Guest Blogger~ Rachel!

Rachel has some good information on the WII fit, something I have never used! I am excited for her that she has been doing so well and I am always happy to hear of at home exercise stuff!

Does anyone else use the wii fit?!?!

I was given the Wii Fit Plus as a gift from my family right after it came out and I have to admit, although I was very excited about receiving it, I was not very good about using it until this year. When I joined up with pound pinching it was as though a light bulb turned on. Now not only was I accountable for the loss of weight, I also made a goal that I would open up Wii Fit every morning no matter what and get on the scale so that I would see how my lifestyle affected my weight. It is the only form of a scale that I have in my house. I think I got the Wii Fit two years ago and the lowest weight I've ever had logged in it is about 183, which for the first time in a long time I am dangerously close to. Logging in each morning to weigh myself really seems to work for me. It gives me a chance to face whatever I ate last night, nights are the worst for me because I tend to eat unhealthy at night still, and I also have to face whether or not I had worked out the previous day. Which usually I didn't, at least during January and February. I was still weighing in everyday except for one, but I just couldn't bring myself to be consistent in working out. The Wii Fit was great, but you can only do a 30 minutes of free step so many times before you get tired of it. For those without Wii Fit they have a step on and off the board exercise you can do either by following the directions of the board, similar to Dance Dance Revolution, or to step on and step off to a rhythm while you are watching a TV show for 10, 20, or 30 minutes. Obviously I chose watching TV shows and working out, which according to the article that Teri just posted is actually not as helpful as it sounds. However, every little bit counts right?Well, I'm not so sure. This past week my mom had to have surgery and so I went down to where she lives to help care for the kids so she could go and have her surgery and not stress about what was happening at home. Everything went just fine thankfully, but while I was there my mom showed my their Wii Fit Plus before her surgery and I was truly impressed. There were more exercises, more fun games, and there were also more features. Once again, another light bulb clicked on. So while the kids were at school and my mom was resting I spent about 2 and 1/2 hours working out everyday on it while I was there. As you work out it tracks the calories that you are burning and you can choose to work towards a goal calorie burn, for instance a chocolate bar is 455 calories. I never realized before the calorie counter how little you can burn off in a 30 minute workout. Very eye opening. It also shows different foods and how many calories they are worth. There are also Wii Fit Routines and a make your own routine option if you don't want to have to do the old way like before and go into and out of exercise after exercise, it just strings them all together for you. The last two things about it that I just found out about yesterday is that it can be a log for your waist measurement and also can log the numbers from a pedometer. I tell you I need to get one so I know exactly how many calories I'm burning in a day by the steps I take. The changes they've made have been moving towards making it weight loss central.After I got home I continued to workout because I had a new goal. When I reached 186 pounds I would be able to go and purchase my very own Wii Fit Plus. To my surprise I reached that goal the morning after I got back from my mom's! It felt really good. It seems to me that this whole weight loss program has been a huge work in progress. From getting a Wii and a Wii Fit, to getting the appropriate vitamin supplement to take for my body, to learning to eat right and now to working out and getting excited about it! All together it is making me a weight loosing machine right now! Now after all of this I'm not saying that this is the last piece of workout equipment I will buy, but it will keep me entertained until I reach 170 and buy another type of workout system to keep my body guessing so the pounds will keep coming off.