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.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t have anything against flossing.  I know that it is good for my teeth and gums.  I just can’t seem to work it into my routine, though.  I’ll floss for a few days after my checkup.  Then I forget about it completely until a few days before my next checkup.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: How good are you with flossing?  Do you floss every day?

P.S. If you haven’t already, go visit FollowerHQ and let me know what you think of my Twitter application.

P.P.S. For a bit of fun, try my other Twitter Application, Rout. It’s a +F in Fun!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #121

Disclaimer: The “open mouth” clipart above is from OpenClipArt.org.

I have bad memories of school lunch pizza.  I clearly remember a girl taking her fist and punching her pizza.  The indentation she made was clearly visible… until the pizza began to “recover.”  It morphed its shape back to the pre-fist-punch shape.  This pizza apparently had healing capabilities or was cooked with a liberal dosage of rubber.  Possibly the latter considering that kids also used to bounce the meatballs around the lunch room.  (I wish I was joking.  And, yes, I usually brown-bagged it.)

So pizza a veggie?

Well, despite the reactionary tone, Congress didn’t exactly make this declaration.  They did do something nefarious to anyone who wants kids to get nutritious school lunches, though.   Currently, an eighth of a cup of tomato paste counts as if it had the same nutritional value as a half cup of vegetables.  Most other veggies need to be half of cup’s worth before they are counted as a serving.  The Obama administration wanted to remove the tomato paste exception.  Congress blocked this.

Some, mostly the food companies, hailed the decision pointing to the fiber and other nutrients that tomato paste contains.  I’ve used it in my cooking from time to time, too.  So I wondered.  How nutritious is it?

The Washington Post tried stacking tomato paste against various fruits.  They found it fared pretty well.  Still, they pointed out, fruits and veggies vary wildly in their nutritional content.  As they put it: “A half-cup of avocado is quite nutritionally different from a half-cup of zucchini.”

I got to thinking that the best thing to compare tomato paste with are actual tomatoes.  After all, tomato paste isn’t claiming to be zucchini or spinach or apples or oranges.  So why stack it up against those.  Let’s see how 1/8th cup of tomato paste compares to 1/2 cup of tomatoes.  Thankfully, Calorie King let me easily look this information up.

So 2 tablespoons (1/8th of a cup) of tomato paste contains nearly twice the calories and much more sodium as the “equivalent” (as defined by Congress) amount of chopped tomatoes.  (They could use low sodium tomato paste, but let’s be honest here.  They’ll likely use the regular stuff.)  It also has nearly twice the sugar, twice the carbs and none of the calcium.  Tomato paste does best chopped tomatoes when it comes to potassium and slightly beats it out in dietary fiber.  Still, I don’t think the calorie/sodium/sugar tradeoff is worth less than 1 gram of added fiber.

Tomato paste clearly doesn’t stack up, but perhaps it has more vitamins?  Calorie King didn’t display this information, so I found another website, Self Nutrition Data, that did.

Here is the nutrition data for 1/2 cup of tomato paste.  (They didn’t let me modify the amounts.)

Now, here is the information for 1 cup of chopped tomatoes.

They look sort of the same until you realize that you need to divide the tomato paste percentages by 4 and the chopped tomato percentages by 2.  Here’s a handy chart with the final “serving size” percentages:

You can see that tomato paste still falls short in vitamins A and C.  It has a slight lead in calcium which is interesting given that Calorie King showed it as having 0mg.  (I’m guessing that was due to rounding for a 1/8th cup serving.)  It also has a decent lead in iron.

So, should pizza (or, more accurately, tomato paste) be defined as a vegetable.  Most certainly not.  First of all, there is the nutritional data that I showed above.  Perhaps, the best reason comes from NHL, though.  My third grade son, upon hearing this, declared: “But tomatoes are fruit, not vegetables!”  He’s right.  They are.  You might as well declare apple pie a veggie.  Perhaps we need to hire Jeff Foxworthy to run a special of his TV game show for Congressfolks.  We’ll call it: Are You Smarter Than A Third Grader?

I try to give blood often, but I’ll admit that in recent years I haven’t gone as often as I could.  When I heard that my Temple was running a blood drive, though, I figured I should attend.  So I headed on down, read the now-familiar introductory pamphlets, got the various health-related tests (the iron finger-stick still hurts), answered the now familiar screening questions and then was shown to a cot.

I showed them my blood-giving arm, my right arm with the big vein popping up.  As always, the needle stick didn’t hurt.  It’s more of a quick pinch.  I still can’t watch it be done, though, for fear that I’ll flinch at the worst moment.  The little needle stick was uneventful, though, and soon blood was flowing into a collection bag.

At that point, I asked what was likely an unusual question.  I asked about taking  photos  I explained that I was a blogger and would be blogging about this.  She said I could take photos anywhere except for the questionairre area (due to personal information that is discussed/displayed there) and of the needle itself (as people might be scared off of giving blood if they see a needle close-up photo).  I completely agreed and she took a photo of me giving blood.

As I squeezed a rubber ball, keeping the blood flowing, the collection bag quickly filled.  The needle was carefully removed and a bandage was applied.  Of course, before I left for the snacks area, I had to take a photo of my blood in the collection bag.

Then I was off to the snacks area for the usual assortment of juices and cookies as well as a special treat: cannolis!

All in all, giving blood is mostly painless.  The slight pinching of the needle stick and pain of the finger stick are minor when compared to what you are giving.  The blood you give is separated and given to up to three people.  Yes, three people’s lives might be saved because I took an hour out of my day to give blood.  I’d say that’s an hour well spent.

Although my kids couldn’t come with me, I talked with them a lot about it afterwards.  I showed them my bandage and let them know everything that was done.  I told them that it didn’t hurt much and wasn’t scary.  I emphasised how good it was to save lives and promised that they could come with me to give blood when they are older.  I look forward to the day when I can walk into a blood drive with my two boys and watch as they give blood for the first time.  (NOTE: “Look forward to” doesn’t mean “can’t wait.”  Stay little for as long as possible, NHL & JSL!!!)

If you would like more information about giving blood, you can head on over to the American Red Cross Blood Donation website.  Have you ever given blood?  If so, when was the last time you’ve given?

Disclaimer: The American Red Cross didn’t compensate me for this post in any way.  I did this because I feel that giving blood is important.

The Game of Life is a simulation where each square represents one "cell" of life. The cells will multiply or die based on certain rules. They might blossom into a vast colony, die on the vine, or even move around the board (spawning new cells in the front and having old ones dying off behind).

I resolved to make a Vaccination Game of Life or, for a more descriptive and catchy name, a Vaccination Simulation. Fast forward through some programming, testing, great advice from Phil Plait (thanks, Phil!) and here it is: http://www.techydad.com/Vaccinate/

Just set some parameters like how deadly the virus should be, vaccinate some people and then let loose the plague. Will all of your people die? Will some recover? Will the virus spread to everyone or fizzle out? Will Herd Immunity protect the unvaccinated?

What about Herd Immunity? I had set out to test this and test it I did. I ran 5 different scenarios: a 0% vaccination rate, a 25% vaccination rate, a 50% vaccination rate, a 75% vaccination rate and a 90% vaccination rate. For each scenario, I ran the simulator 3 times and took the average number of dead and recovered. Then, I figured out the death rate (defined here as Number Who Died / Number Who Got Sick).

Here are the results:

Note that the Death Rate (on the chart labeled as "% Non-Vacc Died") declined as the vaccination rate rose. For the more visual, here it is in graph format.

What does this mean in human terms? Let’s take 5 people and put them in 5 different communities. For whatever reason, these 5 people can’t recieve the vaccination for The Virus. The person in the 0% vaccination group would stand an 80% chance of dying. The person in the 25% group would stand a 76.44% chance. And so on to the person in the 90% vaccination group who would only stand a 13.33% chance of dying. The people have the same immunity, but the vaccinated people around them reduces the spread of the virus and makes it less likely that they’ll contract it. Less likelihood of contracting the virus means less likelihood of dying from it. Herd Immunity in action.

Now go off and enjoy Vaccination Simulation for yourself whether to educate or just to mercilously kill a hundred square representations of people.

For the full story behind this photo, see my post over on DadRevolution.com.

Now, I’ve had muscle spasms before. I get them from time to time, mostly due to stress and mostly limited to the muscles under my right shoulder blade. (Don’t ask why it is that specific, but it is.) This was different, though. Instead of moderate pain, this was extreme pain and instead of being limited, it was much wider in scope.

I stayed still for a few minutes, hoping it would pass, but no such luck. So I slowly made my way to my bag where I was sure I had some advil. More bad luck. No advil. I searched through all of my desk drawers and bag pockets but couldn’t find a single pain reliever. I asked around and no coworkers had any. Finally, one of my coworkers had some and I took it hoping for some relief. By now, the spasms had lasted almost an hour.

I spent the rest of the day feeling like an old man. I shuffled back and forth slowly. I thought ahead before opening any door to plan out the least painful way of doing it. I winced upon getting up and sitting down. I even felt hunched over as my tightened, still slightly spasming muscles refused to let me stand up straight.

Later that night, JSL demanded to see Up on Roku / Netflix. We watched (well, I watched while JSL ran around playing) as Carl Fredicksen fought hard to get his house to Paradise Falls. I’ve often found that I’ll get so engrossed in a movie and identify so much with a character that I feel like that character after the movie is over.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Yes, I found that I had identified with Carl. I even found myself reaching for my cane once or twice before my arm realized that I don’t use one. I’m only in my mid thirties. I shouldn’t be feeling like this.

I tried consulting a medical expert… and by that I mean JSL, who upon hearing of my pain, grabbed his stethoscope and said “Dada, me gonna be doctor!” That didn’t help. So here I sit with JSL typing up this post and trying to ignore the pain in my neck and back. After JSL goes to sleep, I’ll try a nice, hot shower to see if that’ll relax the muscles. If not, maybe a good night’s sleep will do it. Worst case scenario, I’ll find a cane with some tennis balls on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to yell at some kids to get off my lawn. Annoying whippersnappers!

Average Hours of Sleep: 6.2 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

This past week brought an unexpected challenge: The Jewish Holiday of Shavuot. I forgot that during the holiday I wouldn’t be able to write down my points. Usually on Saturdays (when I also can’t write), I just keep track in my head. That works fine for 1 day, but 2 days is too much. I’m quite sure that I would up eating too many points on those days which hindered my ability to shed pounds gained from JSL’s birthday party. Still, I only gained a single pound which isn’t too bad.

With this weigh-in, I bring my 20 Pounds in 20 Weeks challenge to a close. While I didn’t end at or under my goal, I’m not going to count that as losing the challenge. First of all, it’s just one pound. I lost 19 pounds over the past 20 weeks. I can’t see calling those 19 lost pounds a “loss” because one additional pound didn’t drop off. Secondly, I actually hit my goal weight twice. And lastly, well, it is my challenge against myself so why *can’t* I declare myself a victor?

Next week, I’ll look back over my weigh in and sleep figures and that will be my last Project New Me post.

Average Hours of Sleep: 5.4 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

Yesterday’s weigh in brought a pleasent surprise. I was at my goal weight. This was a surprise because my parents were in town for JSL’s party and I had eaten some less-than-perfect-for-me foods while we went out to eat. I don’t think I overdid it, but those foods could have easily packed on an extra pound. Instead, my metabolism seems to be able to withstand a day or so of overeating. (I overdid it at JSL’s party yesterday also and did an unofficial weigh in this morning to find myself at 187.5 pounds.) Of course, eating like that continually will lead to trouble, in the form of packed on pounds, but it is nice to know that my body is at the point where I don’t need to worry about the occassional stray into fattening foods.

Average Hours of Sleep: 5.4 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

As expected, I inched a bit above my goal weight this week. I’m not too worried about this. It’s not that high above. One and a half pounds in 2 weeks is completely doable – even if birthday parties for JSL might mess me up a bit. My big problem recently has been sleep. I tend to get very tired around 7pm. Unfortunately, I can’t just go to sleep. I need to help get the kids ready for and into bed. Once this is done, I get a second wind which lasts until about 11pm – 1am (depending on the day). Then my energy levels crash and I drag myself into bed, completely exhausted. Of course, by the time I do this, I don’t get enough sleep during the night and I’m tired the next day. Until it is time to go to sleep, though, at which time my second wind kicks in again. Wash, rinse, repeat. I’ve got to start learning to ignore that second wind (at least most nights) and go to sleep at a reasonable time.

As my Project New Me winds to a close, I’m also thinking of going over the data I collected during the 20 weeks it ran. Obviously, I rarely exercised, so that’s pretty useless. (I only keep those “Workout Time/Calories Burned” lines in there because I copy/paste from the previous week’s post to get the new one started. Total inertia.) However, it might be interesting to see whether my weight fluctuations were tied in any way to my sleep patterns.