even though I swore at the time I wasn't), getting my house ready for my upcoming addition. During those few months, I had no problem waking up at 4AM without needing an alarm and throwing on my clothes so I could go clean the house. Yes folks, I was cleaning house at 4AM. I was soooooo nesting.

But I can't do that now. Now, I do my best to get up at 5AM so I can grab a quick shower and write for an hour or two. Then the kids are up and it's breakfast, laundry, outside to play, back inside to work out, time for lunch, time to read stories, time to sit and work, and oh my god, is it really 6PM already? Crap, I haven't even started on dinner yet!

Yeah, that's my day. Just about every day, too.

So what am I going to do? I've thought that maybe I ought to give up some of my workout time to clean, but my weight isn't were I'd like it to be, and quite frankly, I hate giving up workout time. I sure as hell ain't giving up writing time. As for cleaning when the kids are outside... well, we don't have a fence around our backyard. I don't mind sending the kids out to play while I'm in the kitchen or the living room where I can keep an eye on them, but I sure as hell am not going to let a six-year-old and a three-year-old play outside by themselves when I can't keep an eye on them. Just doesn't seem like a smart idea.

I'm not sure what to do. House cleaning is one of those activities that would burn calories, although not as many as a good 20 minutes playing DDR will. I need to see what I can fit in. Maybe if I can get the kids to help me...

Or would I end up cleaning up after them in addition to any other house cleaning I'd be doing?

I got no solution here. Will keep thinking about it. I'm hitting the hay now, so I hope everyone has a good night.

Move It Mama Monday! Final thoughts on Wii Fit vs. EA Sports Active

The 30th day of my 30-day fitness challenge on EA Sports Active has come and gone, and I now feel ready to render final judgment on which is better: Wii Fit or EA Sports Active.

Drum roll, please...

Wii Fit, hands down, is the better program.

Why, you may ask? There are a number of reasons. The first, and most important in my book, is that I actually gained weight this past month, an extra three pounds that I'm now going to have to work on losing. Sports Active did not give me the workouts I needed to burn calories. Each workout in the 30-day challenge ran 25 minutes, on average, the longest workout running 28 minutes. Most of those workouts concentrated on strength building exercises, which are important, but don't burn the calories like cardio exercises do. And except for the medium and long run exercises in EA Sports Active, there's not really any cardio to speak of. The aerobic dance segments barely get my heart rate going (and honestly, I think they're a joke, when compared to Wii Fit's step routine). The boxing is nice, but doesn't last nearly long enough to keep my heart rate up. The baseball, basketball, tennis and volley ball drills don't last long either, and they don't pop up nearly often enough in the workouts for the 30-day challenge to make a difference, in my opinion.

(And keep in mind, this is all in my opinion. You'll see as we go today that I expect certain things from my workouts which may not appeal to everyone.)

Another big problem I had with EA Sports Active was its emphasis on lunges, squats, and jumping. I have bad knees. Wii Fit actually improved my knees dramatically. Prior to using Wii Fit, I had problems getting into and holding many positions in my karate classes because my knees couldn't handle the stances. A few weeks on Wii Fit fixed that. I expect it's the focus on balance and posture that did the trick, correcting problems with how I stand in general to the point that the muscles I needed to compensate for my knee problems finally got the workout they needed. EA Sports Active doesn't have that focus. It's all strength training, and while the repeated lunges, squats, and jumping did strengthen my outer thighs, they did damned little for those muscles that actually support my knees. As I type this review, I can feel my knees swelling from today's workout. And the crunching noise they make when I go up and down the stairs is just as bad as it was six months ago, before I started on Wii Fit. It's terrible, I tell ya.

My third issue with EA Sports Active is the exercise band. The one thing I looked forward to in EA Sports Active was the upper body workout. This is one area where Wii Fit falls flat. Aside from a few moves in the strength training section, Wii Fit focuses all its attention on core muscle building. My arms were starting to get flabby. EA Sports should have taken care of that, but the exercise band they packaged with the game is pretty much useless. It's one of the lightest-weight bands you can find, and offered very little resistance for me during workouts. EA Sports Active advises that if you need more resistance, you can double up the band and stand on it. This shortened band will provide the resistance you need. Well, it sort of does that. The problem with that fix is that I sometimes had to stand almost on the handles to make the band short enough for some exercises. Also, it was too easy to get the band uneven in the folding, thus leading to uneven resistance between arms. Finally, I managed to tear a hole in my band by the fourth week of working out, and I think it happened because of how far I had to double up the band to get the resistance I needed.

Fortunately, I did have another band on hand, one that offers four times the resistance of the band that arrived with the game. I'm definitely getting that arm workout now. But I would have liked to have had this band from the start. Better yet, I would have liked to have had a variety of bands from the start, with handles to go with them. I'm thinking of ordering some extra bands and handles to solve that problem. I've looked online, but have yet to see a package of such bands offered by EA Sports Active. They seriously ought to consider putting one together and selling it as an accessory.

Now that I've bashed poor EA Sports Active, let me say what I liked about it. It does offer strength training beyond the core muscles. I especially like that I have the option to do more upper body exercises than just the push ups and plank poses offered by Wii Fit. And I like EA Sports Active's journal feature. By filling it out each day, I have a regular reminder to eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more water, and stay away from sugary drinks and fast food. Those are probably my biggest downfalls when it comes to losing weight, and that gentle reminder is nice to have.

Wii Fit, on the other hand, doesn't really look at nutrition, unless you suddenly gain 2 lbs, and then the snarky little bitch wants to know why you're so fat all of a sudden. Unfortunately, Wii Fit will only accept a certain select list of excuses, many of which have nothing to do with why I gain weight suddenly (Wii Fit does not believe in water weight gain). And once you select your excuse, you have to listen to a lecture on the evils of what you did wrong. Annoying. As is Wii Fit's comments when you miss a day or two or more. Guess what? I can't help missing a week when I'm out of town! It's not like I'm going to pack the whole Wii with Balance Board and Wii Fit disk and take it on the road with me! EA Sports Active, on the other hand, simply labels any days you take off as rest days. Maybe this is a cop out. Maybe I do need the nagging reminders and the lectures that Wii Fit hands out when I miss a few days or when my weight suddenly balloons, but you know what? I don't like it!

My final analysis is this. I prefer Wii Fit, but EA Sports Active has something to offer, if I use it right. I think what I'll probably end up doing is abandoning the 30-day challenge from here on out and make up my own workouts in EA Sports Active, to supplement what I do in Wii Fit. I'd like to try putting together a series of 15-minute routines that use those strength training exercises, but scaling back on the lunging and jumping so I don't continue to kill my knees. I can use the long run to warm up, or even do a few minutes on our elliptical machine, then do strength training with EA Sports Active. After that, I can switch to Wii Fit, do my heavy duty cardio there (about 20-25 minutes straight), and then throw in 10-15 minutes of yoga, strength training, and balance games to workout those core muscles and strengthen my poor knees. I may even consider doing extra balance games later in the day as a pick-me-up in the afternoons. I have a tendency to get tired right before sitting down to work, and this might help me perk up. Or I could pull out the DDR mat and do some of that for a few minutes to get my blood pumping before I sit down at the computer.

One final thought before I sign off. The 30-day challenge might have worked for me and helped me lose, or at least maintain, weight if I had done two things. The first is attempting to complete all 20 workouts in 30 days. I actually missed the deadline by a week; I had five workouts left to go when day 30 rolled around. But I realize now there was no way I was going to complete 20 workouts in 30 days and still do karate and swimming during that time. What can I say? I like variety in my workouts, so I continued to space out EA Sports Active with those other activities, and thus blew my deadline. Second, I might have lost more weight if I had opted for the high intensity program rather than medium. That level of intensity might have made the difference. I might have seen more aerobic exercises mixed into the workouts, or I might have done longer, more intense workouts. However, I also fear that doing that level of workout for 30 days would have completely destroyed my knees, so perhaps it's best I didn't go that route..

I should finish up the last two workouts of my 30-day challenge by Wednesday, then I plan to finish up the week with Wii Fit only. On Monday, I'll start doing custom workouts mixed with Wii Fit and we'll see how that goes for a month.

Move It Mama Monday - Down Time

Well, it's Monday again, and I must report I didn't exercise yesterday or today. I did pull 2 1/2 hours in the dojo on Thursday, and another 1 1/2 hours in the dojo on Saturday. I also managed to get in a swim last week, and a few workouts with EA Sports Active. Yes, I was going good. I could feel myself getting stronger, moving better. My weight keeps fluctuating between 148-151, and I'm to the point where I think no amount of exercise and diet is ever going to shift those last 10 pounds I want to lose, but as long as I'm exercising and getting plenty of fruits and vegetables and drinking water, who gives a damn? I mean, seriously, I got lingerie for my wedding anniversary last week, and it looked very nice on me. And the dress I wore on my honeymoon 16 years ago fits just fine, even if I am 16 pounds heavier than I was back then, so what am I bitching about? The only one who has a problem with my weight is Wii Fit, and if he gets uppity with me again, I'm gonna smack his little plastic ass across the living room. So there.

But anyway, I had a great week exercise-wise last week, and then I hit yesterday and today and didn't get a workout in at all. Yesterday was Father's Day, so I spent most of the day with family, either cooking special meals or having fun at the beach. I did do some splashing in the waves, but not what I would call exercise. Even so, a day at the beach left me completely whipped, and I was out like a light when I got home. Then today, Princess' summer camp kicked off, as well as her swimming lessons, so the bulk of today was spent ferrying her around and then waiting while she did her thing. Pixie and I walked around the Virginia Living Museum for 3 hours this morning, and then parked our butts on the bleachers at the pool, waiting for Princess. Again, not a lot of activity, but exhausting all the same.

So I've had a couple days off from exercise. I plan to get back on the wagon tomorrow morning and squeeze in a workout before whisking Princess to a day of camp and swimming again. The best I can hope for is 25 minutes on EA Sports Active or Wii Fit, because once we're done with camp and swimming, I'm going to be too tired again to make myself work out.

I'm not going to beat myself up over the down time though. It happens, especially when you've got kids. I do the best I can to make it easy for myself to exercise, but I also know that past a certain hour of the day, I'm not up to doing a damn thing. This is the reason why I don't go to evening karate classes anymore. I just can't summon up the energy to go. I'll do anything you want before 4PM, but after that? Nada, zip, bupkis. This mama is too worn out to care.

If you'd care to comment, let me know how often you go through down periods, and how you feel about them. Guilty? Don't care? Think you need the break? And how long do you let a down period last? I'm putting an end to this one tomorrow morning.

I hope.

Move It Mama Monday! My Daughters, The Athletes

I had a big surprise last week. Princess' gym teacher called me at home to invite me to an awards ceremony. Apparently my girl had been named one of two top kindergarten students in P.E. for the year. Needless to say, I'm chuffed. Aside from one sparring trophy, this is the first award Princess has ever received that wasn't an "everybody gets one" deal. Meaning she actually had to earn this award. And she earned it, according to her gym teacher, by being attentive, helpful, polite, always prepared for class (i.e. we always make her wear sneakers to school), and by basically running the pants off of everybody else in school. She's a regular Flashy Fast Foot, I'm told, my freakishly tall daughter who can race like the wind.

Pixie is just as active as Princess. She loves to run races, and climbs all over everything. Princess' karate instructor has already noticed that Pixie is very "physical" and can't wait to see what she's like when she starts taking karate classes. Yep, I've got two little athletes on my hands.

And I have no idea where they get it from.

**I** was never an athlete. Growing up, I hated recess because I couldn't run fast enough to play tag, and I sucked at jumping rope. I was the proverbial kid who was picked last for dodge ball teams, and I had such poor hand-eye coordination I couldn't even hit the ball in T-ball. My dislike of recess turned to full-blown loathing by the time I hit middle school and I had to wear a butt-ugly gym suit to do even worse tasks like volley ball and soccer. Then every spring semester, we had to take the same stupid physical fitness test, consisting of such torments as the flex arm hang and the shuttle run. I was always guaranteed to get the worst score in the class. I just sucked at athletics.

Naturally, my father decided I would excel in ROTC. Should I even get into how miserable that was? During the four years I struggled through college, I spent more time puking up my guts before 8 AM than most people will do all their lives. I ran miles across the campus during company runs, got crushed in team sports pile ups, and left my lungs and stomach somewhere in Lane Stadium while running sets of stadium steps. My push ups were a true testament to the law of gravity (i.e. gravity sucks and thus so did my push ups). To this day, I have no idea how I got my commission in the Army Reserves.

Some time after college though, things changed. I was no longer subjected to the tyranny of drill instructors and gym teachers. It was finally up to me and me alone to make sure I exercised. And to my amazement, I did. Two years after I finished ROTC, I was once again running across the campus of Virginia Tech, but this time eating up the miles instead of puking up my guts. I started weight lifting too. When I got married, Michael and I got memberships to a gym and worked out three or more evenings a week. Then I took at job at a nearby Air Force base, and made regular use of their gym and running trails. When I finally quit the day job, Michale and I signed up for karate classes, and spent five days a week at the dojo. I used to spend my mornings running a couple of miles through the neighborhood, stop at a local gym to lift, and then walk next door to the dojo to practice karate for half an hour before walking back home.

Having kids slowed me, obviously. My knees have never fully recovered from pregnancy, and a couple of sparring injuries put an end to my running days. But I found alternative activities - swimming, walking, yoga, Wii Fit. I still go to karate, and am hopeful I can get back to a regular schedule of 2-3 classes a week. I am a black belt, after all. I need to keep training.

I've been thinking about this summer, how I'm going to keep the kids and myself happily employed and active. Both girls are eager to hit every playground in the area this summer. We'll do it too. Playgrounds, gardening, swimming, karate... we'll have plenty to do this summer, me and my athlete daughters.

Move It Mama Monday! EA Sports Active part 2

Well, the utility guys have dug up all the utility posts in my neighborhood, so cable, internet, and phone have been sketchy all day. Thus you may be seeing this on Tuesday, rather than on the Monday it was written. Oh well!

Anyway, I've had a week to play with EA Sports Active, and thought I'd give an update. I have NOT lost any weight in last week, and in fact have actually put on a pound or two. This may be due to the fact that it's 'that time of the month.' Or it may be due to the fact that I've very off schedule so I haven't done my other fitness activities like swimming, karate, walking, or gardening the past week. Or maybe it's due to the fact that someone in the family had a birthday recently, and someone else we know graduated recently, and thus there's been a lot of cake and backyard grilling going on, neither of which is good for my waistline.

Regardless of the reason, the weight gain has made me aware of what I consider to be the big flaw so far in EA Sports Active - the lack of cardio activity in the workouts. Now don't get me wrong, I'm definitely getting a workout here, and I'm disgusting with sweat by the time I'm done. But each workout lasts on 35 minutes at most, and maybe only a third of that is dedicated to cardio - running on a track, boxing, dance, etc. The rest of the time I'm doing calisthenics - lunges, squats, bicep curls with the elastic band. There's plenty of muscle building going on, and I was so sore a few times last week that I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. And that's good. I need the muscle building. But I also need cardio. Lots and lots of cardio.

Wii Fit provides cardio in spades. There are nine different cardio activities to do, and many of those have 2-3 intensity levels. I can mix and match my cardio so that I do five minutes of a bunch of different activities or I can do 30 minutes of just one activity. I like that. And on some of these longer cardio activities, I can even slip in my ear buds and listen to some podcasts while I work out. That's a big bonus for me! I can not do this with EA Sports Active.

The other problem I'm having with EA Sports Active is that all that lunging and squatting and jumping around is pretty rough on my knees. My knees sound like I've got a ton of gravel in them right now, lots of popping and cracking when I go up and down the stairs. Wii Fit had actually taken care of that problem for me. My knees improved significantly during the first two weeks of using Wii Fit. I think it was all the emphasis on balance and core strength that did it, and I miss that terribly.

So what to do? I like the strength building in EA Sports Active. I also like the 'attitude' behind it, constantly encouraging instead of occasionally snarky like Wii Fit tends to be. (That damned thing actually got rather snippy when it asked me why I'd gained weight and I responded "I don't know." Hey, is it my fault they don't list water weight or illness as a reason for possible weight gain?) BUT, I prefer the cardio in Wii Fit and I need the yoga, strength and balance games to improve my knees.

I've started doing workouts that combine the two games. I start with EA Sports Active, getting all my strength building out of the way, and then switch to Wii Fit for cardio and a bit of yoga or strength or balance games. On Sunday I spent a walloping 60 minutes between the two. I was ready to drop when I was done. Didn't seem to affect the needle on the scale any, but I'm hopeful that more workouts combining the two programs will give me the results I need. I have noticed that my legs look nicer and that it's gotten easier for me to do lunges, so that's a good sign. I'll give another update in a few weeks to let you all know how this works out.

Move It Mama Monday! EA Sports Active is here

So I completely blew off Move It Mama Monday last week. I had expected to do the blog post a day late, due to the fact that I was at Balticon through the entire four-day weekend. I was completely unprepared though for how wiped out I was after the convention. Seriously, Balticon kicked my ass. I'm forty, a stay-at-home mom, and not used to partying like that anymore. What was I thinking, staying up until 2AM every morning?! Especially when I normally get up at 5AM?

It took me all last week to recover, and then catch up on work as well. I worked straight through the weekend and got a lot done (audio recording, 2 stories written, 2 book covers finished for a client, and I got to see Wicked! the musical), but to do that I had to let a few other things slide, like say... exercise. And house work.

Of course, we're not here today to discuss the state of my house (it's bad, really bad). Instead, we're here to talk about exercise, and I do have something to discuss. Namely, EA Sports Active, the new game for the Wii! I ordered this game over a month ago as a wedding anniversary present for my husband and I. It showed up the day after I got back from Balticon and I let it sit until Friday, being too wiped out to even open the box. On Friday, when I finally did pull it out and get it set up, EA Sports Active proceeded to kick my ass just as badly as Balticon had, only using tortuous exercise in lieu of partying.

Since Friday, I've used the game three times. That's long enough for me to give it my initial opinion, I think. And that opinion is...

I like it. It's not as perky or game oriented as Wii Fit, but it does have a lot going for it. Active is based on a 30-day challenge by Bob Greene, he of the sacred circle of Oprah experts. Bob Greene is probably the only one in that circle I can tolerate, having read one of his books and decided for myself that his advice on fitness makes sense. You only get to see Mr. Greene in the little introductory video, which is probably good because he's so damned healthy it's scary.

After the intro video, Mr. Greene disappears and you have a choice of two smiling trainers to guide you through the workouts. These are real people as opposed to the digital trainers used in Wii Fit. The workouts in Active are the best part about the game. You can either go with the preset routines, of which there are several, or build a customized routine. There is also something called the "30-day challenge" that puts you through 30 days of workouts, pushing you a little harder each time. These workouts switch up between several exercises, mostly strength but with some cardio, and each day gets a different focus, so it looks like this won't get boring any time soon. And from what I can see, if you decide not to do the 30-day challenge, you can still pick from PLENTY of preset routines to do, though if you want to build your own routine, you're free to do so. It will probably be a while before I feel the need to customize a routine. I'm opting for the 30-day challenge right now, letting Active pick the routines for me. This means I can just workout on autopilot and not have to think about what I'm doing. This right here is one of the biggest differences between EA Sports Active and Wii Fit. With Wii Fit, there are no preset routines. You have to decide for yourself what you're going to do each day. I find that I tend to avoid certain exercises on the Wii Fit because of that, and those are probably exactly the exercises I need to do. I could avoid certain exercises on the Active game as well, but I would actually have to go to the trouble of picking through the routine to decide what I don't want to do. If I just shut off my brain and go with the routine, that doesn't happen and I get those extra exercises in.

Another big difference between Wii Fit and EA Sports Active is on what aspect of fitness the two games focus on. Wii Fit places a lot of emphasis on balance and core muscle strength, tracking your center of balance through every strength and yoga exercise. Not so with Active. Active favors more traditional gym exercises like lunges, arm curls, etc.. With Wii Fit, I usually only do one set of a particular exercise per workout. With Active, I may visit the same exercise 2-3 times, depending on the preset routine. That's not to say I don't sweat when I do Wii Fit. Doing each exercise once usually lets me work up quite a sweat, so I have no preference of one over the other here.

Accessories is another category to look at. Due to its focus on balance and posture, Wii Fit utilizes the balance board heavily (in fact, I don't think there was no balance board before there was Wii Fit, was there?). For Active, however, the Wii balance board is an optional accessory. You can use it for some exercises, but if you don't have one, don't sweat it. Those exercises that use it don't actually require it, so that's nice if you haven't shelled out for the balance board yet. Instead, Active uses an elastic resistance band included in the game package to do a lot of the strength exercises. The band is pretty light weight, and after another week, I'll probably pull out one of the bands I used to use for physical therapy to up the resistance. There's also a leg band that you strap around your upper thigh. This has a pocket in it to hold the nunchuk through out exercises that only require the one remote.

One final big difference is the body test and goal setting. Wii Fit does this, Active doesn't. In fact, Active doesn't even check your weight. This is both good and bad. I can't stand being scolded by Wii Fit, especially when I know my weight gains are due to water-weight or some other excuse not in it's "why are you fat today?" list. But tracking my weight as well as my activity does make me more likely to eat better and drink more water in addition to exercising, and that's what it takes for me to maintain a healthy weight. Active will track my workouts and ask about my eating habits if I choose to fill out my journal entries. But it doesn't track my weight or test my balance.

So those are the main differences between the two games. Do I like Active better than Wii Fit? I'm going to say no. It's different, but not better. I like having the preset workouts, but have to admit some of the exercises in those workouts, like lunges and side-to-side jumping, are a little rough on my knees. Still, I can get through that and I'm hopeful that my knees will improve as I continue to do these exercises. What I miss is the check on my balance. I swear, Wii Fit and the balance board did more to improve my knees than even several weeks of dedicated physical therapy. I need those balance-oriented exercises to maintain my knees' health. I also miss the game aspect of Wii Fit. I like scoring points for stuff that I do. Active sort of does that, awarding trophies for workouts completed and such, but it's not as much fun as Wii Fit. Graphics-wise, I definitely prefer the Wii Fit. I can't help it, I like being a kitschy little cartoon character. Seeing my Mii run and box and do other stuff is just too fun. My avatar in Active looks like a real person, sort of, and that also serves to remind me this isn't a game so much as a work out.

I'll have to find some balance between the two games. I want to continue doing both, but having limited time, I'll need to be careful how much time I spend on each. With the 30-day challenge, I've pretty much committed myself to using Active almost everyday for the next month. Juggling that with karate, swimming, Wii Fit, housework, and career might be... tricky.

We'll see what I do. I haven't had time yet to think about how I want to incorporate EA Sports Active into my workouts, but I'll get it sorted in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a good workout that provides plenty of variety, check it out. You'll be sore like I was for a few days, probably, but I think it's going to be worth it.

Move It Mama Monday! Did I Make My Goal?

No.

No, no, no, no. I did not make my Wii Fit goal. In fact, if you ask Wii Fit, I'm only a pound less than where I started from three months ago. I know that sounds terribly disappointing. However...

My bathroom scale says I'm about four pounds lighter. And my weight has been fluctuating between 146 and 148, rather than 149 and 152. And I've even gotten as low as 144.5 at one point. Plus my clothes fit better. For Mother's Day, I wore the slinky dress I made for my honeymoon almost 16 years ago, and it fit perfectly. And my knees are doing a lot better in karate class. I can now get through two hours of class without limping out of the dojo afterward.

So I'm going to say this was a success, even if I didn't lose the 11 pounds I set out to lose.

But I'm also going to say that there are areas I could stand to improve, and they're things Wii Fit doesn't monitor. Things like sleep, drinking water, and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

I know what it takes for me to really lose this weight. The biggest factor is the amount of sleep I get every night. I do best when I can climb into bed at 9PM. Then I have no problems getting up at 5AM the next morning to start my day and go on to accomplish everything on my to-do list. Also, if I can sleep straight from 9PM until 5AM, I don't end up craving sugary or salty foods all day long. However, if I don't rigorously enforce that early bed time, I'm pretty much screwed. I won't be able to get out of bed at 5 and I won't be able to take control of my day from the get go. I end up scrambling to get stuff accomplished, including exercise, and my eating habits go south fast.

When I'm tired, I have problems doing things I know I should do to lose weight, like drink lots of water and eat fresh fruits and veggies. Instead of water, I'll down cup after cup of hot tea or coffee with plenty of sugar in it. Instead of reaching for an apple or pear when I'm hungry, I'll dig out the chips. It's stupid, I know, especially since I know the fruit is better for me and I know I'm sabotaging myself when I go for the chips. But when I'm tired, I just don't have the will power to do what I should do. Or rather, I refuse to summon the will power to reach for the fruit instead. There's this little voice in my mind that tells me I'm tired and I've been working so hard, why not just relax a bit and reward myself with some comfort food. Again, really stupid, and I know it even as I do it, yet I do it anyway.

It hasn't helped that I tried going to bed early last week, but had insomnia just about every night. That really killed my fitness goals, and I couldn't do much but suffer through it. I've been plagued by insomnia off and on for as long as I can remember, and I really wish I could figure out a way to beat it. I don't drink any coffee or sodas after 2PM, so caffeine really shouldn't be the problem. I do tend to use the evening hours to catch up on work, so that's probably the culprit. I should stop working in the evenings and do some winding down instead, but if I cut out those work hours, I'm afraid I'll really get behind in work.

It may be that I need to look at my schedule again and try something new. I loved doing some exercise early in the morning before doing work, because I know that helps me lose weight, but I need the word hours desperately, especially if I'm going to eliminate those work hours from the evening. So my plan for this go around is to move the exercise to later in the day, probably mid morning after I've gotten some work done and gotten Pixie outside for some play time and gardening. We'll see if that helps.

Two final notes: first, I'm still waiting to see what Wii Fit says I weigh after I get through my current menstrual cycle. Remember, I'm carrying around a lot of excess tissue held over from the previous cycle, and I'm wondering if that's causing me to hold onto a little extra weight as well. Second, I'm waiting for the new EA Sports Active game for Wii Fit to come out. I pre-ordered a copy and am anxious to see how it works. I love the current Wii Fit, but would like to have something to add to my repertoire of fitness tools. Variety never hurts when it comes to losing weight!

Next week's Move It Mama Monday will probably be late. I'll be up in Maryland for Balticon all through Memorial Day weekend and won't get home until late Monday, so look for an update on Tuesday instead. I could write the post in advance, but I'd like to give myself a week to see if I can convince Wii Fit I weigh a little less. So until then, have fun and keep moving!

Move It Mama Monday! Crunched For Time

Greetings and salutions on this fine Monday morn--!

Eh, who am I kidding? I'm dead on my feet today. But hopefully you're doing better.

I'm going up on my first three months with the Wii Fit. This week is the last week for me to meet my goal, although I'm not going to make it. I had set a goal of losing 11 lbs in three months. I'm 6 lbs short of that goal. But I'm not upset about that, especially considering how high my weight shot up last week (water weight really sucks, but it can be gotten rid of, thankfully!).

While I won't manage to meet my goal, I did lose and manage to keep off 5 lbs, which I haven't been able to do before. My scale these days more often reads 146 than 151, and that's a huge difference for me. My jeans fit much better (hurray!). But better than that, I've noticed a huge improvement in my knees. I have lousy knees, ruined by sparring injuries and hormones from two pregnancies. They'd gotten really bad this past year, but after working on Wii Fit for a few weeks, I started noticing a significant difference in my ability to hold the more demanding stances. I can get lower and hold those stances longer, and that makes me really happy.

Still, I'd like to eventually lose those last 6 lbs., and I've been thinking about what it will take to make that happen. Do I need to exercise more? I'd love to, but my schedule is pretty full, and I'm already having a hard time fitting everything in each day. So I started playing around with my daily schedule to see if I could squeeze in an extra half hour of Wii Fit each day. I got up most mornings at 5 AM last week to do 45 minutes of Wii Fit, and then scheduled some sort of fitness activity later in the day like swimming or karate. I definitely got results. Unfortunately, I normally get up at 5AM to work on my writing and podcast, and I couldn't figure out how to fit in the work time I needed now that I'd given up an hour or so each morning to do the extra Wii Fit.

Bottom line, the schedule change helped me shed that water weight plus another pound or so, but it ruined my work schedule, and I can't have that. So I'm trying a different schedule this week. I realized one of the reasons the Wii Fit early in the morning worked so well is that I was getting my cardio exercise in first thing in the morning.

Cardio in the AM has always helped me maintain my weight, so this is something I want to continue. However, I don't have to do 45 minutes of Wii Fit to get those results (and keep in mind that 45 minutes on the Wii Fit translates to at least an hour of actual time). What I do need to do is about 20 minutes of cardio, either using the Wii Fit or the new monster elliptical machine the Hubster bought. Then I could do my body test, an extra 5 minutes or so, and move on to writing for the morning. Then later in the day, after the Pixie and I have had some time to play outside and garden, I can come back in and spend another 20-25 minutes doing the strength, yoga or balance games on the Wii Fit. Or I can head out to the Y for a swim or the dojo for an hour of karate class.

I'm hoping this compromise works and gives me the time to both workout and work. I'll let you know next week how it goes.

Meanwhile, I'm doing okay. I spent some time working on Operation Kill A Lot Of Plants this past week. I've filled a total of 23 pots with soil and seedlings. Yeah, I'm nuts. But remember, this is Operation Kill A LOT Of Plants, so we're good so far. I also have some plants that have survived previous gardening attempts, so right now my deck is pretty full. I still have some sunflowers and marigolds to plant. They'll go in one last big pot later this week.

For Mother's Day, the Hubster took me to Barnes & Noble, where I picked two blank journals, one for me and one for Princess. I told her we would keep journals this summer of our gardening and other activities. We also got a simple weather science kit for Princess and set that up yesterday. She spent the afternoon taking little notes about the weather and then drew our deck with all the plants on it. I'll have to scan in her drawings later this week, but for now, here are some picks of the garden so far.

We've got lots of herbs on the back deck...

Plus tomatoes and corn and peppers...

Did I mention we had lots of herbs on the back deck?

Okay, that's it for this week. Pixie's starting to climb all over me, so you know what that means.

Mama's got to move it!

Move It Mama Monday! - Fat and Dizzy

Wii Fit says I'm fat. My gynecologist says I've got an inner ear infection.

And yes, those two statements are actually related! I know, the latter statements sounds a little weird. "Uh, did you say your gynecologist said you had an ear infection?" And I know what you're thinking. "That's a strange place to keep your ears, Helen..." And just so you know, my good friend Nobilis of the Nobilis Erotica Podcast already beat you to that joke. But it's true.

You see, the past two weeks I've had a slew of female troubles (and if that sort of things grosses you out, you can stop reading here, although it won't be that gross so why not read on and quit being a big baby, okay?). For starters, my last period was five days late. Considering my plumbing works like clockwork (yeah, I'm mixing my metaphors here), five days is an awful lot of being late. However, I took three home pregnancy tests and they all came out negative, and then I went to the doctor's office and they did a pregnancy test on me and that came out negative too.

Then my period finally started. But it was really light. And it only lasted four days. And I was having Braxton Hicks contractions. Lots of Braxton Hicks contractions. And then the dizziness started and I couldn't pry myself out of bed or off the couch for anything. And did I mention my weight suddenly shot up about five pounds?

So I took another pregnancy test, because I swear it felt like I was pregnant. But that came out negative too, and so did another one at the gynecologist's office. And then when I told my doc about all the symptoms and the dizziness, he decided to take a look at my ears, and he saw...

Both eardrums packed with fluid!

That explained the dizziness right there. Apparently the pollen count has been rather high in our area, and I had an allergic reaction of sorts that involved fluid in my ears rather than snot leaking out my nose.

As for the contractions, the doc did a quick ultrasound on me and confirmed that not only was I soooooo not pregnant (I really was worried about an ectopic pregnancy at that point), but that I also had no fibroid tumors in my uterus. What I did have was one hell of a thick lining of blood and tissue in there, some of which should have shed during my last, late period, but didn't. No, it had just stayed there, building up until it looked like my uterus was packed solid with tissue and blood, all of it now just waiting for my next menstrual cycle to start so I can bleed like Noah's Biblical flood while I lay on the couch clutching my heating pad, popping half a dozen Advil and just basically dying of cramps.

Did I say this post wasn't going to be gross? Sorry...

So anyway, all of this has led me to two conclusions. The first is that the new plants I've potted know all about Operation Kill A Lot Of Plants, and they're going on the offense, clogging my ears with pollen until I'm too dizzy to garden/kill a lot of plants. The second conclusion is that Wii Fit don't know Jack about female trouble, because if it did it wouldn't tell me I'm fat when instead I'm actually just carrying around a ton of extra unshedded uterus lining and stocking up on water weight because we all know you can't have female troubles without adding a ton of water weight to your girlish figure. And Wii Fit also wouldn't be giving me crap about missing days because I was too damned dizzy and bloated to get on the machine and work out!

To combat my problems, I sent the Hubster out to get me some Clariten D to unclog my ears. I'm also drinking lots of water to help flush out all the water weight and stave off any ultra-nasty PMS symptoms I fear may be headed my way. And I've tweaked my schedule to give me a little more exercise time as well because if I can get my weight down even a little, that will also help alleviate some of the PMS symptoms which I know are going to be bad.

So that's it for Move It Mama Monday. I'm fat and I'm dizzy and now I have to cope with those conditions and get my assets back on the balance board before I turn into Moby Dick. Wish me luck!