Best class ever?

We’re all well aware of the fact that we are the technology generation. We spend our entire day with our eyes glued to computer screens, sending more texts and BBMs a minute then our hearts beat, and accompanying our lives with a personal soundtrack courtesy of our iPods. After Twitter made it possible to tell the world what you’re doing every 2 seconds (and I found out how often some of my guy friends poop), I thought nothing could shock me.

That was until I heard that the University of Houston now has an entire class dedicated to the Wii. No joke.

The course is listed in the catalog as “online aerobics activities” and the description? A class for PE credit where students work out 20-30 minutes twice a week by playing the Wii Fit video game.

Why the heck can’t my college offer this course? I’d enroll in a nanosecond. Play video games the whole semester and knock going to the gym off my daily schedule twice a week? I’m sorry but that sounds like perhaps the most amazing thing ever.

Oh, but it gets better. A course built around a game console would no doubt attract a large interest among guys, but the chairman of the university said the course focuses more around fitness activities like Yoga. Hell freakin’, yea! Now you’re telling me I don’t even have to suffer through sports like Tennis and Bowling? I can drink my chai tea latte, show up for a 20-minute yoga sesh, bag my A and call it a day?

The only thing better than taking this class is being the luck jerk who gets to “teach” it.

I’m seriously considering transferring. What do you guys think?

What a moron. He totally should have denied, denied, denied.

Maybe he’ll be first in line for the Denny’s Free Grand Slam breakfast.

The Super Bowl’s best and worst commercials. What do you think?

Jennifer Hudson rocked the house.

Is it just me, or is Bruce Springsteen a total hottie?

 Life lessons you can take from TV.

What does Elisabeth Hasselbeck have against Wii Fit?

Tips for staying in an Ivy League. Apparently it’s not that hard.

Dammit, Phil - we can’t handle 6 more weeks of winter.

Translation: I’m not doing sh*t.

Actually, that’s a huge lie. Instead of lounging like I would like to be, I’m working my ass off at a menial job making minimum wage. Hours upon hours of filing, sitting in front of a super-slow, super-irritating computer and returning home to do the same (with the addition of the roommates watching endless Friends re-runs as background noise) has turned me into a bit of a mindless drone. I have felt myself becoming lazier, smellier, dumber and well, wider.

My gym shoes have collected dust by the front door, right next to at least three garbage bags full of Keystone cans, Bud Light bottles and the occasional box of Carlo. My once-amazing gym habits (3x a week, alternating between running and the elliptical) have become practically non-existent. I even have a sweet new workout mix created on my iPod, but this has still not motivated me to actually go exercise.

But, I figure that there is always a bright side to every situation. Since I can’t actually find the energy to drag myself halfway across town to the gym, I decided that I can bring the exercise to me. But, with little cash and little-to-no motivation, what can a girl do to stay in shape?

Workout DVDs: (from easiest to hardest)

[These require little to no “tools” besides comfy workout clothes, a yoga mat (mine is here) and a DVD player.]

GAIAM Yoga for Beginners –If you’ve never done a Downward Dog or Sun Saluation in your life (and you’re reading this like WTF is she talking about?), this DVD is for you. The instruction is slow, easy and will ensure that you don’t twist an ankle or pull a muscle while you’re learning the moves. Just make sure you have a DVD remote because you can’t skip around and it can get quite boring. Correction: Really boring.

Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease– What? She’s hot. And if there is any possibility my body will end up looking at all like hers (or that I’ll magically become coordinated enough to actually perform a striptease) because of this DVD, you better believe I’ll throw down some cash…that is unless Tila Tequila comes out with her own workout vids.

The Yoga Booty Ballet Series – Okay, so the name (and the “instructors” in the video) are a little weird. Alright, I’m not gonna lie, they actually creeped me out so much the first time I attempted to get my booty in yoga ballet shape, that I was tempted to turn it off. But, I “kept up” as they instructed me and I felt fabulous. I started with “Yoga Core” (the beer belly is definitely the first thing that needs to go!). It can get a little intense if you’ve been a stagnate vegetable for months like me, but overall, I think it’s a good workout.

Wii Fit –I don’t have one (or even know anyone who does), but it sounds pretty damn sweet. You can do stuff like yoga, aerobics, even strength training from the (comfort?) of this weird little electronic mat thing.

Too broke to buy stuff? Yeah, me too. Instead of dishing out the cash for the aforementioned DVDs, check out free online workout videos like these awesome ones on YouTube with model-turned-yoga instructor Tara Stiles.

Outdoors-y stuff you can do fo’ free:

Take a hike. Literally, According to this little ditty, light hiking can burn about 225 cals. Take a friend …& some mushrooms for an extra exciting adventure Just kidding. Kind of.

Take a break from tanning and chillaxing poolside and actually go swimming. Run ten laps around the pool or engage in a little water aerobics. Of, if you have the luxury of living near a beach, try body surfing. This didn’t always work out so well for me, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

Beach/backyard volleyball. Instead of hiding behind your big-ass sunglasses, flipping the pages of the latest Harper’s Bazaar or creepily admiring the toned, tanned bodies of the boys playing beach volleyball, join in. Put in the effort — you can burn up to 100 calories.

Other random/cheap ways to up your fitness level:

Walk places or park far away from the places you drive to. You’ve heard it before, but seriously. JUST DO IT.

Shop & walk the mall at least once a week. An easy way to combine your two favorite things. And by favorite, I mean one favorite and one thing that kinda sucks.

Jump rope. Make one if you can’t find your old one.

Swap workout DVDs with other chicks you know who are trying to get in shape.

Find out if there are free yoga sessions offered in your area. And take advantage when gyms near you offer “Demo” weeks and the like.

Scour your kitchen. Not only does cooking burn calories, you can substitute lifting dumbbells for lifting milk jugs, sacks of potatoes or even canned goods. Your roommates might make fun of you, but when your underarm no longer jiggles like an old woman’s when you wave (and their’s still do), who’ll be laughing then?

But perhaps the biggest problem here is not WHAT you can do, but HOW the hell you can get yourself to do it.

- Start small. But make sure to challenge yourself. If you can only complete ten minutes of a workout DVD one day, that’s okay. Just be sure to keep increasing your time and the intensity of your workouts as time goes on. This is also a great confidence builder.

- Reward yourself. Like, “Hey self, meet your workout goal for the week? Okay then. You are totally allowed to buy the Sex & the City Movie book.”

- Write stuff down. Sign up for one of those websites that allows you to track your workout progress, download a Food & Workout Diary from Marie Clare here or buy a cute little Moleskine (or one of those 99 cent things from the drugstore), cover it with inspirational quotes and you’re good to go.

- Stop reading this! All of CC’s intelligent, delicious, gorgeous, fabulous bloggers will still be here when you get back. Pop in a DVD & get your ass in gear.

[Photo courtesy of Corbis.com]

With the purchase of my new Wii Fit, I’ve been on a serious exercise and health kick of late (with the glaring exception of Memorial Day). As such, I’ve been trying to keep track of everything I eat and my portions in my head, which is inherently flawed in that in any given day I will lose my keys, sunglasses and purse at least once. And so I’ve found some sites that help not only keep track of what I eat every day and my daily exercise, but also tell me how many calories I should consume for my size, how many calories are in my favorite foods and how many calories are burned in my workout.

The one that I’m using is called thedailyplate. Membership is free and the site is very easy to use. Like the Wii Fit, it has you setting weight goals and gives you tips on how to achieve them. I like the way the days are laid out, it shows fairly comprehensively what you ate, when, and all the nutritional aspects of that meal.

Myfooddiary.Com is another site that tracks what you eat and purports to have the largest food database of sites of its kin. It does seem more customizable and set up in a very pleasing way. It’s also endorsed by some big names, but its $9 a month so I’m gonna stick to the free one. If you are really committed and wiling to spend that extra money a month, I say go for it.

Fit Day Fit Day seems to be very similar to myfooddiary.com and it’s free. If offers some software that you can buy, though, that seems pretty neat.

If you Twitter and would like to have a food dairy close at hand on your twitter page, you can go to tweetwhatyoueat

If you just assume not deal with a big complicated website to help you count your calories, you can go to CaloriesCount for a simple template that you can print out and use to record your meals.

Keeping a food diary seems to be key in undertaking any serious weight loss. Not only does it help you know how many calories you consume, it also helps to identify unhealthy eating patterns and whether or not you are consuming enough of what you should be consuming. I’m hoping that I can use it to help retrain my body to be hungry at more beneficial times (namely, less hungry at night when all I want in the world is to eat a big box of cheezits)

If you keep a food diary or use a website to keep track of what you eat, tell us about it.

Let's see...]

DAY ONE

7:05 a.m. Boyfriend wakes me up to kiss me before he goes to work, like he does every morning. Like every morning, I feel guilty about my morning breath, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

3:45 Boyfriend comes home early and suggests a quickie.

3:46 Boyfriend catches my unenthusiastic response and tells me never mind. I feel awful, as I do every time I turn him down, but I’ve been cleaning all day without a shower and I had just finished an hour of wii fit so I was sore. I promise him that I’ll make it up to him later that night.

1:22 a.m. Come home from seeing a friend’s band play. Still too sore and tired for sex, so I offer him a blow job as soon as we get home.

1:23 He tells me, and I quote, “I’m okay right now, but thanks”. I wonder if I am ever supposed to get to a point in a relationship where I don’t take these things personally. I need to let it go.

2:33 Boyfriend tries to have sex, but I’m absolutely exhausted. I roll over to take one for the team, so to speak, but boyfriend again tells me never mind. I start to get angry now because I feel like he’s having a hissy fit.

DAY TWO

8:10 a.m. Boyfriend wakes up like nothing happened the night before to tell me about the dream he just had.

8:12 I tell him about the horrific dream I had, that we had a baby. To the baby’s credit, he was remarkably well behaved. His name was Malcolm (after Malcolm McDowell) and it turns out at the end of the dream, that we were just being tested to see if we were fit parents and we failed. Angela Bassett came and took little Malcolm back to the baby factory and I was sad.

11:45 a.m. We finally do have sex, doggie-style behind an open window in our bedroom. Boyfriend has discovery fantasies, and likes people to watch. I don’t, but having sex in front of a window seems harmless enough, so I humor him.

DAY THREE

8 a.m. Wake up not as sore and up for some morning nookie but boyfriend is still asleep

10:00 Boyfriend is still asleep so I look up some internet porn, but it’s too early for me to be too especially into it.

NOON Boyfriend is still asleep so I put in Pride and Prejudice for a little literary porn.

1:00 p.m. Boyfriend is awake, but I don’t feel like having sex anymore

8:12 Finally feel like having sex after watching a documentary called Sex With Strangers. I even sort of feel like having sex with a stranger, the documentary makes it sound like a hoot.

8:23 Have a mid-cunnilingus conversation about trying a foursome, but quickly realize that I’m not quite that well adjusted.

8:45 I go down on him and then we have sex in our recliner in the living room (again, discovery fantasies) me on top.

DAY FOUR

11 a.m. Enjoying day off from work by floating down the river

1 p.m. Covertly feel boyfriend up underwater. He reminds me that the river is freshwater and thusly very cold, but I don’t mind.

6:00 Get home to realize that we are both sunburned within an inch of our lives, thus ruining any chance of anything sexual for a couple of days at least

6:30 As physical contact is too painful, I get to touch boyfriend only when I rub aloe on his back, chest, and arms.

9:30 Fall asleep on totally different sides of the bed, miserable, with only our hands touching.

Day FIVE

7:15 a.m. Wake up to a morning kiss. I feel like someone has barbequed me. No nooky today. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

8:30 Have to wear the only dress that doesn’t irritate my sunburn to work. Which just happens to show off my sunburned boobs to perfection.

10:00 Wonder if the IT guy that just walked by was gawking at my lobster suit or my huge red boobs.

5:30 p.m. Boyfriend gets home and we kiss without touching any parts of our bodies. I rub him down with aloe a la sensual massage and give him some ibuprofen. He rubs me down very slowly and then bites my earlobe and I curse the sun and my nearly-albino skin.

DAY SIX

9 a.m. I start to feel a lot better, think about surprising boyfriend with a blowjob when he gets home.

3:30 p.m. Work is driving me crazy so I go home early and masturbate. Decide that I’m definitely going to jump boyfriend when he gets home.

5:00 I feel achy and crappy again, but its been a couple of days since we’ve been intimate so I decide to brave it and definitely surprise boyfriend with a blow job.

6:00 Boyfriend comes home after awful day and his sunburn has made him all itchy, so I doubt he wants blow job.

1 a.m. Boyfriend’s sunburn itch is now unbearable, so I wake up and run to the pharmacy to get him an antihistamine.

1:20 a.m. I spray him down and he feels better almost immediately. He mumbles something about how much he loves me and that I’ve saved his life and falls asleep.

DAY SEVEN

8:30 a.m.-Wake up, decide to skip out on work today and look up shirtless pictures of Mike Rowe. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

9:00 Decide that if I’m not going go to work, that I should spend day more constructively, so I turn on Dirty Jobs while I clean and do some writing

11:30 Wonder with some alarm if my new celebrity obsession means I’m in to older men.

11:31 Realize that I’ve never dated or slept with a younger man (to my knowledge, at least)

5:30 Boyfriend gets home, and I give him a quick sweaty kiss while I‘m playing wii fit.

8:30 Too sore from Wii Fit to have sex

10:00 Fall asleep at a pathetically early hour while watching Dirty Jobs.

Totals: one act of masturbation, one act of fellatio, one act of cunnilingus, two acts of attempted fellatio, two acts of intercourse, one act of underwater petting.

I like (okay, love) video games. I admit it! I think it goes back to childhood when I was forced into playing (but, mostly watching) them with my brothers. But let me tell you, after a good 15 years of playing everything from Super Mario to the underrated (and hilariously ridiculous) Burgertime, I know a thing or two about gaming.

And yes, while there are certainly hundreds of games that feed into the typical male shoot-‘em-up mentality, trust me, there are games for the girls that will blow your mind.

Like what, you ask?

Wii Fit! I know, we’ve mentioned it before, but it’s totally worth another discussion. It’s not scheduled to be released until 2008, but Steve and I got to play a demo of it yesterday and my inner-geek was overjoyed!

Fit is undeniably Nintendo’s most exciting upcoming game, however, I use the word “game” loosely. It’s more of a series of exercises and ‘mini-games’ that improve your balance, coordination, and core. Let it be known, this is not the kind of game you throw on during a lazy Sunday afternoon. You have to be up and active…and it’s perfect!

During the demo, we were told that Wii Fit was to be looked at as a way to get up off the couch and engage in physical activity while still keeping a kind of gaming mentality. When it’s released, Wii Fit will be able to asses your progress over time, your individual skill level, and even your BMI. Very cool stuff for a video game.

First, Steve tried yoga. Yoga is hard enough, but on a platform, in your socks, with a room full of strangers watching, it looked…well, fun!

I got to hula hoop which, I must say, is one of my talents in the real word. On the Wii? I was awful. In fact, I felt like an idiot swiveling my hips around while simultaneiously reaching for “hula hoops” that were being “thrown” towards me to “catch”.

But all told, it didn’t even matter, and that’s what is really the greatest thing about Wii Fit…and the Wii in general. It’s a social thing. It’s about gathering your friends and all feeling like idiots together!

Gone are the days of humoring your boyfriend while you watch him play Metroid for three hours. Get yourself a Wii and play together! I’m pretty sure he’ll be down for it. In fact, upcoming titles like Mario Galaxy have a “co-op” option that allows two people to play as one (Steve and I are a good team) which was as novel as it was difficult.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m excited to show some of my technologically-challenged friends what the Wii has to offer.

After over a decade of gaming…I just might be cool.

Finally.

My solution of abstaining from exercise really doesn’t keep those muscles toned, either.

Lucky for me, and anyone who would rather play video games then run around in circles sweating profusely, Nintendo has just introduced the world to the Wii Fit. The Wii Fit comes complete with a Wii balance board to stand on top of, which has the ability to measure your BMI as well as a number of other body related statistics.

The game lays out on screen instructions and the “player” exercises along with their virtual Mii, all the way to a fit body outside of the virtual world. The game keeps track of the progress of “players” showing the variance in BMI over the course of a number of workouts.

A blow to lame workout videos and The Fitness Channel? Probably. A more entertaining way to stay fit? For sure.

The Wii Fit is so new that Nintendo has yet to post information on the program on their website. Hopefully the release of this game won’t mirror that of the Wii console itself. If this turns out to be the case, people may have more luck sweating their weight off than waiting around to man the Wii balance board.