A fond farewell and a lesson on male dietary habits…

It’s been a while since I posted here. But I thought this would be an important post (sarcasm).

So this summer has been known as Bang’s firesale. I’ve sold my:

Macbook Pro, Xbox 360, Nintendo Ds, PSP, TI-84 Calculator, LG Chocolate, and an old toshiba laptop (yea someone wanted to buy it…all 9 lbs of it)

Yea its kinda sad I had all these things but that’s a story for another day. Yes, I do have a life or at least am trying to convince myself of that haha.

The last few items to go include my Wii and Wii fit.

So a little history about video game peripherals, generally they are fun for the first few days and then you’re like….I just wasted my money

DDR pads, guitar hero controllers, Gametrak golf (utter waste of plastic), Guncon 1 and 2 (for time crisis), Rock Band drum kit, etc…..

Generally the issue stems from the fact that the game the special controller is designed for, may or may not hold your attention for that long and usually not long enough to justify the cash you ponied up. For some, the controller can be worth it (guitar hero heroes). I guess I must have ADD and none of these games can hold my attention long enough.

Another cash cow for Mario

Enter Wii Fit. So my reasoning for this purchase was that it would allow me to excerise in the comforts of my apartment during the balmy montreal winter or at any time (spring, fall, summer) for that matter haha. Initially, the wii fit didn’t look like it’d be any different from the aforementioned wastes of money.

First day. 60 minutes. Oooh yoga. Oooh it weighs accurately. Oooh I can fake head butt soccer balls. Damn….I’m heavy.

Second day. 30 minutes. A lil yoga. A lil jogging in place (yes jogging in place….something we can all do for free). No weight loss.

Third Day. Just weighing myself. Probably gained.

End of the week. In the closet for the rest of the summer til I got to Montreal.

Me on the Wii Fit

Generally I do lose some weight over the summer cause I’m home, eating better and exercising more (as opposed to not at all). At the end of the summer though, I was already heavier than the end of last summer cause I entered the summer at an all time high (not woot). So once I got back to school, and with going to the gym not being an option, I whipped out the Wii fit ready to exercise again. This time around though, it dawned on me that if I kept track of my weight on a daily or semi daily basis, I’d be motivated to keep the downtrend going.

So since then, I did do that and did lose 20 lbs over the course of the past year. My original intentions for the wii fit failed miserably. Unless you’re a yoga fiend or have a fetish for fake heading soccer balls or jogging in place, the “games” will become boring and aren’t even close to a substitute for cardio or any reasonable act of exercise.

Basically the wii fit became a digital scale coupled with an automated excel spreadsheet + graph plus a cute little wii fit animation guy that says hi to you and good morning and says happy birthday on your birthday and generally annoys you to no end. It worked for me at least cause I’m a competitive person and I wanted to lose weight so seeing progress on a daily or at least weekly basis became a real motivator.

Essentially for me it boiled down to eating less and slower. For some of you, it might be about eating junk food but for me it was about the quantity of good food (even if generally healthy). I enjoyed eating good food and lots of it and it also didn’t help that as young males (high school or early college), eating less is not much of an option. My metabolism is about as high as Charles Barkley’s golf swing is good (probably mostly my own doing) and I’m short to boot. If you aren’t eating as much as the friend next to you (who’s 5 inches taller), expect your manhood to be questioned. Eating a salad? Only if his name is Jenny Craig. Girls even question your manhood (yes its happened to me). Why are you eating so slow….we got a movie to catch? It doesn’t help that You develop bad habits that generally, you won’t correct til its too late.

Luckily, I bought a Wii fit. Immediately I ate less so I could see results but quickly realized, that I wasn’t dying of hunger and my stomach began to shrink. Thus, my appetite kept getting smaller. Eating became slower because meals ceased to be solely about piling food into the mouth and grabbing more food. The truth is, I barely did any exercise. Tennis once or twice. Swimming once or twice. For the entire year. It’s a bit scary to think about how much extra I had to eat to maintain my previous body weight and for how long I was able to do that without realizing.

So what have we learned. Buy a wii fit? Yes, if you’re ultra lazy and can’t use a scale and excel or paper. Otherwise, a scale and keeping track of your weight consistently can do the trick. I suggest at least getting a digital scale cause we all know analog scales are a psychological mind game. They’re inaccurate, so when you gain weight you’re instantly thinking its off and when you lose, the thing is ultra accurate.

First, you gotta have motivation but I would say most of us have that. After that, the wii fit was the catalyst for me. It forced me to eat less, healthier and slower and keep those changes permanent. Don’t be like me and not exercise. I had a lot of excess fat that came off easily but I hit a wall and now, I’m trying to get into the habit of exercising daily. Start that up from the beginning and when you hit the wall, you’ll just breeze by it.

So as I send my Wii fit to its next owner, thanks for forcing me to change the way I eat and I apologize if your next owner is a step aerobic fiend.