What I Really Need

Okay, so I missed yesterday’s deadline, but in my defense 1) I gave you two last week and 2) we had this REALLY huge March snowstorm that shut down the entire Washington Metropolitan area. Okay, okay, so the storm wasn’t HUGE in all areas. In fact, as one Facebook colleague noted, some areas only got rain or slush. For my area, there was snow coverage. Big fat wet flakes fell until about one o’clock where I live. And to be quite honest, it wasn’t an attractive snow. I wanted to take a picture of my back yard, but the snow fell so unevenly that the left half of the yard was covered in this pretty picturesque Robert Frost poem substance, while the right side seemed to fight back against the snow and show its craggy existence (who knew that I would get to use one of the words from a Scottish romance novel for my backyard). So the scene overall kept me from whipping out the camera-phone. Now that I laid bare my very good excuse for not posting yesterday, I’ll most on to today’s post. Back to talking more about my health and my weight loss quest. Currently, I am sitting here eating my oatmeal (the subject of my last complaint) with the knowledge that all the dieting in the world does me no good without the one thing I need. What I need can be summed up in one simple word: exercise. I know this for several reasons. Let’s just start with the most recent: the newly re-turned over leaf. I have spent months of scarfing down oatmeal and increasing my water intake, only to NOT GAIN any weight. The bad news is with just the food routine, I’m not losing any either. Four months ago, I decided to get moving again; while my summer two-evening a week boot camp had increased my flexibility, not being able to go anymore was no excuse for not re-incorporating any form of physical activity. Even though my mind decided four months ago, my body didn’t engage in the conversation until two weeks ago when I started working out to the Xbox 360’s Nike Fit Challenge Game. I had originally purchased the Xbox 360 Kinect for my husband as a Christmas present, and one of the purchase options came with the Nike Fit game. Great idea! I thought. Maybe this is something we can eventually do together! So I bought the system, game and all, and the game remained unopened until that fateful day two weeks ago. It was a Saturday, and I was uncommonly restless after coming home from teaching class. My son and I went down to the basement, and I started cleaning up to Usher’s videos. Then the cleaning became dancing, and the idea came to me that I needed to do some coordinated movement. And the forgotten game came to mind. On went the console and here’s where the real story begins. The Nike Fit game is designed to be completely interactive. Gamers, or fitness nuts, get their choice of either a female or male virtual trainer. After some ridiculous time spent Googling, I’ve managed to come up with some back story on the actual people these trainers are modeled on. The lady trainer is Marie Purvis and according to her Website “Not Your Mom’s Workout,” she’s a trainer extraordinaire who specializes in training overweight women (her words for real). The guy’s name is Alex Molden and he’s apparently a former NFL player. I chose Alex because I can much more readily accept a man barking orders at me over his feminine counterpart. He introduced himself to me, but since his virtual form has been torturing literal me, I had long since forgotten his name. And apparently, most gamers choose the trainer of the opposite sex (I read a few reviews too). One of the first problems I encountered with this was how to position the Kinect portion of the game so that I would have more room to jump around, or even be “seen” by the sensor. In the end, I had to put the Kinect sensor on the edge of the television screen. The entire time you’re playing the—dare I call it a game?—Nike fit, you are inundated by the typical video racing game music, nothing actually catchy like the Usher I was listening to earlier. Since this is a Kinect model, the screen “reads” your body image. As if mirrors or pictures weren’t bad enough, you get see yourself pixelated on the television as blue (or sometimes orange or white) blob—at least that’s how I saw myself. And for it to be a blob, it’s surprisingly accurate, while I couldn’t quite see any cellulite dimples, I could tell EXACTLY how round my midsection was (really, it was like looking in a virtual fun mirror). Then Alex took me through a rigorous workout that I was soon to find out was only the assessment of EXACTLY out of shape I was (and according to my virtual blob the shape was a very large oval). Alex then came up with a regimen and had me commit to three days (his virtual self is kind of cute so he talked me into it). This commitment was for three days a week: Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday for 19, 23, and 19 minutes respectively. And that Sunday he was referring to was the next day! But I figured sure I could commit to 19 minutes. This was, of course, a total setup. What Alex fails to mention is that those 19 minutes don’t actually include the warm up or the cool down. What he also fails to mention is that some the exercises aren’t merely time based but form based: if you don’t do the exercise correctly, you are literally stuck in his virtual workout until you complete something that resembles what he is demonstrating. Finally, one of dear ol’ Alex’s biggest omissions is that his workouts are kick-ass workouts. Granted, the Candi of five or six years ago would not have had as much trouble with the paces that were being set, but the Candi of TODAY has been talking back to virtual Alex about his grueling workout while flailing through at least half of them. He starts off by demonstrating the exercise in proper form. My virtual blob is only blue when I’m in the right position; until then, I turn some type of toxic orange. After I’ve adjusted, the drills begin: • High knee jumps: This is like jogging in place, only you have to pretend that you are a Clydesdale. I usually do well for about 15 of the 20 seconds until start feeling my entire body try to reach my knees: stomach, boobs, etc. • Jumping jacks: about the only exercise I can pull off for the entire time. The only problem is that my arms get cut off during the jump and Alex chastises me about my form. • Side hurdles: I have to jump sideways over two in the direction of the arrows. The major problem with this is that the left jumping space is occupied partially by my couch. The other problem is the jumping high enough with my feet together. I constantly hear the thump of not jumping high enough. In the end, Alex has adjusted me to one hurdle. • Leg confusion (not really called that but the result is the same): Apparently Alex does not yet realize that I do not have the required coordination for this exercise which is composed of lunges followed by squats, followed by jumping lunges and jumping squats, all in 20 seconds. • Bounce around on one leg in a square (again, (not really called that but by this time I’m just staring at Alex with slack-jawed disbelief): By the time I’ve balanced on one leg, the exercise is over. • Split decision: Virtual panes of glass are put up in different arrangements and your task is to avoid hitting them. I can barely manage to avoid bumping into walls in reality, so when I heard the first tell-tale glass shatter on screen, I knew I was in for it. • Dodgeball: Apparently, you do not know that I was traumatized by this sport in elementary, grade, and high school. So when I see a bunch of balls zooming at me on a screen, I tend to freeze up. It doesn’t matter that the red bull’s eye on the screen is supposed to help you find where the next ball is aimed; I apparently can only walk into them. • Mountain climbers: Really Alex? Getting into plank position is hard enough, and you expect me to actually MOVE after I get there? • Any drill that requires me to get on the floor: immediately sabotaged by my son who finds this is the perfect moment to play jungle gym with me in the lead role of gym. He has crawled under my plank, bounced on my leg lifts, and rolled over when I’m on my side. Screen blob me stays orange most of the time. These are only examples of a few, and to his credit, Alex tries to keep it interesting with occasional encouragements: “Way to adjust your form”; “You nailed that one”; and “You’ve reached your personal best.” The personal best is easy when I progress from zero to one. When I do something better in that Pavlovian way, my blob turns white. At the end of the drills, Alex even has the nerve to actually ask me to repeat some of his drills, and at this point, the screen prompts you to either say “Let’s Do It” or “I’m Done.” Usually, my screen choices usually stay up with that music looping over and over again as I catch my breath long enough to actually scream “I’m Done!” The one time I did “Let’s Do It,” I truly learned to appreciate that 48-hour interval in between workouts, because my knees let me know their true feelings the morning after the extra doing. Overall, I do see myself improving: I can now cross my legs and touch my toes without falling over (I seriously did one time), I managed to not get hit by three dodgeballs one time, and I hear less glass shattering during split decision. Best of all, I managed to lose five pounds.