Video Games, My Exercise of Choice

My attempts to convince myself of the fun of exercise have been fairly successful over the past week. I’ve got a secret weapon now: video games.

I’ve always been a bit of a gamer, but I haven’t bought a game system since the Nintendo 64 — which used cartridges, just to remind you how old that system is. After a lot of discussion, my boyfriend and I decided to pick up a Nintendo Wii and some games.

The Wii has a pretty revolutionary controller, and, because of the set up of our living room and the nature of the Wii games we chose, I have to stand up to play games now, and always wind up moving around a lot. I’ve gotten happily sweaty several times now, and I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten something resembling exercise. There are even a set of games from Nintendo that require a ton of moving around.

I could go for this as a long-term plan: lose weight while fighting bad guys. I’m not sure yet if it’s actually having a noticeable effect, but I’m more than happy to keep trying. The next step might be finding a copy of Dance Dance Revolution. Plenty of gamers claim that DDR is an easy way to exercise because of all the movement it requires.

Video games are a bit of a time sink, though. I’ve already noticed that I can spend an hour playing something and not even notice. I think a big noisy timer might be a good investment — it’ll let me set limits to my playing a little easier.

by Thursday Bram

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