Well, I had put in a 2-week goal in my Wii fit profile to gain 5 pounds in two weeks, but wasn't able to do it. At the end of the two weeks, I was exactly the same weight. So, I've put in a new goal to try and gain 2 pounds in two weeks. We'll see if I can pull that one off.
It seems like when it comes to a change in weight, this is the order of difficulty:
Put on weight by storing more fat (all you have to do in order to do this is to consume more calories than you burn and if you don't move around much, you can probably get by on burning only 1200 or 1500 colories per day, depending on your metabolism of course)
Lose weight (this is just the opposite, you just have to consume less calories than you burn. So, if you limit your intake to 1000 calories per day, but excercise such that you burn at least 2000 calories per day, then you'll lose a pound about every three or four days)
Gain weight by building muscle (this seems to be the hardest to do. In order to build muscle, you have to work out, which burns calories, but in order to gain weight you still have to take in more calories than you burn.)
That may seem like an oversimplification, but the math I believe is 1 pound = 3500 calories (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that), so in order for me to gain 2 pounds, I'll have to consume 7000 more calories than I burn. For me, that may prove to be tough.
We'll see how it goes.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Mii fitness
I've been playing Wii fit every day for the last few days and starting to get a little better at the various games. I'm still not real consistent with all of the different activities and some of them still give me problems (I do terrible with the bubble balance one, haven't been able to get all the way through it yet). I just unlocked the snowboarding one this morning, but I must say, I don't like it as much as the skiing one.
They are fun games though and can help keep you motivate to work out. Which, at least for me, really helps stick to a fitness program. It's far too easy to be too busy or tired to exercise and just be a couch potato.
I've learned that my balance and agility isn't so great though, so I'm really going to focus on those areas and see if I can't improve.
They are fun games though and can help keep you motivate to work out. Which, at least for me, really helps stick to a fitness program. It's far too easy to be too busy or tired to exercise and just be a couch potato.
I've learned that my balance and agility isn't so great though, so I'm really going to focus on those areas and see if I can't improve.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
More toys
We have a Wii that my wife bought back when they first came out (she was actually able to get one at retail price without having to camp out for three days in a Walmart parking lot), which is fun and the kids enjoy playing with it too. But just this past weekend, she bought the Wii fit game and balance board. So of course we had to play around with it over the weekend.
It has two different skiing games (or at least those are the only two I've seen so far), one that is a slalom through gates and the other that is a jump. Now, I love to ski and although I admit I am certainly no expert, I can make my way down the slope and go where I intend to go most of the time. But in this slalom game, it is so sensitive to movement that I found myself just all over the place and couldn't get through the gates to save my life. I think at my best I still missed at least 5 gates.
But the jump, I got that pretty good. All you have to do on that one is duck down a bit and lean forward so that your weight is distributed a certain way to pick up speed as you go down the hill, then, when you hit the jump point, you have to stand up straight (quickly) and stay as still as you can. If you do those things, you'll get a good jump score.
I was never able to get a score of more than one star (which it seems has a rank of "unbalanced", maybe "unhinged" was the word they were looking for...) on the slalom, but got three stars right off the bat in the jump.
We've just used it the one time so far, but it can calculate your weight and after you tell it how tall you are, also calculates your BMI. We got the whole family registered on it, confirming what I already knew, my wife and kids both fall right in the middle of the "normal" range and I'm in the "underweight" category. So I set a goal for my character to put on a few pounds in a couple of weeks. We'll see how that ends up going.
It should provide a little extra motivation though, as it plots how you are doing and you can see your trends over time. Now I just have to remember to use it at least once every week (preferably three times)
It has two different skiing games (or at least those are the only two I've seen so far), one that is a slalom through gates and the other that is a jump. Now, I love to ski and although I admit I am certainly no expert, I can make my way down the slope and go where I intend to go most of the time. But in this slalom game, it is so sensitive to movement that I found myself just all over the place and couldn't get through the gates to save my life. I think at my best I still missed at least 5 gates.
But the jump, I got that pretty good. All you have to do on that one is duck down a bit and lean forward so that your weight is distributed a certain way to pick up speed as you go down the hill, then, when you hit the jump point, you have to stand up straight (quickly) and stay as still as you can. If you do those things, you'll get a good jump score.
I was never able to get a score of more than one star (which it seems has a rank of "unbalanced", maybe "unhinged" was the word they were looking for...) on the slalom, but got three stars right off the bat in the jump.
We've just used it the one time so far, but it can calculate your weight and after you tell it how tall you are, also calculates your BMI. We got the whole family registered on it, confirming what I already knew, my wife and kids both fall right in the middle of the "normal" range and I'm in the "underweight" category. So I set a goal for my character to put on a few pounds in a couple of weeks. We'll see how that ends up going.
It should provide a little extra motivation though, as it plots how you are doing and you can see your trends over time. Now I just have to remember to use it at least once every week (preferably three times)
Saturday, June 7, 2008
All work and no play make Doobie a dull boy
This past week has been pretty rough work wise. I worked ten to twelve hours every day, except for Saturday and Sunday when I worked eight and four hours respectively. I'm almost done with this project though, so that's good.
The frustrating part is when you're just spinning your wheels. I know I'll get blasted by all of the Java disciples for saying this, but working with Java again this past week after having not used it in a few years really makes me appreciate C# and the .Net framework.
Yeah, Java is a good platform and the syntax of the language itself is also good, but the utilities and plugins and trying to get everything configured right and playing nice just makes me crazy. Sure, it can be done and there seem to be people out there who prefer it, but .Net is so much more straightforward when it comes to all that sort of thing.
Okay, enough complaining and time to get back to work.
I'll sound off later.
The frustrating part is when you're just spinning your wheels. I know I'll get blasted by all of the Java disciples for saying this, but working with Java again this past week after having not used it in a few years really makes me appreciate C# and the .Net framework.
Yeah, Java is a good platform and the syntax of the language itself is also good, but the utilities and plugins and trying to get everything configured right and playing nice just makes me crazy. Sure, it can be done and there seem to be people out there who prefer it, but .Net is so much more straightforward when it comes to all that sort of thing.
Okay, enough complaining and time to get back to work.
I'll sound off later.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Toys
Toys are great. They can really make life fun and they come in all different shapes and sizes.
Friday night we had some friends over and played Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo Wii. It's a very fun game, challenging you with different categories such as Visual, Memorize and Compute. I used to have the highest score, but one of my friends beat me by 30 points (1361 versus 1331) so I've got some training and retesting to do to see if I can regain the top spot. Granted, I'm sure that plenty of people out there have a lot higher scores than that (feel free to leave comments about your high score if you feel so inclined) but considering I play it so infrequently, I feel okay with those results.
Anyway, yesterday I mowed the lawn using another toy. My wife bought a John Deere riding mower. More of small tractor with a mowing blade on it really. The thing is pretty sweet. It has 4 wheel steering and cruise control. Yeah, you read right. Cruise control. On a lawn mower. I had no idea they had such a thing. At any rate, I can do the lawn in like 20 minutes with that thing. I use the same kind of pattern as a Zamboni refinishing the ice between periods.
Yeah, toys are fun.
Friday night we had some friends over and played Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo Wii. It's a very fun game, challenging you with different categories such as Visual, Memorize and Compute. I used to have the highest score, but one of my friends beat me by 30 points (1361 versus 1331) so I've got some training and retesting to do to see if I can regain the top spot. Granted, I'm sure that plenty of people out there have a lot higher scores than that (feel free to leave comments about your high score if you feel so inclined) but considering I play it so infrequently, I feel okay with those results.
Anyway, yesterday I mowed the lawn using another toy. My wife bought a John Deere riding mower. More of small tractor with a mowing blade on it really. The thing is pretty sweet. It has 4 wheel steering and cruise control. Yeah, you read right. Cruise control. On a lawn mower. I had no idea they had such a thing. At any rate, I can do the lawn in like 20 minutes with that thing. I use the same kind of pattern as a Zamboni refinishing the ice between periods.
Yeah, toys are fun.
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