WEIGHT LOSS: Tips to help shed those unwanted flabby bits

I used to have the special ability to eat whatever I pleased and never put on weight. This was before I hit twenty five. I am no longer the envy of the heftier members of my family and I've had to start following a few weight loss tips to stay in shape.

With winter having waned, you are so often left with the results of overindulging in the warm, delicious winter dishes which tend to settle around the middle body area, increasing your girth and refusing to budge. All of this is exasperated through lack of exercise. The gradual expansion of weight in this manner can eventually lead to all kinds of of negative, unhealthy conditions. Proper weight loss will help prevent these.

Research shows that decreasing your body fat percentage by 5-10 percent reduces your risk of cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, cancer and other lifestyle related diseases. Follow these simple weight loss hints and tips below to help reduce your weight and improve overall well-being.

14 weight loss tips:

• Exercise while watching television.
• Use a smaller plate when dishing up your food.
• Make sure ½ of your plate is full of raw or cooked vegetables.
• Drink a glass of water before your meal to help fill up the stomach.
• Reduce/eliminate alcohol intake as this can contribute to weight gain.
• Eat 80%of your total energy intake during the day and the other 20% at night.
• Cut back on your carbohydrates at night eg: pasta, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes etc.

Be careful of snacking, especially at restaurants or coffee shops. Milkshakes and carrot cake with cream, for example, contain approximately 4500 KJ. For the average woman, this amount of energy virtually covers her total energy intake for the day.

• Exercise: starting with a short walk then gradually increasing the walk to 30 minutes a day is a good start.
• Eat at the table rather than in front of the television. When your brain is preoccupied with visual stimuli other than your food, this can affect the digestive process.
• Wait twenty minutes before you go for a second helping. It takes at least twenty minutes for the brain to register you are satisfied.
• If you are still hungry after a meal, head for the salads which contain little or no dressing.
• Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Sometimes we are thirsty and not hungry.
• Feed the body with nutrient rich foods (vegetables, fruits, whole-grains, avocados, nuts) rather than nutrient diluted foods (refined foods, biscuits, breads, sweets, chocolates etc.)

And remember, “optimum nutrition = optimum weight” !

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WII REVIEW: Getting in shape with the Wii Fit

MY first experience with a Nintendo Wii saw me breaking a sweat after playing a few rounds of virtual boxing and losing a tennis match. Now people around the world are getting on board one of the first gaming platforms that actually encourages family fitness and health.

Wii Fit is a video game developed by Nintendo for the Wii console and has been dubbed as an example of 'exercise gaming'. Inspired by sumo wrestlers' needing to weigh themselves with two scales, Wii Fit uses a unique platform called the Wii Balance Board which senses both weight and shifts in movement and balance. It can also calculate a person’s body mass index (BMI) when provided with their height. It then tracks a user's "Wii Fitness Age" through a daily body test basing the result on the user's current age, weight, and athletic ability.

Working out on the Nintendo Wii Fit

Getting in shape with the Wii Fit

The unique balance board has taken almost two years to develop, and the Wii Fit game today has about 40 different activities. Training on Wii Fit is divided into four categories: aerobic exercise, muscle workouts, yoga poses, and balance games. The activities provide a core workout, emphasising controlled movements rather than overexertion.

The featured muscle workouts are what you might find yourself doing at the gym. These include press-ups, rowing squats, stretching and the like. The aerobic exercises might find you jogging, hula-hooping, or punching the air with rhythmic boxing.

It gets more fun with the Nintendo balance games, which range from ski jumping to tight-rope walking, and features a game called Penguin Slide – whereby the player has to catch fish whilst balanced on a piece of ice. When you're done pretending to be the penguin from Surf’s Up you can pose as your favourite Anime character by doing the Half-Moon, Cobra, Warrior, or Palm Tree yoga poses.

New activities can be unlocked by gaining "Fit Credits" which are accumulated in a "Fit Bank". Each minute of Fit Credits is equal to the number of minutes doing an activity rather than the number of minutes of overall gameplay. At certain stages, new yoga poses or muscle workouts are unlocked based on the total time spent working out. Being the best at an activity with a 100% score, or playing an activity a certain number of times, unlocks more rigorous versions of that activity.

Wii Fit also allows a player to keep track of their activities outside of the game, such as gardening, walking, and playing real sports matches, which are then added on to the player's activity log, but not included in the daily exercise time.

Some of the games allow the player to watch TV while getting instructions or rhythm through the Wii remote speaker. You can even get your own personal virtual trainers to talk you through the different activities and make suggestions for improvement. Furthermore, different people in the same household can use Wii Fit and track their progress separately.

Wii Fit has sold more than 2 million copies since it’s release in Japan at the end of 2007, and was launched in the States (where it is perhaps needed most) on 19 May 2008 with an exclusive release at the Nintendo World Store in New York City.

The Nintendo Wii is also the first video game system ever included in the President’s Challenge - a program of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports that encourages all Americans to make physical activity a part of their daily lives.

There is little information regarding how Wii Fit has been received in South Africa, but it has at least reached out shores and is available in stores for R1000.

Related posts:

• Wii Music launched in SA
• Gateway to Nintendo Week
• Nintendo Wii - Enter the Electronic Fist

For more information visit:
www.nintendo.com or
www.mybroadband.co.za

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