Cargo

Pulled the trigger on one of these, it should arrive next week.

I have been working out with DDR for the last few weeks to good effect and now it's time to level up. If you're following team_fatty you know I have lost 17 pounds since the end of August with Weight Watchers and exercising. Only about 100 pounds to go!

My Achilles heel in the past with this stuff has been exercise. It is absolutely crucial to my efforts - I can diet rigorously for months and lose almost no weight. A combination of healthy diet and exercise works best of all. Thanks to weight watchers the eating part is pretty much taken care of. I can even still hit the odd restaurant on weekends and continue to cut bodyfat. DDR is excellent for cardio, especially in nonstop workout mode, and I get the feeling it's working my legs and calves pretty well. But some kind of strength or resistance training is still necessary - weightlifting or something like it.

The problem is I hate gyms. Can't stand 'em. I don't like having to take an hour and a half to work out for 30 minutes, on slimy machines in some warehouse space surrounded by buff guys, lifting my puny bar in the wrong way because the minimum wage personal trainer doesn't give a crap about me. Gyms are punishment to me, something to endure. I did it when I had not much else going on in my life for about five months at a stretch - that was the longest I have ever continued a workout routine. And the earliest possible excuse I have to give it up - I hit my goal, i'm 'close enough' to my goal, I'm in crunch mode at work, it's snowing, I'm too exhausted - I jump on it. Gym is a prison sentence. Lifting weights is fucking boring as hell, the most effective but the least interesting workout there is. Swimming is fun but pools are hard to come by around here. I looked into yoga and pilates but once again it would be incredibly time consuming and expensive. Let's say it was $10/session, 3 times a week - that adds up. After a year? more?

My ideal workout is something fun I can roll out of bed in the morning and do for half an hour, then get on with my day. Home gyms are great - but they take up a lot of space and at the end of the day you're lifting weights. It gets real easy for a home gym to become a laundry rack in a matter of weeks. Outdoor activities like sports are great but they need space and sometimes other people. I live in an apartment. Plus we're heading into winter so somethng indoors is crucial - nothing should be able to break the routine.

The Kilowatt Sport makes working out into play. it's just a specialized video game controller. The analog stick is a metal bar with force sensors on it - isometrically you move the bar around to move your character on screen. It works with any video game, some better than other, but I'm already looking forward to plowing around with katamari damacy and getting a workout in the process. the other stalk on the device is the brace you push back against for resistance. Driving games, fighting games, it all works. Sensors in the bar determine how much weight you are actually 'lifting' - the bar doesn't move, it just measures the force you apply to it. There are 20 levels of resistance.

This thing cost four hundred bucks. A gym membership for six months would be in that ballpark. If it is a piece of crap I will let you know. If it works I will let you know. But this could be the missing piece of my workout/diet plan.