Glory days

High school was a great time. I ate everything I wanted and stayed at around 140 pounds. I graduated high school many, many years ago, and my, how things change. I remember the first time I looked in the mirror and realized how much my hairline was receding. I also remember the first time I jumped on a scale, something I hadn't done in years, and saw that my weight was about to hit 190. I was floored.

I have a feeling that I'm a lot like many of you. We spend a lot of time working on our monitor tan, and the busier we are the harder it is to eat well; my life consisted of way too much fast food with a soda chaser while I was working, studying, or writing. Not only had I gained weight, but I felt worse. Two flights of stairs were enough to wind me.

Something had to be done. One roadblock: gyms are expensive, and I'm not really into the high-pressure sales tactics and bodies-on-display vibe of the gyms I visited.



We have a lot of work to do. Even with shoes

After poking around a bit, I found that there was a glut of products for video game systems that are meant to promote fitness. I remember back in the day when rowing machines had simplistic video games attached to them to get you to work out harder, but I had no clue there were exercise bikes attached to PlayStations, EyeToy games dedicated to fitness, or a game that includes its own personal trainer named Maya... who just happens to have a great, uh, energizing spirit.

As I started on my quest for fitness, I had a few questions. How good are these games? Can someone actually get into shape using just video games in their own home? How much was this going to cost me? Clearly there is a market for this sort of thing, but are people actually being helped, or is this just a clever way to get people to buy more games?

Thus began the experiment: a few fitness games, two months testing time, and a tweaked diet. How well do these games really work? We're about to find out.

MC 900-Pound Writer

I knew I wanted to try Dance Dance Revolution; it's the game that gave me this unholy idea in the first place. I've played the game before and knew that I wanted the newest version with an official Konami pad. One copy of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 with a pad, $60check. I'll treat myself to a nice aftermarket pad if I stick with it.

For the second game I decided on Yourself!Fitness, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't take into account the fact that the girl on the cover was pretty hot. Our own Dr. Gitlin recommends it highly. It was hard to find: it seems to be out of print and none of my local stores had it used. I found it at Overstock.com for $40.

I wanted to stay away from anything too expensive and needing a lot of hardware, so specialized fitness equipment for consoles is out. At that point you might as well join a gym for the cost. But this does need to be fun, so for my third game I decided on EyeToy Kinetic, a Nike-endorsed fitness game that uses the EyeToy to put your image into the game and uses your own movements to interact with the images on the screen.

I like the EyeToy; it's usually a great little toy. When I've used it with friends, after a few minutes I'm usually breathing pretty heavily, so this became game number three. I found it with the updated, smaller EyeToy for $50 at my local software store.

Total price: $150 for three games and two pieces of hardware. So after a long day of shopping for games, I have a big glass of water that I wish was a Coke, and then go to bed with happy, non-aching muscles. If I knew how long it would be before I was in that state again, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

No Morgan Spurlock jokes, please

Before starting with the games, I had to see where I was at. Weight: 194 pounds. Body fat percentage: 23.3 percent. BMI: 27.9. Ick, I'm overweight.

I'm not obese, but I'm certainly heading there. I've got love handles, a gut, and a face that looks much wider than it did in my high school pictures. If this is how I look at 25, what will my 30th birthday bring?

I took stock of my diet, which consisted of almost criminal amounts of fast food and soda. I was going through a twelve-pack of Coke a day, or about 1,860 calories just in soda. In a recommended diet of 2,000 calories, I was leaving myself no room for actual food. Soda had to go. I substituted black coffee and green tea; I wanted to lose weight, but I certainly wasn't ready to give up caffeine. Yet.

Half of my dinners were fast food. I started looking up the nutritional information on the pizza chains I was ordering from, only to be shocked that one slice of pizza could have as many as 300 calories. I was eating four or five slices in a sitting, so in one meal I was at 1500 calories. That had to go.

Changing my diet wasn't that hard. I discovered the joy of chicken breasts and the George Foreman Grill; about 20 minutes less time than delivery pizza and about a hojillion calories less. Add salad, pay attention to labels, cut the fat, and I'm set. Nothing drastic, just common sense changes I could live with.

Now I knew a little bit more about what I should be eating: stay away from fast food, make my own meals, and cut out the soda. Sticking to this diet will probably be hard in the future, but at least I know where I stand.

Games? Check. Proper diet? Check. Let's get exercising... er, gaming.