Rethinking the Whole Jillian Michaels Wii Ultimatum Thing

Run Swiftly Racerback and the Run Team Spirit Crops: sea gaze
Originally uploaded by lululemon athletica

I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that I have come to realize that I am NOT up to the challenge of completing the Resolution I set for myself on the Jillian Michaels Ultimatum. Rather than give up entirely, I have decided to just go in and do some of the exercises every night. I think after I get used to the exercises and build up some muscle and endurance, I will be better equipped to take on a Resolution.

The first thing I did was make sure that Jillian's voice on the game is turned way down. I know it's supposed to be encouraging, but hearing someone yell at me does not make me want to exercise. Instead it makes me want to quit and throw in the towel.

I was telling my brother about this Wii game and he laughed when I told him how mean Jillian's character was and how she yelled at me. "What did you expect--it is called the Ultimatum, isn't it?" Yeah, well it still wouldn't hurt to hear, "Way to go! That's so much better than your last attempt!" or "You're almost there, keep going!". Build me up, baby, don't cut me down! I'm coming out and putting in the time, I'm not doing it perfectly, but I'm doing it, and that is half the battle.

Getting back to it again...

Boxed
Originally uploaded by recursion_see_recursion

So, you can probably guess that my 30 days of using the Wii Fit for 30 minutes fell by the wayside. All is not lost though, I did find that my clothes are fitting a bit better and I plan to try it again.....sometime. (procrastinators of the world, unite...tomorrow!).

I've had a busy week taking my little one around to all sorts of programs during the day. Thankfully I've had a few days off of work and a vehicle at my disposal, so it's worked otu well.

I'm getting back to the organizing, slowly but surely. I've given away some things on freecycle this week. I really love this as it allows me to find homes for things that I haven't a use for but someone else might. The biggest thing to go this week? Our old playpen--the old style that only folds in half and is really big. That has cleared up a lot of room in my basement. We also had two boxes of donations picked up by Cerebral Palsy today. Of course, after the driver was gone, I realized I had a third box as well. We regularly receive calls from Canadian Diabetes, Cerebral Palsy and Community Living and I say yes to all of them. It's a good way for me to make sure that I am decluttering and I don't even have to take it anywhere! The girls have both out grown a lot of clothes over the last few months, so boxes fill up pretty quickly here.

I even cleaned out my kitchen sink this week. It's not shining yet, but it's mostly empty, so I can live with that. I'm trying to keep on top of the dishes, but dinner is made and eaten while I'm at work. The last thing I want to do when I get home is clean up the kitchen. sigh...

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 8 Wii Fit

technical difficulties
Originally uploaded by jadytron

We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by. OK, really, it's my balance board that is having technical difficutlies. I was actually all gung ho to exercise tonight. Did a 10 minute free run and felt pretty good about that. Then I tried to do the hula hooping. The balance board was low on batteries, so I plugged it in, then it couldn't find me even after rebooting several times. So, I've only done 10 minutes today. But even 10 minutes is better than doing no minutes! Hopefully when I try to use it tomorrow it will be fine!

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 7 Wii Fit

paperdolls044
Originally uploaded by ana_ng

Woohoo! 1 week down. And according to the Fit, I'm down in weight too. About 3.1 lbs. Not sure if I believe that or not yet. We'll see what it says tomorrow.

Curious about the picture? Well, today I seemed to be wearing many hats. I was on bus duty, walking my oldest to her bus stop this morning, then I was policing my youngest in her attempts to take over the household for once and for all, I was a mom, I was a driver, I was a travel agent (my real job) and now I'm a baker! How am I getting all this done? Mostly just necessity. I'm baking some tea biscuits because there is no bread left for big kid to use for her lunch tomorrow. At least this way she'll have something to eat and hopefully we can scrounge up some change to buy a loaf of bread tomorrow rather than waiting to pay day. I'm really not loving this living pay cheque to pay cheque thing right now.

Be that as it may, I got my 30 minutes in tonight even though I didn't want to. I got stuck late at work tonight, so I was late and hungry and not in the mood to exercise. Now that I'm done, I wonder what was so hard about doing it. Oh well. Maybe one day I'll actually want to do it instead of forcing myself too. Here's hoping!

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 6 Wii Fit

toe touch silhouette
Originally uploaded by mariachily

Woohoo! I touched my toes! I was doing the Sun Salutation yoga pose and I actually touched my toes! I know it doesn't seem like a big thing, but I couldn't reach them earlier this week. So, I guess doing the poses every day does help increase your flexibility.

For a change, I skipped most of the aerobics and the games and did more yoga than anything else. I even attempted the tree pose even though I cannot get it. I did end up wobbling myself right off the wii fit board, but hey, at least I tried it. And who knows, in another few weeks, I may even get it.

So, touching my toes is the first "positive" outcome of doing 30 minutes for 30 days. No weight loss to speak of yet, probably because I don't do it at a specific time each day. Maybe I should do a weigh in first thing in the morning and then do the exercises later in the day. Maybe I'll try that.

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 5 Wii Fit

(112/365) Ice cream is GOOD
Originally uploaded by Sarah G...

Can you guess from the picture what I used to motivate me to use my Fit tonight? Oh yes. I'm sitting here having a lovely bowl of icecream now that I've finished working out for 30 minutes. My ice cream does not look as appealing as the ice cream in the picture, but that's OK.

Anyway, I'm now 5 days in and I'm still alive, so that's a good sign. I focussed on the strength training and yoga today and then threw in some aerobics to get me over my time. Let me tell you, 10 minutes of Hula Hoops is not an easy feat!

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 4 Wii Fit

YOGA in nature's way
Originally uploaded by Tony George

I soooo did not want to exercise today, but some how, I did it. Even after I started, I still didn't want to do the whole 30 minutes. I did some yoga tonight. I'm still finding it funny that I'm not very flexible and I'm pretty unco-ordinated, but I'm scoring as a yoga trainer on some of the moves. Some of them are pretty darn tough!

What I"m having fun with is that you can change up your exercises on the Wii Fit all the time. You're not stuck in a rut of a routine and I don't have to try to do these poses in front of skinny people who get dressed up to go to work out (you know who you are). I can make a fool of myself in the comfort of my own home with no one watching me. I don't have to worry about what I look like or what someone else thinks about what I look like. I can try it and I may not get it right, but with practice I hope to. Then maybe I'll feel comfortable going out to a gym and trying some of this.

That reminds me, the other day, I did my fit time while the kids were still up. My oldest watches the board when I step on it and says, "Boy, mama, did you ever make the board go down low!" What is it that they say about kids telling the truth? Oh well.

I did get to visit with my best friend today. I haven't seen her for 9 years and it was awesome. It was like nothing had changed, no time had passed at all between us. So awesome!

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 3

Wii Fit box
Originally uploaded by camy west

You didn't think I'd get this far, did you? Actually, I'm pretty impressed with myself just because it's been so long since I was doing this every day. 3 days in, I'm not feeling any difference yet, except when the Wii board displays my BMI as having increased over the last three days. How is that possible? Ugh! And do they really need to show my Mii as underweight and then take it all the way up to obese? I get it, I'm obese. Just show me the Mii in all its obese glory rather than making her blimp up every session. It's not very conducive to building morale.

I skipped the Rythymic Boxing today and instead did a run. And I didn't just do an easy run--oh no, I did the Island Lap. What was I thinking? I haven't done any running in a long time and I go for the longest distance available to me? At least I worked up a good sweat, but I still think that was crazy.

I'm loving how the Yoga poses are so hard for me to do, but my score comes up as being a Yoga Expert. Ha ha ha ha! I do not think so!

Well, I'm 3 days down 27 to go. Hopefully I can get my time in tomorrow because I have a guest coming from out of province and I haven't seen her for 9 years. We're going to be talking all day and night!

30 Minutes for 30 Days, Day 2 Wii Fit

jump off - VoxEfx
Originally uploaded by √oхέƒx™

So, yesterday, I set myself a goal to do 30 minutes on my Wii Fit every day for 30 days. So far, I'm 2 for 2. My arms were a little sore today, and I couldn't figure out what I had done to cause the pain--until I picked up the remote and remembered I'd been boxing yesterday! D'oh! Guess that means it's working, right?

I did the Advanced step and Rythym boxing first off again today. I do that because it gives me 16 minutes completed right away. I was getting frustrated with the boxing because my dodging was not working right and I kept getting hit instead. I tired different ways of dodging, but nothing was working.

Did a couple yoga moves and strength training too. When I did the first move, if it gave me a second move to pair with it, I did that. The funny thing is I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to yoga, but I score very well! I don't have that problem with strength training though.

What's with the trainers though? Couldn't they give me a trainer who is struggling a bit or maybe looks like a real person? I use the male trainer and today I noticed for the first time that he has a tiny pony tail. What is with that??

Aaaaannnd today pushed me over 20 hours of time on the Wii Fit and I got a new piggy bank :) Yay me!

Getting back to it, Getting back to Fit

Burning off the pounds: 40/365
Originally uploaded by SashaW

I've been really lazy this summer as far as exercise goes. I was getting some exercise by taking the kids to the park, but we haven't been in awhile. Today I had some motivation. I'm just tired of feeling like my clothes don't fit and looking like I don't care. So I hopped back on my Wii Fit today. It's been 28 days since I last used it and it was probably close to that from my last use to the one before that. The good news is that I haven't gained a whole lot since the last use. My goal right now is for the month of September to do 30 minutes a day. We'll see how I do. The hardest part for me is making time to do the exercise. And it's hard to do that when the kids are underfoot and getting into things.

Today I did the advanced step (and got my highest score ever!) and rythym boxing (my trainer was disappointed and said I can do better and I can). I also did the single leg extensions (20 reps) and a few of the games. I got my highest score on the Zen sitting thing. The funny thing was that they have all this background noise that's supposed to distract you, but I had the kids making even more noise than that! It felt good to work up a sweat that was not heat induced. I really worked for it today. And my plan is that when I lose 5 lbs from using the Fit, I'm going to treat myself to a new Fit game. I think that will help motivate me because before I found the Fit was getting boring.

The mountain of paperwork on my dining room table has been reduced quite a bit. I've filed a whole lot and tossed a whole lot too. So I'm losing some paper weight, too bad that doesn't count. LOL. Oh well, onwards and upwards, my friends!

Getting Fit without my Wii Fit!

You may have noticed I haven't really written much about my blog topic, getting fit, healthy and organized. Well, today we're getting back on topic! I've been spending a lot of time out of doors with the kids since the big one finished school. We go for at least one walk a day and we go to the park 3-4 days a week (sometimes more than once in a day!). It helps that Parks and Recreation have a summer program on for two hours a day for the big kid. While she plays there, I play in the park with the little kid going from the swings to the slides and back again. I'm also getting the chance to talk to other parents as well, so it's been very good all around.

Today we walked to the local library which is about a forty minute walk each way. The little one went in the stroller (I'm not quite that crazy!). We missed the toddler time, but we got both girls signed up for the summer reading program and I got to stock up on my summer reading again. Who am I kidding, I read all year round because I love it so much!

So, we're settling into a bit of a routine and it seems to be working fairly well. I'm getting exercise without using my Wii Fit. I dread the next time I use it because I know it's going to bug me about not signing in more often. To be honest, I've gotten a little bored of the basic program. I've heard of some workout programs, so I will have to check them out. I probably should log in again, just to update my weight, but I'm a little scared. While I'm trying to eat healthy food, it's very easy to slip into eating not so healthy foods, especially when I've got both kids with me all day.

OK, so we're getting fit and healthy. How about organized? Hmm, I'm trying, that's for sure. I'm scooping any clothes that don't fit the kids and putting them into boxes right away to be donated. I've got two boxes right now. I try to keep my eyes open to things around the house that we don't really need and pop them into the boxes when I see them. So far, no one has complained about anything that has been missing--and considering the amount of toys that I've stuck in the boxes in recent months, I'm truly surprised. I don't recommend leaving the boxes open or even in the house once you hit the toy box. They're bound to open one and ask why their beloved little toy that they never play with is in there...always fun to try to explain!

Upbeat Me

My last post was somewhat...well, depressing, and I haven't posted to let you know I've been much better since then. I found myself on the way to work the next day thinking that I just couldn't handle it anymore. I caught myself thinking that way and I started to repeat out loud, "I can do this, I can do this." It made a difference because I stopped focusing on the depressing thoughts and got out from underneath my dark cloud.

I'm still working on getting my exercise time in on the Wii Fit. I'm getting really good at the rhythm boxing. The trainer mentioned that you get double points if you hit in time with the music and I'm working on getting my points up there. My high score is 1062 and I'm trying to beat my best score every time--of course, that works a lot better when I get the footing right!

I spent some time and money on me last week and made a trip to the Body Shop to stock up on cleanser, moisturizer and body wash. I was completely out of all three, so it was time for me to get in there for sure. It felt good to be taking care of me, knowing that using the products will make me feel better about me. It was kind of fun to "spoil" myself, even though they are products I needed.

As for organizing, well, I'm not getting very far there. I just can't seem to keep up with the mess. I can get a whole bunch of papers picked up and into the recycling and the next day there is a whole whack more. Where does it end? I'm still trying to declutter a bit at a time though. This month my company is asking us to bring re-useable items in to the office to be donated to a youth center which will use the items in a fundraising garage sale. I'm going to try to find some items to take in every day if I can. That way I'm decluttering and I'm also getting it out of the house--and if I can help someone else with my items, so much the better. Wish me luck!

Ten Favourite Wii Fit Activities

Tonight I thought I'd do something different because I couldn't decide what activities to do. I used the favourites section which holds my top ten activities ranked in order for the most times I've tried them. Doing all 10 netted me 30 minutes!

10. Penguin Slide--Balance Game.
I don't hate this game, but it's not my favourite either. I mostly do it to make my 2 year old laugh to see Mama bouncing and sliding on the ice.

9. Zen--Balance Game.
Meh, it's not exciting, but sitting down for that time and allowing the spine feels great. I once lasted over a minute, but have not yet repeated the feat.

8. Rhythm Boxing-Aerobics.
Easily one of my top exercises. I get frustrated when I get my rights and lefts mixed up (I never was highly co-ordinated), but it's still fun and I like making the bag destruct at the end. I made my trainer say, "Nice job!" tonight. Love that.

7. Tightrope--Balance Game.
I cannot get this one! I get as far as the chomping thing and I jump off into the air no where near the rope. One day I'll keep doing it over and over until I conquer it (but not today).

6. Ski Jump--Balance Game.
I just realized yesterday that I should be keeping my red dot for my center of balance in line with the blue dot on the screen. Amazing how much farther you can jump when you do it right!

5. Slalom Skiing--Balance Game
I thought I was doing great when I got through the first half of the course with no misses. Then came the second half to show me just how crazy I was for thinking that.

4. Soccer Heading--Balance Game.
This one drives me nuts. Why can't these Miis keep their cleats on? Who taught them to tie their shoes? And what's with the panda heads? Still, I'm getting better, so I can't complain too much.

3. Advanced Step--Aerobics.
I think this is my favourite activity so far. It's fun and relatively easy, even for someone like me who gets directions confused so easily.

2. Ball Drop--Balance Game.
I like this one but I get so frustrated when I drop a ball off the table. My little one likes to watch me play this one and is always saying, "Aw, mama!" when I let one of the other characters fall off the board.

1. Bubble Balnce--Balance Game.
The reason this is number 1? Because I'm damn stubborn and kept trying and trying and trying one night to no avail. I still haven't gotten past the fork in the river, but I will one day!

Have you checked out your top ten activities? Which is your favourite?

You probably noticed the lack of Yoga and Strength Training in my list. I'm working on the yoga slowly but surely. Some of the poses are really great and then there are those crazy ones where I cannot balance at all, but I'll keep plugging away at them and I'll get them eventually. I'll probably add in the strength training eventually too. I just don't like the activities, so I don't feel motivated to give it a try.

Ten Things I Like About My Wii Fit

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a list of ten things I like about my Wii Fit. Feel free to add to it, I don't mind.

1. Everyone in the family can use it (OK, with the exception of my 2 year old, but she still likes to watch us use it). My 6 year old loves the hula hooping and ski jumping, even if she can't get it quite right. Hubs can use it to do strength training and I use it right now mostly for aerobic activity. We took it to my parents' house this weekend because they were interested in it and my mom absolutely loved it!

2. It's fun. It doesn't feel like exercise.

3. It's my "me time" where I get to focus on me for a few minutes everyday.

4. There's always something new. Even though I've unlocked most of the activities and exercises, there are always different levels within the exercises, so I can keep interested.

5. It costs way less than a gym membership and I'm more likely to use it every day.

6. I feel motivated to do activities--whether to beat my score, complete an activity or just have fun.

7. I can montior my weight/BMI easily over time and it keeps me focussed on reaching my goals.

8. The Wii Fit has a sense of humour. No really, it does! On April Fool's Day, the balance board was wearing a hat and threw confetti and stuff and promised it wouldn't try to fool me. Guess what? It posted my Wii Fit Age and then dropped a higher number on it. Got me all excited for nothing.

9. I found out that I actually kind of like yoga after all. I'm not very good at it yet, but it's not as boring or hard as I had previously thought it to be.

10. Did I mention it's fun??

Why do you love your Wii Fit??

Getting Organized!

Since I post about the Wii Fit pretty much everyday, I thought I'd post a little video about it here. I wish my house looked as clean as all these other houses where they're using the Wii Fit! Anyway, I have been using the Wii Fit now for a full week--I did a minimum of 15 minutes plus the body test every day. I found it funny that my weight fluctuated quite a bit this week, but as the machine pointed out, I've been weighing in at different times each day.

Organized: I spent some time yesterday emptying out the laundry baskets. I'm really good at getting them washed, dried and folded, but then the baskets sit all week instead of being put away. Sigh. At least it's done for now. What I need to do is spend some time going through our closet and take out clothes that hubs and I are no longer wearing, are really old or just plain don't fit. The T-shirt I'm wearing now I've had since I was in university--and my 10 year anniversary is three years in the past. How sad is that? Time to thin out the closet a bit. That will be one of my focuses this week.

I also went through hubs' receipts that he finallybrought in from the car. Now I have to input them all in my spreadsheet so we can get them out to the accountant to take care of.

Today, I got all Flylady and actually shined my kitchen sink! I've had it done before, but it never lasts long. The idea is that you should start to build the habit by shining your sink every night before bed and by a month, the habit should be well, habit. So, I've got a nice clean and empty sink right now. Hopefully it will stay that way because it makes the whole kitchen look better and it makes me feel less stress. To put it simply, my shiny sink makes me smile.