Exercise

Not something I really like doing but it is important.  If you want to lose weight dieting is MUCH more important than exercise.  Not that exercise isn't important but look at it this way, say you want your car to weigh less, what's the best way to do it?  Drive around & around burning up gas to lighten the car or put in less gas?  Also after exercising many people feel they've worked out, now they get to reward themselves.  Well I got news for you, it's a lot easier to consume calories than to burn them.  Here are the cool things I use to help me exercise & monitor my weight.

Wii Fit

As you can see by my setup I'm not much of a gamer but I do use it almost every day.  I do about 20 minutes of exercises a day but the best thing about Wii Fit is how it monitors your weight.  I know every day how much I've lost or gained since September of 2008.  It's wonderful to see the graph & how my weight's been going down & down from obese to overweight to now  in the normal range.  Now Wii Fit is not always nice, gain too much weight & it will treat you like a 4th grader who's come home with a bad report card.  But there's no fudging, it's very easy to see how much you're losing (hopefully not gaining).  The training is not too intense but if you're like me only want to get toned, not muscle-bound, the Wii Fit can help.  I do believe my Wii Fit trainer is Christian & she does seem to have a substance abuse problem but I don't have the Wii Fit Plus just the older version so maybe she's cleaned up her act.  I do use light wrist weights & dumb bells to make things a little more intense.  Here's the setup:

Here's the Wii Fit balance board along with a really thick spongy exercise mat which really helps cushion things.

I also do push ups with the push up stands.  I don't know if the stands make a difference, but everyone seems to use them these days.  I purchased the weights, stands & mat at Walmart, another company that doesn't need my help selling stuff but I found these items much cheaper there than my local sporting goods stores.


To lose weight & stay healthy however you need to do aerobic exercise & get your heart rate up.  After my Wii Fit work I walk to my nearby gym & get an aerobic workout, usually on an elliptical machine.  To get a good workout in you're going to have to make sure you're keeping your heart rate up.  To do this I use a:

Polar Heart Rate Monitor

The strap goes around your chest & it transmits to the separate watch monitor.  There are a lot of fancy settings but I have set up so that when my heart goes above the rate I've chosen the timer starts, if I go below that rate it stops counting.  I currently do a half hour at heart rate which I current have set as a minimum 120 beats per minute, meaning I have to work hard enough to keep my heart rate over 120 for a half hour.  Sometimes I don't make the whole half hour, usually I do.  I started at 113 BPM minimum, took it up to 125 BPM minimum but now 120 seems to work best for me.  I   also used to do a whole hour but found myself too tired later to really do anything for the rest of the day so I've dialed it back a little.

So this is it for unfun, yet cool stuff.  Check back soon for some really cool stuff, I promise you!!!