Health(ier) Life: Wii Fit, Stopped Smoking, Weight Watching

In January I bought a Wii Fit board. I haven't written about it earlier because I wanted to give it a good 6 months before a review, however, some other developments cause me to mention it now. When I first turned on the Wii Fit it told me quite bluntly that for my age and height I was a little into overweight territory. How annoying. But true - I never was much into physical activity and my sedentary lifestyle coupled with the frequent travel and accompanying "travel junk food" has taken its toll over the years. To get back into the upper range of "ideal weight" I only needed to lose a little weight, to hit the middle of the ideal range I needed to lose an additional 10 Kg. So I set a short-term target to get away from the "overweight" moniker, and a 6 month long-term target to get back to the middle of the "ideal" zone.

Hitting the Nintendo gym

Wii Fit is divided into 4 areas: aerobics, strength, yoga, and balance with a set of games for each, some of which are locked. As you progress, more and more games get unlocked (the unlocking goes rather quickly). Most of these games are very low-impact meaning you won't break a sweat. But I suspect this is not the goal of Wii Fit anyway. The aerobics games are good for a warm-up. Some of the strength games are good for building muscle (like the push-ups and the jackknifes). The balance games are for the most part good fun and when played with multiple people can lead to fierce competition. But for me the yoga part was the biggest discovery; I never imagined that stretching could be so good for you.

When I say "yoga" I really mean the poses; because Wii Fit strips yoga of any fluffy new agey connotation and simply offers some of the simpler poses and in some cases parts of poses. Which suits me fine because people blathering on about chakras and other new age nonsense annoy me. Stretching muscles is just that: stretching muscles. Good for you. Very good, even - my back hasn't felt this good in years. I hit my short-term target without much issues and am now working towards my long-term target and making good progress.

The end of smoking

Exactly one week ago I quit smoking cold turkey after 19 years of smoking rolling tobacco like a chimney. This in itself is only partly related to the Wii Fit - I mainly quit for health reasons, but costs and convenience also played a part. Being treated like a second-class citizen and herded into remote corners to get your fill of gray air isn't fun. The quitting itself was less hard than I thought - I haven't had a moment of weakness since my initial decision, my resolve is strong, and the benefits are immediate and obvious: my sense of smell and taste have improved, I get winded less easily, I feel more energetic, and I am saving massive amounts of time and money.

Now people who quit smoking often gain some weight, perhaps due to sped-up metabolism and/or extra snacking. I wanted to avoid this since I was already a little over my 'optimal' weight, so we move on to...

Calorie counting

So how do you know when you are snacking too much? Well, you'll have to start tracking what you eat, when you eat it, and how many calories it has. Surprisingly, this can be rather fun (for statistics geeks) and makes a good substitute activity for the smoking itself. The USDA has a huge searchable database - it is even available for download. The Dutch government is less advanced in this matter, you can request their database on paper (!) or they can send you a CD but you have to qualify for that in some way. That said, there are two excellent Dutch sites where you can do online lookups: here and here.

So grab an spreadsheet program and record what you stuff in your mouth, then in the evening quickly work out how much calories each item is (ballpark figure). The results may surprise you, I know they surprised me. The biggest surprise was how easy it is to ingest way too many calories. All these supposedly healthy foods and snacks - many of them are like calorie-bombs.
So I made some adjustments - crossed some items of my shopping lists, substituted other items with lighter products. With just a few changes and no sacrifice at all I've improved my diet and this in turn will hopefully lead to me hitting my Wii Fit targets.