During the next five weeks, I’ll be posting my progress with Ubisoft’s Your Shape Fitness Evolved for the XBox 360.  My goal will be to workout 3 times a week and burn at least 150 calories per session.

For my first workout, I began with some warm up activities.  First, I did Hu-La-La, where you wiggle your hips as if you are playing with a hula hoop.  This was very intense and I really felt the effects of this exercise in my stomach.  This burned 8 calories.  Next up, I selected Run the World: New York Times Square.  Running burned 70 calories.  I could have burned more, but I had some trouble with the Kinect losing me while I was running in place.  (This isn’t a fault of Your Shape Fitness Evolved, but seems to be an issue relating to the small size of my room.  After this, I repositioned the Kinect and it seems to be better.)

After this, I tried Stack ‘Em Up: Hard, a balance game where you need to hold up a platform to catch falling blocks, to burn 4 calories.  Then, I played Jump Rope: Easy (exactly what it sounds like) for 19 calories.  Next, Wall Breaker: Medium (where you punch/kick to break bricks hovering in front of you).  This one really helped me work up a sweat and scored 23 calories.  After this was Juggle It which is kind of like a virtual hacky sack game (only with a ball).  This surprised me and burned 15 calories.  I didn’t think it would burn that many.  Finally, I played Stomp It: Easy (where you need to stomp panels "in front" of you to the music) for 10 calories and Wall Breaker: Easy for 7.

Total calories burned in this session: 152.

The next session, I tried Pump It (where you flap your arms and bend your knees to inflate and then pop a ball) for 26 calories, Kick It (a soccer goal shooting game) for 19 calories, Hurricane (where you roll your arms around in circles to levitate some balls) for 19 calories, Stack It: Medium for 4 calories, Wall Breaker: Hard for 23 calories and Run the World: New York 5th Avenue for 70 calories.  Total calories burned: 161.

I was going to have a third session, but life intervened.  And by life, I mean JSL got sick and I had to tend to him instead of working out.  I do plan on doing three workouts for next weeks’ installment.

Giveaway

You could win a copy of Your Shape Fitness Evolved.  Simply post a comment to this blog post.  When my five week series is finished, one commenter from across the five posts will win a copy of the game from Ubisoft.

Disclaimer: I was given a copy of Your Shape Fitness Evolved by Ubisoft and financially compensated for this  Clever Girls Collective, Inc. campaign.  In addition, I was loaned an XBox 360 and Kinect for the duration of the campaign.  The opinions expressed above, however, are my own.

That being said, however, I’m going to try a couple of weeks of an informal diet.  I’m going to cut down on the snacking, eat less and focus on eating healthier food.  I’ll dine on more salads and snack on less junk food.

In addition, I’m going to try to work out more.  I think I’ll break out the EA Sports Active and break a sweat.  There are going to be two challenges for this.  The first is the cold weather.  With such a chill in the air, I’d much rather bundle under my Slanket and let my laptop warm up my lap.

The second reason is that I recently hurt my neck/back.  I seem to be prone to muscle spasms and, after playing some Nintendo Wii with the boys last week, I got a bad one.  The odd thing was that it wasn’t even a high-motion game.  (Kirby’s Epic Yarn – you use the WiiMote like a normal video game controller.)

It’s been over a week now and I’m still sore and achy.  My neck still hurts when I move it and I get shooting pains down my right arm.  I’m not going to let that stop me, but I will take it easy at first.

My other change, rather than not going with a formal diet, is that I’m not going to update every week.  Honestly, for some of my "20 pounds in 20 days" posts, I began to reach for content.  I couldn’t think of anything to say other than "Hey, I lost another pound this week."  While it was nice to know just what I was posting about, I’d rather have more substantial posts.  So I’m just going to post an update every first Monday of the month instead of every Monday.  I may also put something on the sidebar to help keep track of my weight loss.

So that’s my plan.  Wish me luck.

Disclaimer: The body scale clipart above comes from OpenClipArt.org.

This is the final update in my 20 Pounds in 20 Weeks Challenge.  I hit my goal last week, so this week was mainly about making sure I didn’t slide back above it.

Not only didn’t I slide back above my goal weight, but I shed two and a half additional pounds.  I’m ending this challenge a full three pounds below my goal and twenty three pounds above where I was when I began.

During this challenge, I was using Google Documents to keep track of my points and weigh-ins.  I began using a regular spreadsheet, but quickly realized I’d need to be able to update it no matter which computer I was on.  I switched to Google Documents and it was great.  One of the nice fringe benefits was the ability to generate charts on my weigh-in data and easily export them as images.

Here’s a chart of my weigh-ins from beginning to end.  (Click to enlarge it.)

You can see spikes for Disney World, Passover and JSL’s birthday.  Otherwise, it was a pretty steady drop.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to keep eating healthy, but I’m not going to hold as rigidly to the points structure as I did during the Twenty Week Challenge.  Perhaps I’ll check back in in another 20 weeks (that’d be in late October) to see how I’m doing at keeping the weight off.

I’ve done it!  I hit 185.  And passed it.  Of course, I still have one more week in the challenge so I’m not going to call it quits just yet.  I’ll keep track of my points and weight for another week to keep at or under my goal.

Just a quick post to note that I’m closing in on my goal.  I’m a single, solitary pound away from calling this challenge a success.  I suppose I should be happier about this, but I’m not.  Ok, I am happy about it, but it’s not brightening my mood much.  The reason why will be clear in my next post.  Here’s hoping my mood lightens more so I can celebrate next week when (crossing fingers) I hit 185.

This weekend, JSL turned four.  This meant a birthday party which, of course, meant a trial of my willpower.  Now, my willpower can sometimes stay strong, but not during an event like this.  I’ll admit that I didn’t track my points over this past weekend.  And when I don’t track my points, I slip and eat more than I should.  Of course, this leads to weight gain.  I take a step back to 189.5 but I’m not giving up.  I’m still a stone’s throw from my goal weight and only three weeks to go.

There might not be any celebrations coming up to sabotage my weight loss, but something else is lurking: stress.  I’m not good about handling stress (as I’ve mentioned in the past).  I don’t have a big circle of offline friends to talk things over with and online friends can only help so much.  Talking with B helps, but if the topic is something we both are stressing over then the stress tends to fester.

When the stress festers, I think less of the pounds on the scale.  It’s not so much that I turn to food for comfort as I cease to care.  I’m worried about more important things so what does it matter if I stuff a handful of peanuts down my throat?  I’m fretting about big items so why should I care about how many points this snack has?

Right now, the stress is festering.  I want to scream about everything that’s going on, but the circumstances surrounding the stress don’t make that a possibility.  I can say that it involves NHL’s education, though.  Right now, the best I can do is try to keep the stress from overwhelming me.  Deep calming breaths and distracting work seem like the best prescription to avoid a binge.

Thanks to a week back on my weight loss plan, it looks like I’m back on track.  My weight has dropped back down and my goal is within sight.  Even though my son’s birthday looms over this coming weekend (and thus the presence of cake and other goodies which I’m sure to partake in), I think reaching my goal is definitely doable.

Now that Passover has ended, it is time to get serious about my weight loss again.  After all, I expected some weight gain but I weighed in at 194 pounds yesterday. 194! The last time I weighed in there was way back in week 6 (February 20th weigh-in).  It stings to realize that my work from the past weeks were undone by a couple of carb-loaded matzo days, but I’m not letting my resolve weaken.  I have 5 more weigh-ins until my challenge is over and 9 more pounds to lose.  It may be tough, but it won’t be impossible.  I can do this!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been going on and on about Passover looming on the horizon.  I’ve been more and more fearful of the weight that would pack on when matzoh permeated my diet.  So when I stepped on the scale, I was shocked to see no weight gain.  Even more surprising, I lost 3 pounds!

I have no real explanation for this.  I haven’t been watching calories or points at all.  I was even snacking too much on Passover junk food while at work for two days.  Going to work during Passover means I need to pack all the food I’ll need during the day.  This means I need to estimate my day’s food needs.  It tends to seem to be a better idea to bring too much food than to not bring enough.  Sadly, this can result in over eating.

Still, despite this, I lost weight.  It should be interesting to see what the rest of Passover (and the days that follow it’s ending) brings.

This week’s weigh-in brought a not-so-pleasant surprise. From being a half a pound away from my goal, I went up to 189 pounds.  All that pre-Passover snacking took its toll.  To make matters worse, I’m sure I’ll gain weight during Passover itself.  Still, this just means I’ll be as good as I can be during the Eight Days of Matzoh and then will redouble my weight loss efforts post-Passover.