THE FAT BLOKE DIARIES
Episode Eight Power Up!
Apparently your weight increases as the day progresses, so youll appear lighter if you weigh yourself earlier in the day. I have of course tried this; anything to lose an easy pound or so. Normally I get weighed at around 6pm, but the other day I got on the scales as soon as I got up, just to see if it really did make a difference. Amazingly I was a whole three pounds lighter than the day before! Now either the liposuction-fairies had visited in the night, or there really is something in this timing theory. So I got to thinking; maybe I could lose an entire stone in one swoop if I could figure out some way to get weighed two weeks last Tuesday?
Inventing time-travel is a bit of a desperate measure, but desperate situations call for them, and I am indeed getting a bit desperate. I was looking for my face the other day. It took a good few minutes studying the mirror before I recognised it. It was hidden beneath the lumpy pudding fat thats still stuck on the front of my head. Apart from those few pounds the other week, Ive made such very little weight-loss progress, and its getting boring.
Its time to add a new weapon to my lard-attack armoury. Enter the Wii Fit board.
Much beloved by eBayers but the bane of panic-buying parents in the run-up to Christmas, the white balance board claims to be usable by persons of up to 23 stones. That was good enough for me, so (after getting an anonymous tip off that a store that I cant name for fear of causing a run on them had just taken delivery of six boards) the plastic plank found its way into my house.
The software that allows you to turn your own living room into an aerobics gym allows a choice of virtual trainers. I selected a chummy Stepford-husband Coach-With-No-Name, but Ive rapidly learned to detest his calm, measured style of encouragement. He makes everything seem incredibly simple, and praises my pathetic attempts with an almost sycophantic zeal. Ive decided to call him Derek, after an old office manager whom I despised with a passion. My respect for Derek knows no beginning, especially as he doesnt actually exist.
Hes apparently been programmed by a sadist. At no time to date have I heard him say, Try to do a normal push-up, then when youre at your highest point turn your body and shift your entire weight onto one straight arm. While holding this position, point the other arm in the air, Travolta-like. Now lose your balance and fall nose-first onto the balance board, threatening to break it on its very first day out of the box. He hasnt said it, but I think that he should, because thats precisely what happened to me when I tried to follow one of his more brutal routines.
What he has said though is While you are exercising, imagine your perfect body. Now I know that he means this as a motivational tool aimed to make me work harder by imagining how thin and toned Ill look, but I cant help it, it always cracks me up. I have to stop working out because Im laughing too much, as the perfect body that Im imagining usually belongs to Cindy Crawford.
There are those who insist that working out with a Wii Fit isnt proper exercise, that it isnt the same as jogging on the wintry streets, or taking a class in a gym. That may be true, but to those people I say this; I dont believe that Nintendo made the Wii Fit for you, but for people like me.
Im (still) a fat bloke. I wouldnt be able to run or even jog for more than a couple of minutes before collapsing at the side of the road, waiting for a merciful trucker with very loose steering to put me out of my misery. Seriously, for all my physical improvements over the last few months I still pretty much get out of breath going up a couple of flights of stairs not really too good as I work on the eighth floor. Jogging is, as yet, not an option for me.
But six minutes of step on a three-inch high wedge of plastic? Now thats something that even I can manage. And after just a few weeks of using it Im now au fait with side twists, lunges and even the dreaded parallel stretch. Im throwing yoga shapes, intensifying my workout by adding light weights to my routine and have even attempted the heart-pounding twelve-minute super-advanced shadow boxing. Which for some reason features Derek pretending to have a gruff voice. I think hes trying to sound hard.
Most of all Im heaving my 43 year old backside off the sofa, moving it around more than it used to and making it and the rest of me sweaty. Im doing some of this every day, and Im loving it. Thats got to be a good thing.
If anyone from Nintendos reading this, you know where to send the cheque.
So if I combine this new electronic tool with the pedalling and some walking in the woods and beautiful rolling hills near home, surely this new, more balanced exercise schedule will be more effective.
But Im drawing the line somewhere. Im not being talked into getting a High School Musical dance mat.
© 2008 Shaun Finnie