Category: Fitness

A few years back, my wife and I decided that we had enough of our poor eating habits.  NHL was almost one year old and I feared that he would pick up our poor eating habits.  I had tried losing weight before, but never too seriously.  We heard about Weight Watchers from a friend and got some information about the program.  After that, we designed our own weight loss routine loosely based on Weight Watchers.  It worked too.  My initial weigh-in was 255 pounds.  After one year, I lowered that to 188.5 pounds.  That’s 66.5 pounds lost in a year.

I didn’t stop there, either.  The second year, I lost an additional 10 pounds to bring me to 178.5 pounds.  Around this time, people actually began telling me that I looked too skinny.  I had never been told that in my entire life!  I dropped down as low as 173 before my weight slowly began rising again.  I found that my "ideal weight" was around 185-190.

Unfortunately, I began slacking off on watching my food intake.  My weight went up and down as I alternately fell off the wagon and got back on.  I never did reach the commitment levels of our initial effort.  In addition, my diet change was not accompanied by an increase in exercise.

Months back, though, B bought me WiiFit for the Nintendo Wii.  I faithfully followed the excercises for a few weeks, enjoying exercize for the first time.  Then, as often happens, life intervened.  I slacked off and the Wii Balance Board got pushed off to the side.  I had even bought a new yoga mat to use with my WiiFit as our floor was too hard on my back/sides, but that didn’t give me an incentive.

Then, this Sunday, I got my incentive.  During my weekly weigh in (the one part of the diet plan that I followed through on religiously), the scale read 208.5.  I didn’t want to see 210+ on that scale any more and I noticed that my suits were getting tighter.  So this week I resolved to start working out for 30 minutes per day for 4 days per week.

Yesterday, I put the WiiFit disc in the Wii and powered up the Balance Board.  After some trouble with the WiiMote batteries being too low, and the onscreen guide chastising me for being away for 163 days, I took the balance test to find out my WiiFit age.  It was 40!  (I’m only 33.)  Then I began my 30 minute workout.  I started off with Deep Breathing yoga, Warrior Pose yoga, and Lunges.  Then I moved on to Hula Hooping and Basic Step Aerobics.  Rhythm Boxing kicked my rear next.  I couldn’t dodge for my life.  After some Torso Twists, Triangle, a short Run, and Jackknives, I unlocked a new exercise: Jackknife Challenge.  I swear the trainer let me win the Jackknife Challenge, but I was not detered.  I moved onto Spinal Twist and Bridge yoga poses.  Finally, I had my 30 minutes (35, actually).

Now I’m off to do some more working out.  Well, I’m actually off to put the garbage out and *then* I’m off to work out.