Leslie's Latest News

Making me feel young

I went in at the crack of dawn this morning for my mid-year checkup for the Diabetes Prevention Program. In past years, the mid-year exam has been a simple fasting blood test and a couple of questionnaires to fill out. But this year they added physical and cognitive testing to the mix. And the tests were clearly aimed at people a lot older than me, making me feel remarkably young and, dare I say it, spry. 

For example, one test timed how long I took to walk 15 feet. Another test was getting up out of a chair without using my hands. And then asking me if I felt safe trying to do it 5 times in a row. The most fun one was, after passing 3 carefully graded simple balance tests, being asked if I felt safe trying to stand on one leg for 60 seconds. I did actually start to lose my balance at one point and had to wildly readjust - and I could see the interviewer getting ready to catch me - but somehow I managed to get back to equilibrium and lasted the rest of the 60 seconds with no problem.

The cognitive tests were things like naming as many animals as I could in a certain timeframe, then giving as many words as I could think of beginning with the letter "f". (I actually was a bit slow on that one and kept thinking of more f-words all the way home.) Then there was a word retention test. So I did the usual thing of drawing pictures in my mind, and now I can't shake this image of a kitchen, where a woman is serving CABBAGE soup with a LADLE and her husband is reading a NEWSPAPER and a DICTIONARY and trying to decide between COFFEE or COCOA (both of which are made from BEANS), or JUICE or TEA to drink, while a PAN of ASPARAGUS is on the stove and a SIEVE full of PEACHES is sitting in the sink. 

Breast cancer screening brouhaha

It's been interesting seeing the reaction to the new recommendation to no longer do routine screening for breast cancer between the ages of 40-49. At first glance, this seems like some sort of evil plot to save money at the expense of women. Especially since women are pretty sensitive right now in the wake of the Stupak amendment. More screening means early detection, which should mean more successful treatment and lives saved. Seems obvious, right?

But the odd thing is, if you look at the data, it really shows that there is no improvement in long-term survival for women in that age group who have mammograms compared to women who don't. This is a very non-intuitive result, but there it is.

It has long been known that women in this age group have more dense breast tissue, so the screening mammograms in this age group miss more real cancers and produce more false positives than for older women. Those false positives lead to unnecessary treatments, which may cause unnecessary deaths from the treatment itself. In addition, just the radiation exposure itself over 10 years might cause cancer. Some cancers are missed by the screening, and some that are caught are treated aggressively, even if they are early and small and might have never grown into a real threat. 

What's interesting about the reaction is it shows how resistant the public will be to any evidence-based medical policy that might have the effect of reducing medical costs in the United States in the long term. The anecdotal stories go around about cancers that are caught by screening, and so everyone wants to be screened. It's human nature. 

I had a similar situation when my doctor did not want to prescribe a medication for a condition that I'd read might be effective. "We have no evidence that it provides any benefit," was her explanation. That was a hard call to accept. Even if there was some chance that it might provide some small benefit, I wanted to have it. But in the end I accepted her decision. Every drug has side effects and unpredictable results, and if the science showed no benefit, it made sense to accept that.

In this case, I think it would make sense for women to accept the guidelines about screening. Keeping in mind that they are guidelines, not absolutes. If a woman has a family history of breast cancer, that might be a reason to have the screening anyway, until more research has been done on the various subgroups that might or might not benefit. 

Of course, then you get into the issue about insurance companies, and whether they will try to stop paying for screenings in this age group. If they do, it would be unfortunate. These should be considered guidelines for doctors and their patients, only, not an excuse for the insurance companies not to provide coverage.

Diabetes Prevention Program Mid-Study Results

I got a free dinner last night at a big meeting of diabetes prevention program participants to hear the mid-study results. The resulting paper has been accepted for publication in The Lancet and will appear sometime in the fall. Here's a brief summary we were given.

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP): 1996-2002

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) was designed to find out whether diabetes could be prevented or delayed in individuals who were at high risk. The 3,819 particpants were randomized to one of four DPP treatment groups. Each participant assigned to placebo, intensive lifestyle, or metformin received treatment for an average of three years. (Note: there was a troglitazone group, but it was discontinued early due to the chance of serious liver complications with the medication.)

• In the placebo group 11% of the participants developed diabetes each year.
• In the intensive lifestyle group the rate of diabetes development was reduced by 58% compared to the placebo group. 
• In the metformin group the rate of diabetes development was reduced by 31% compared with placebo.  
• In the troglitazone group the rate of diabetes development was reduced by 75% compared with placebo over the 10 months, on average, that this drug was used.  

Because lifestyle treatment worked best to decrease diabetes rick, every participant was invited to participate in a 16-session Lifestyle Balance group program from January to July, 2002.

The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS): 2002-2013

The DPPOS began in the fall of 2002. Our DPPOS goals are:

• Diabetes delay or prevention
• Prevention of diabetes complications such as heart disease and kidney, eye, and nerve problems. 

The main question of DPPOS was whether the interventions that were shown to be so effective during the original DPP would maintain their preventive effect throughout the subsequent years. 

During DPPOS, lifestyle participants continue to develop diabetes at the lower rate they developed diabetes during DPP. Standard care and metformin DPPOS participants have lowered their rate of diabetes development to a similar rate as the lifestyle group. 

Looking at the entire period of the DPP and first half of DPPOS (an average of ten years):

• Lifestyle participants have developed diabetes at a rate 34% lower than the participants previously assigned to placebo.
• Metformin participants have developed diabetes at a rate 18% lower than the participants previously assigned to a placebo. 

Another way of looking at it:

• Lifestyle: 42% have developed diabetes, a four year delay in diabetes onset.
• Metformin: 47% have developed diabetes, a two year delay in diabetes onset 
• Placebo and troglitazone: 50% have developed diabetes 

(Remember that participants who joined DPP were at a very high risk for diabetes at the time they joined the study.)

Risks for heart disease:

• All treatment groups have shown decreases in heart disease risk factors including blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides. 
• Lifestyle participants have shown lower blood pressure and lipid levels, even though they use lipid-lowering and blood pressure medicines less often than the other treatment groups. 

 The DPPOS study is funded for another five years. Questions we hope to answer:

• What impact do the study treatments have on preventing the complications of diabetes, such as heart disease and kidney, eye, and nerve problems? 
• Do the study treatments delay or prevent diabetes over a longer period of time? 
• What are the health conditions associated with diabetes and pre-diabetes? 

It's been very interesting to be a part of this study for the past eleven years. Stay turned for more exciting developments. 

My healthy version of a burger and fries

Trader Joe's Chili and Lime Chicken Burger (150 cal, 6g fat) on 100% whole wheat sandwich thins (100 cal, 1g fat), Alexia Yukon Gold baked French fries (130 cal, 3.5g fat), romaine, carrot, and red pepper salad with a spritz of non-fat dressing (maybe 40 cal, 0g fat). Total 420 cal, 10.5g fat, about 10g fiber. Tasty, healthy, and reasonably filling. And I've got a nice peach for a mid-afternoon snack. 

When do we die?

I ran across some interesting data the other day. I was sitting in the bathroom, reading an old magazine I had lying around, which happened to be an end-of-year issue of Newsweek with the typical "In Memoriam" sort of article. It listed the names and age at death of a number of famous people. So for some odd reason, I decided to take a look at the data, specifically, the age at death. I was expecting to see a sort of asymetrical bell curve peaking sometime in the 80's. 

In fact, this is what I found:

It seems to me that there are two peaks (or possibly three, although the sample size is so small that it's really hard to be sure about the third). As I expected, about 1/3 of the sample (31%) died in the 6-year period between age 82 and 86. My father died at 85 and I could see the aging process really hit him in those last few years. A social worker I talked to once also said that the mid-80's is when most people really start to need assistance and support.

But what surprised me was that second smaller peak in the mid-60's. It looks like 18% of the sample died in the four years between ages 62 and 66. Hmmm, right at retirement age. Isn't that interesting?

Obviously, this was a skewed sample of famous people. There were a lot more men than women. Most of these people were well-to-do, so probably had good medical care. There is no way you can generalize statistically from this small sample to the general population.

But, still, it's interesting data. It looks like if you can make it through your 60's you've got a good chance to make it well into your 80's. Look how few people died in their 70's. And if you get through your 80's, the next big hurdle is the mid-90's. 

I'm entering the first danger zone, but I don't have any immediate plans to die. So I hope I'm good for at least the mid-80's. After that, all bets are off....

Imbolc - A time for hope and anticipation

Today is another of the lost cross-quarter days - once called Imbolc or Oimelc or Brigit - that marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's no coincidence that Groundhog Day is around the same time, and no coincidence that Groundhog Day talks about 6 more weeks of winter, since that brings us right up to the spring equinox.

The name Imbolc comes from the Gaelic and refers to lambing season, meaning "in the belly". The name Brigit or Brighid comes from a fertility goddess, whose festival is the first sign of spring and new life. Brigit also endowed humans with poetry, smithcraft, and healing.

Although it's still quite cold, the lengthening of the day is starting to become evident. We can begin to see buds on the trees and new growth under the snow. We often get a bit of a thaw around this time and can start to get outside again (sadly, that's not so true this year). But it's definitely a time when we can begin to look forward to spring and start preparing our tools and planning for our new gardens. 

From my favorite pagan holiday site:

Oimelc teaches us to plan, prepare and set goals. .... Brigit nurtures the human arts, scholarship, inventiveness, technical skill. Whether we call this festival by either name, both, or any other, we celebrate this central reality: the Earth's life rising to anticipate and greet the Spring

This season is vibrant with hope and anticipation. Explore and enjoy your enthusiasms. Catch the rising tide!

LIfe was simpler before recycling

Don't get me wrong - recycling is vitally important for the future of our planet and everyone should do it. I recycle so much that my weekly trash is a tiny little bag that sometimes doesn't get picked up because the trash collectors miss it. But I have to admit that it's a pain and every so often I think back to simpler times when you could just throw stuff in the trash without thinking about it.

Here are the things I do regularly:

• Vegetable waste, egg shells, etc., go into a plastic bag to get taken out and dumped into the compost pile. 
• Newspapers and magazines get piled on the kitchen floor and tied in bundles with twine when enough have accumulated. 
• All other paper waste - junk mail, etc. goes into a brown paper bag. Also every time I finish a cereal box or cat food box or other cardboard grocery box, it gets broken down and flattened and goes in the bag.  I keep a box cutter in the kitchen to help with this. 
• Any corrugated cardboard delivery box also gets broken down with the box cutter and piled in the basement and tied in bundles when I have enough. 
• Every two weeks recycled paper goes out to the curb for pickup. 
• Nearly all food containers (cans, jars, plastic trays) can be recycled, so now I have to wash them instead of just throwing them away. Also any other plastic that has a recycling number stamped on it. They go into a green bin under a table in my kitchen. The green bin goes out to the curb when it fills up.
• Aluminum soda cans have to be rinsed out and go into another bin. That goes to the grocery store where I have to spend time shoving them into a machine, then have to stand in line to get the slip redeemed. And I have to go to one particular store, which is the only one in my area that has a machine which they keep calibrated and in good repair so that half of my cans don't get rejected.
• Plastic bags from groceries (although there are fewer now, since I usually remember to bring my own reusable bag), other shopping, and my daily newspaper go into another bin under the table (it's really getting crowded down there). That gets taken to a grocery store recycling bin when it gets filled up.
• I've been saving styrofoam peanuts and other packing material to reuse as I send out things that I've sold via eBay or whatever. My town doesn't recycle this material, so if I get too much, I'll try to give it away via Freecycle. Back issues of magazines can often be given away via Freecycle also.  

After all this, there's really not much left to go into the regular trash. But it really does take a lot of extra time. I open a box of cookies and sort through the outer cardboard box (break down and put in one container), the plastic tray (rinse out and put in another container), and the plastic/foil inner wrap (into the trash). It's the responsible thing to do, but still, it's a pain. So forgive me for occasionally remembering how it was years ago, when you could just toss all this stuff into the trash without thinking about it. 

Wii Fit - Balance Games

The Balance Games section is the most fun, but the least useful in terms of exercise. So I ration it a bit and use it as a reward after doing the harder stuff. Most of the games are pretty short - just 2-3 minutes - so it's easy to fit in a couple without spending a lot of time. All of them use the balance board exclusively.

Here's the main Balance Game menu. There are 9 games, and some of them offer multiple levels of difficulty. Like the other sections, you start with 3 or 4 games and the remainder get unlocked as you accumulate credits.

The soccer game is hard because it requires a fast reaction time. You tilt left and right to "head" soccer balls, and to avoid other things that are thrown at you (shoes and black-and-white panda heads that look like soccer balls). You get +1 for each ball you connect with, -1 if you get hit with shoes, and -3 if you get hit with a panda head. The sound effects are great - a satisfying thunk when you get a ball, a sickening splat when you get hit with a shoe, and an odd sort of sproing when you get a panda. 

When you do poorly (as I usually do), your Mii falls to her knees, rolls her head at the heavens, and pounds the ground, alone at the center of the field. When you do well, the other players gather round and cheer. I have to learn that it doesn't work to duck when the shoes come flying. It only recognizes a left-right tilt.

My favorite is the ski slalom, I think, because it's quick and easy and gives a nice feel of speed. You lean to left and right to go through the gates, and the further forward you shift your weight, the faster you go. This scores by time, with penalty seconds added for each gate you miss.

The ski jump is a bit boring. You go down the slope in a crouch and when you reach the red area, you quickly straighten your knees to "jump". You get scored by distance of the jump. I guess the distance is greater depending on how well you keep your balance in the target zone (see blue/red dots on the right.)

The Tilt Table game is pretty good. You shift your body weight to tilt the table and make the balls drop through the hole. There is a lip around the table that helps keep the balls from falling off, but they can fall off. If they do, the table spins around wildly and the missing ball or balls drop back on. After you clear all the balls from a level you get a new harder level until you hit the time limit. I've gotten through level 7 and only gotten 2 stars, so there must be a lot of levels. Here are two examples.

The next one is a TIghtrope Walk. You walk in place on the board, and the character walks across the tightrope. If your balance is off, the Mii will start leaning and waving her arms and won't continue until you straighten out. If your balance is way off, she falls and that's that. To make things more interesting, part way across, a bear trap comes snapping at you and you have to "jump" over it. If you don't get across, the score is how far you got. If you do get across, the score is your time. I got across for the first time last night.

The Balance Bubble is very pretty. You are floating in a bubble downstream. You control the speed by leaning forward and back, and the direction by leaning left and right. If you hit the bank, you're toast. Complications include an annoying bee, and a place where the river splits. I haven't completed this one successfully yet. This one is scored by distance, then time, like the tightrope walk.

The Penguin Slide is very cute and has cute music, too. You are a penguin chasing after fish. You tilt the ice floe by shifting your weight back and forth. The penguin slides along and snaps up fish that appear. One point for blue fish, 2 points for green fish, and 10 points for the elusive red fish. If you tip too far, the penguin can slide off the ice. He'll swim around for a second or two and pop back on, but you'll lose some time. 

The Snowboard is like the Ski Slalom, but you turn the balance board sideways, stand sideways, and shift your weight forward and back to control the movement.

The last "game" is a little different and maybe goes with the yoga poses. You are supposed to sit in lotus position on the board and watch a flickering candle flame without moving for three minutes while the flame burns down and goes out. Various things happen that might distract you. The first few times I did this, I had no trouble last the 3 minutes, but the last two times I did it, I failed. So it apparently senses really subtle movement. Or else it's random. I haven't quite figured that out.

PS: I can't really manage lotus position, but I sit with my legs crossed as best I can.

So that's the Wii Fit. I have to admit, my weight has actually gone up in the 12 days that I've been using it, but I guess some of that is due to the holiday parties and other temptations. I need to start adding healthy eating to the plan. Then maybe I'll see some progress. But I really have been using it regularly and I can feel through my aching muscles that I have been getting a workout.

Wii Fit - Aerobics

Here's the screen with the Aerobics choices. Reading down from the left, there's Hula Hoop, Advanced Hula Hoop, Rhythmic Boxing, Basic Step, Advanced Step, Free Step, Basic Jogging, Two-Person Jogging, and Free Jogging.  

For Hula Hoop, you stand on the balance board and swing your hips in a big circle. Every so often, one of the other Miis tosses you a hoop, and you must lean over to that side with your arms extended to catch the hoop. You get points for every circuit multiplied by the number of hoops you're spinning at the time. When you go really fast, the hoops are up around your neck. When you slow down, as I did to take this picture, the hoops start slipping down to your feet. 

Advanced Hula Hoop is similar, but a bit longer, and you do half in one direction and half in the other. You also get to see a tracing of your weight movement for each direction. In my case, one direction is notable less smooth than the other. If you do this quickly, it is a bit aerobic, but it doesn't last long enough to really be a workout. It does really use your torso muscles, though, and I can't do it too much right now without feeling rather sore.

Rhythmic boxing is also not terribly aerobic, but does give your arms some exercise. And it's the activity that makes me understand fully why they keep warning you to make sure your wrist strap is fastened, since you're throwing punches directly at your TV screen. It was hard to get a good picture of this one, since it's very active. You hold the WiiMote in your right hand and a secondary controller (the Nunchuck) in your left hand. The little guy on the right demonstrates a sequence, and then you do it yourself on the big bag. You step forward off the board each time you punch, and then step back to block in between. A target comes up when you're supposed to punch, and a big splat graphic with sound comes when you connect. It actually can be rather satisfying.

At the end, you get a few seconds of free-style rapid punching that if you do it with vigor, causes steam to pour out of the punching bag and then it blows up. 

Jogging is a lot of fun because you job around a virtual island, complete with a town, a waterfall, various types of bridges, etc. You follow a randomly-chosen Mii (different each time), and you have a choice of 3 different routes of differing lengths. And you have people cheering you on as you go. 

You don't use the balance board for this, you just run in place with the WiiMote in your pocket or held in your hand. The system uses that to tell your speed. Your Mii's head bobs up and down in time and you hear your footfalls, which even change in sound based on the surface you're running on. Here are a few pictures of the short run.

Your Mii stretches before the start:

You pass a waterfall. (In this picture, my companion has turned around and is waving her arms to urge me to get going, since I stopped to take the picture.)

Through a rock formation. Note that the symbols at the bottom show that I'm about halfway through the course.

It's hard to see here, but every so often a dog comes up and passes you. (He's the brownish blur in front of the little house.) And I have discovered a trick, which is that if you speed up when the dog goes by, you sometimes can switch the arrow so that you start following the dog and get to see a different route.

And here's the finish line for the short jog. When you cross the finish line, your Wii jumps around and celebrates with the other Miis. 

 

As I mentioned, you get to choose between 3 lengths of run, each with a different course. The longest one takes you up to the top of the waterfall. I haven't tried the two person run, but I assume that's used when two people want to work out together. The free run is when you want to do a longer run - 10, 20, or 30 minutes. You can stay in the game and circle around the island, or you can choose to switch the TV to a different channel and watch something else while you run. You could also use this in conjunction with a separate exercise device, such as a treadmill, if you have one. The neat thing is that there is a speaker in the WiiMote, so you can get progress messages and time checks as you go. 

I haven't quite figured out the run scoring. For the Basic Run, it seems to be based somewhat on the consistency of your jogging, not just the speed. But for the Free Run, it does seem to go by speed, and shows you as going further around the island the faster you run. And it gives you a score for the number of miles covered. 

Finally there is the Step Aerobics. You know what this is like if you've ever taken a step class - you step on and off the balance board in ever more complicated patterns. You can either watch the scrolling diagram, which uses color to indicate the different step patterns, or just watch the Wiis to see what they're doing - which is also useful to see what you should be doing with your arms.

  

Like the jogging, there are several versions: a short, simple version, then an advanced version with faster, more complicated steps, then a free version where you can switch away from the screen. In the free version, you can choose to have the WiiMote give you various sorts of metronome-like sounds if you wish, and can adjust the speed to suit your pace. 

Scoring for the first two variants is based on how accurately you are in time with the beat. Each step gets scored as either missed (0 points), Good (1 point), or Perfect (2 points). I find it really hard to get the Perfects and find that only about 1/4 to 1/3 of my steps get scored Perfect. For the free step, like the free run, you are just scored on how many steps you get in. 

The balance board is not as high as a typical step board in an exercise class, so I'm thinking that when my thighs get a little stronger, I'll maybe slip something under it to raise it a bit and get a better workout. Right now, though, I'm fine where it is. 

I like all of these exercises and do them all pretty consistently. It would have been really cool if they had a jogging version where you could decide which way to go at various turning points instead of having to follow a fixed course, but that may come in the future. I think that the Wii Fit has only scratched the surface of what it would be possible to do with this type of device.

Wii Fit - Strength

The organization of the Strength section of the Wii Fit is very much like the Yoga section described yesterday. You start with 4 exercises, and additional exercises get unlocked to a total of 15. Like yoga, many of the strength exercises involve balancing on one leg. A couple of the exercises, such as the Tricep Extension and the Arm and Leg Lift. use the WiiMote to track repetitions rather than using the balance board.

I can do most of them except for the pushup, since my arms just aren't strong enough. The Jackknife is something I can just barely do, but it leaves my stomach muscles really sore. I also found the last one I've unlocked, called the Single Arm Stand, to be pretty difficult. It involves lying flat on your back, holding the WiiMote in a vertical position with your arm straight up, and then rising smoothly to a standing position keeping the one arm stretched up and pushing off the floor with only the other arm. Whew - very tough - and then they ask you to repeat it 5 more times, and then again on the other side. Quickly. That's quite a workout for me and I have trouble keeping up.

Here's the overview screen for the Rowing Squat. It's got most of the same elements as the yoga poses. One difference is that for some of the exercises you can select to do different numbers of reps. I think some of the rep choices get unlocked as you put in more time. 

Like the yoga poses, many of the exercises track your balance. In this example, you are trying to keep the dot in the blue area. (I'm deliberately messing up because I don't want to get a bogus high score messing up my records.)

The remainder is just like the Yoga section - you get a score and rating, and minutes go into your piggy bank.

The selection of exercises seems pretty decent, although it's limited to things you can do without added equipment. I'm not an expert so I don't know if you did them all you'd get full coverage of all your muscle groups. There aren't a lot of arm exercises, so being unable to do the Pushup does mean that I'm probably skimping on my arms. There are a couple that match exercises I've been advised to do for my back pain, like that Arm and Leg Lift on the lower left, which is good for me to do.

I have to admit, this isn't my favorite section of the Wii Fit, but it's something that's important to do, so I put in my time. Following the usual advice for strength training, I've been trying to do this every other day to give my muscles a rest day.

Wii Fit - Yoga

Here's the Training menu for the Wii Fit. You can choose between the 4 different training areas, and you can also go to a Favorites a screen which has the 10 activities you do most often from across all the areas. The piggy bank alternates between showing the number of minutes you have accumulatedtoday, and the total amount of time since you originally registered.

 

Today we're going to take a look at the Yoga section. Here's the main Yoga menu. When you first start, you get the first 4 exercises only, but the rest get unlocked pretty quickly, as rewards when you accumulate fit credits. I've only been playing for a week and I have all 15 of them (although I haven't tried them all yet.)

Notice that when you hover the cursor over an exercise, it shows you its name and how many times you've done it. I like the Sun Salutation, as it's a good morning stretch. 

The poses range from fairly easy to rather hard. The first one is simply deep breathing. Number 4, the Tree pose, is the first one that involves standing on one leg and is rather tricky. I found a nice article online that discusses the various poses, gives some cautions, and suggests possible alternatives for each. If you're trying yoga for the first time using the Wii Fit, I'd highly recommend reading it. For the Tree pose, I'm currently using a simpler method that involves putting your foot against the opposite leg's calf, rather than way up on the thigh. I can almost get through that one without putting my foot down, most of the time.

The one on the lower left, called Dance, looks like I haven't tried it yet. In fact, I did try it and couldn't do it at all, so didn't accumulate any credits for it. The one on the lower right, the Shoulder Stand, is mentioned in the article as a pose where you could possibly hurt yourself, so I may not go to that one at all, or at least for a while.

So that's one issue with the Wii Fit - if you haven't done this stuff before and don't have a good idea of what your body can and can not do, you could possibly run into trouble and injure yourself. I'm just being cautious and careful and so far, have encountered no real problems except slightly achy muscles.

Notice that this section of the Wii Fit doesn't use your Mii character at all. You have the option of switching between a male and female trainer, and you can sometimes change the point of view to be from the front or back.

When you go ahead and pick a particular pose, you get a screen with a little animation that shows you what muscles are being exercised. You also see what the highest rating (number of stars) you have attained so far. I'm at 2-3 stars for most of these, but Sun Salutation is fairly easy and I've done it a number of times, so I'm at 4 stars with that one.

You can choose to see a demo of the pose by clicking the Demo button, and the first time you do it, it always shows you a Demo automatically. When you go ahead and do the pose, you can put down the Wiimote - for most of the exercises, only the balance board is used. The coach talks you through it, giving hints on posture and breathing while soothing music plays.

You'll note it says "Try to keep your center of balance within the yellow area." This is usually fairly easy to do, but if you waver, and, say, set down a foot when you're supposed to be holding it up, it definitely registers. Even the small little adjustments you naturally make when you're keeping your balance show up as the red dot moves around and leaves a little trail behind.

When you're done with the pose, you get a summary of your balance. In this example, it's only concerned with side-to-side balance. In some poses, it tracks both orientations. For poses where you do it on each leg separately, you get a separate score for each side. (I snapped this photo just as the score box came up over the balance line and just before the score was displayed, which is why it looks a bit odd.)

Next you see your score relative to the other scores so far on this machine. (This one is artificially high because I wasn't really performing the exercise while I was trying to take photos.)

And finally, you see an animation where coins (representing minutes) drop into your Fit Credits piggy bank. This pose is repeated three times so that added up to 2 more minutes in the bank.

So that's yoga on the Wii Fit. If you'd like to learn more, you can see video excerpts of the first four poses on the Wii Fit web site.

Wii Fit - Daily Body Test

This is Part 1 of "More than you ever wanted to know about the Wii Fit".

When you first set up the Wii, you are invited to create a character, called a Mii to stand in for you in the games. You can have multiple Miis, and that's useful when the Wii is being used by different members of a family, because each person can have their own profile. (There's a lot of cute naming going on here. The remote is called a WiiMote, for example, and has some added features you don't find in they typical remote. For example, you can use it as a pointer on the screen, and it vibrates as you move over a selectable item.)

You have a lot of choice in creating the Miis in terms of facial features, hairstyle and colors. You can make them look like you or like you'd like to look. Here's my Mii, flanked by a few experiments (alex on the left and machinka on the right).

You then register your character with the Wii Fit, answering some questions about age, etc.

When you first enter Wii Fit each day, you see a chart tracking your weight and the Miis you've registered with the game along the bottom. You select the appropriate Mii to get into the game. The Mii gives you a cheery time-appropriate greeting and offers a random fitness tip. You might get congratulated for something like using the game every day for a week, and on Christmas there were some colorful streamers thrown and the balance board character was wearing a Santa hat.

You are invited to do a "Body Test" each day. By standing on the balance board, the Body Test is able to measure your weight and assess your balance. You mark a calendar for each day that you've done the body test and can go back and view the results of each day.

When you select the Body Test, you're asked to stand still on the balance board while you are weighed and measured. The balance board is very sensitive to small shifts in body weight. Today I was asked to do it with my eyes closed, and didn't do as well as when my eyes are open. Here's the result.

The one part of this Body Test that I find a bit bogus is that it calculates a Wii Fit Age, which it then presents to you with a lot of hoopla. The Wii Fit Age is apparently calculated based on your weight and the balance test results. In my experience, it has wandered all over the place and really doesn't seem to be a very useful measurement of anything. So I pretty much ignore it.

But the other graphs are useful. You can see your weight, your BMI, and also a record of how much time you put in each day (called Fit Credits) The gray shows effort outside the game, which you can record. For me, this is usually walking or working out on my Nordic Track. The blue is yoga, green is strength, red is aerobic, and yellow is balance. You can see that I put an emphasis on doing mostly aerobic each day.

If you look back at the calendar graph, you'll see there is a choice at the bottom between Body Test and Training. In my next installment I'll talk about the different training areas.

Wiiiiiiii....

I bought myself a Wii Fit system for Christmas. A bit extravagant, but I am looking for anything I can find to try to get myself to exercise regularly in the winter. I've used it for 5 days now, and I like it so far. It's not perfect, and has some odd quirks, but there are enough useful pieces that I think it will help me. 

For those that aren't up on the latest fad, the Wii game system has a sensor and remote that can track body movements. So you can use it to control the typical video games by body movement, which is already one stop up from sitting on the couch and pressing buttons. The Wii Fit adds another element - a "balance board" which you stand on and can sense your weight distribution, adding yet another movement factor to the mix.

The Wii Fit "game" is a series of activities specifically designed to encourage fitness, and which use these various elements to sense your movement and give you feedback. There are four categories of activities: yoga, strength, aerobic, and balance. Plus there is a daily checkin that measures your weight and balance and provides graphs showing your weight over time and how much exercising you've done each day in the various categories. You can also add in credit any exercise you do outside of the game.

One of the drawbacks of the system is that you don't get a lot of guidance about how to combine the activities, and there's no way to set up a continuous flow of activities - you have to select and start each one up. So you waste a little time. But there is also the advantage that it's very easy to just do a few minutes of exercise at odd moments during the day. So I'm okay with that.

Some of the exercises are quite difficult. Others are more like games than exercises and don't really seem to do much in the way of fitness. So you get out of this what you choose to. If you spend all your time playing the games, I suppose you could fool yourself into thinking that you're exercising, but I don't think it counts.

The routine I've come up with is to start in the morning before breakfast with a selection of 3 or so easy yoga poses, a few minutes of easy aerobics to get warmed up, and one of the short balance games before doing the daily checkup. Later in the day I do some more energetic aerobics and add some strength training and more advanced yoga (depending on how sore I'm feeling). And then a few balance games as a reward. Each time you complete an activity, you see coins (representing minutes) going into a piggy bank, and you get a little ta-da when you hit 30 minutes or an hour. 

Over the next few days, I'll describe the different parts of the system a little more and maybe try to show some screen shots. 

Most depressing dieting post ever

1 M&M = 1 football field. Read it and weep.

Go take a hike

After visiting Nancy in Colorado and hiking in Garden of the Gods and other places, I've resolved to try to get out into wild places more often. The walking will be good for me, and visiting nature always soothes my soul. So I did some research and discovered that the Appalachian Mountain Club actually has quite a lot of offerings for short hikes in the Boston area (as well as more challenging treks out in the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont). So I joined up and went out on my first short hike yesterday. It was moderately challenging, especially since it was a bit humid yesterday, but I managed it and am not feeling too sore today. So I hope to continue. More details on yesterday's hike when I get my photos downloaded from my camera.

Diabetes Prevention Program visit

I went in at the crack of dawn for my annual Diabetes Prevention Program visit. After fasting for 12 hours, I was anxious to get through the 2-hour glucose tolerance test as quickly as possible. But for some reason, they had a lot of trouble placing the needle and had to try a second time in the other arm. They continued to have some trouble the with the second attempt, and as they futzed around trying to reposition the needle I mentioned that I was feeling lightheaded.

That sent them all into a flurry of activity, tilting back by chair, giving me water, putting a cold washcloth on my brow, and generally being concerned. A quick check of my blood pressure read something like 86/60, so it was clear I wasn't making it up (a few minutes earlier it had been 118/78). 

After a few minutes of laying back, I got back to normal, they managed to get the needle positioned, and the test proceeded uneventfully. Actually, with one improvement. They used to have to hook me up to an IV for the two hours so they could come back and take the 30 minute and 2-hour samples. But now they have some way of doing it with a saline solution in a short bit of tubing taped to your arm so you don't actually have to be hooked up to anything. That made it much easier to read the paper, go to the restroom, etc., while I was waiting for the final test. 

They keep you pretty busy any with health questionaires, measurements, an EKG, foot sensitivity tests, and various other things called for in the protocol. So the two hours go by pretty fast. 

This time I felt I really earned my $50 stipend and $30 in Target gift cards...

Good advice

Eight tips for making yourself happier IN THE NEXT HOUR.

Incipient sniffles?

I felt a little run-down yesterday, and this morning I woke up with a scratchy throat and a feeling of fuzziness around the eyes. This usually is an indication that I'm coming down with a cold. I sure hope not, but if it does come, at least it's at a time when I only have a few activities planned for the next week or so. Alex and I have theater tickets for Friday night, and I was hoping to help some friends with an activity on Saturday. So we'll see how it goes. I plan to stay close to home and rest a lot today and try to stave it off. That won't be hard to do, as it's still miserable and gray outside.

Week 31 Report

Well, it hurts to do this, but the worst thing I can do is to ignore the situation. I'm only down 4.2 pounds since August, an average of .1 pounds/week and .5 pounds/month. Pretty dismal. I started going up at Boskone and continued up through my California vacation. I'm maybe turning it around now, but I'll have a lot of catching up to do.

Here's the sad situation...

Week 30 Report

The news is not pretty. In the past month, between Boskone and the California trip, I've gained back about half of the 6 pounds I'd lost in the previous 6 months. Sigh.

On the good news front, my annual physical blood tests all came back with good results, especially my HDL, which my doctor noted was "awesome". So I must be doing something right.

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday and stocked up on healthy stuff, so I'm ready for another go. All I can do is keep trying.