So how did I do?
Well this week I have decided to talk about exercise and my Wii program. I could talk about food stuff and self sabotage, but maybe I will delve into that next week.
I am the girl who used to hate the word exercise and saw it as a form of self torture and brutal work. I hated to sweat, it just felt so gross and disturbed me to have something drip down my nose. And worst yet, I hated to exercise with people around. I don't sweat enough, so my face turns the color of the Sedona red rocks and stupid people would always ask me, why I was so red. It irritated me so much that I confined myself to I only working out at home or in a swimming pool.
Plus, exercise was so boring, and I asked myself, why I am doing this much work and not training for anything? I was an athlete throughout high school, once that part of my life was over, exercise seemed silly and pointless. Why sweat if you are not working on getting better times or faster on the court?
Enter college and marriage, and I soon realized I need to do something or as a budding physical education teacher I was going to be a laughing stock. How could I teach about exercise and being healthy if I was a couch potato and looked like one?! I discovered Tae-Bo, and never looked back! I loved that stuff! It fed my inner athlete and competitive spirit. I could kick, and punch with the best of them, even if I still looked like a girl doing it. I have a very mean competitive drive and always want to win or be the best at any athletic activity, so working out at home punching and kicking my butt into shape just made sense to me. Plus, no one could see me, and ask why my face was so red.
Enter modern day. I love the stupid Wii workouts for the same reason I fell in love with Tae-Bo. Actually, they are not stupid, I just feel like a nerd working out with a video game system. The best part of these games, you earn points to "buy" stuff! And you earn a score based on your performance during the workouts! The Gold's Gym Cardio and the NFL Training Camp are my favorites right now. My husband laughs at me after the workout, because I buy new outfits for my avatar and dress her up every time. It is a girly touch for sure and I love it! The Gold's Gym is basically boxing, I can beat someone up and feel good about it. The NFL Training Camp is great because as a football fan since the 5th grade, I can choose my team, hello 49ers and dress in all 49ers gear! And I just like the type of workout is gives, feels like you are training for something because they are all sports related drills, so once again I can tap into my inner athlete. My husband likes the NFL one too, so we can workout together, a big bonus for me. If you are looking for two great Wii workouts, I highly recommend these two. Each workout is fun, plus it kicks your butt in all the right ways. And yes ladies, you can buy and wear a new outfit every time, including shoes.
So what is with my title? Well, since I have become a recent exercise queen and could be called an addict at times, I have realized you cannot exercise your butt off. Television shows like the Biggest Loser, lead the average person to believe that through producing enough sweat to fill a small lake, you can lose all the weight you want. What they do not show, because I am sure it would be super boring and not as dramatic as watching obese people cry and fall off treadmills, is the diet. The contestants are on a diet of about 1,200 calories a day and literally workout all day. What else do they have to do without jobs or kids around. So even though you may know this, like I do, you can still easily fall into the trap that you can exercise off any excess calories. Which is totally untrue. Only the super lucky, which is a super small percentage of people, can eat as they wish, exercise, and still maintain a healthy weight. If you notice, many aerobics instructors are not the skinniest women in the room and they workout for a living.
It takes burning and cutting 500 calories a day to lose about one pound of fat a week. Now you can combo that with exercise, but just remember it is more about what you put in your mouth than what you can burn off. Case in point, the other day I worked out for about 40 minutes at a really hard pace, how many calories did I burn, about 200. My snack, which took me less than five minutes to eat was 140 calories. Yes, you can let that defeat you. But you know what, if you like to exercise and you find it fun and enjoyable, than go for it, you will reap tons of benefits. I exercise now because I like the way it makes me feel, and it is a solid 40 minutes a day that I spend on just myself.
But every dieter has to keep this in mind, you cannot exercise your butt off no matter how hard you try, unless you go on one of those weight loss shows and you are transported out of the real world. But since most of us live in the real world, if you want to lose a few pounds, eat right, count your calories, and fit in some exercise. My butt has not gone away yet, even after completing both P90X and the Insanity workouts! My butt actually got bigger because I believed the lie that I could eat more since I was working out so much! Lesson learned the hard way.
So good luck and here's to working hard with a great attitude and getting great results!
The post was originally published on 1/24/2012 on my wine blog wineabit.net
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