This Christmas, the Naan family got a Wii Fit – something I’d initially been quite sceptical about but after reading great reviews was quite excited about finally getting it. Two weeks ago, for various reasons, I also bought My Fitness Coach (Wii) – another personal virtual trainer style product.

I’ve been asked by several people how they compared with each other, so it seemed sensible to compile my thoughts into a single blog post. Rather than describe each one separately, I’ve decided to split the post into various categories to give each a fair comparison: price, navigation and tracking, quality of the workout, longevity.

WARNING: this is an excessively long post and a thorough review. I will not be in the least offended if you just skip it. The rest of the post continues after the jump…

[Read more →]

The UK Territorial Army are currently offering a free interactive personal fitness programme on their website which looks pretty good, although there’s a lot of emphasis on jogging which I don’t particularly enjoy.

I have been slowly getting fitter this year and am getting to the point where I have more control over and more strength my body, so it does appeal. I mentioned it to Sylvia the Cynic who reckons they’ll try and recruit you by the end of the training, but still might be worth a play.

Anyone tried it who can give some feedback?

A few random thoughts from the visit with the homoeopath last Friday:

• It was unbelievably thorough. I had a suspicion it might be (seeing as how I was warned it was going to be an hour and a half long), but didn’t really appreciate how much detail she would go through. Pretty much every condition and illness in my life was gone through in meticulous detail (from the mysterious coughing up dried blood incident as a baby, childhood asthma and attacks, allergies, headaches, throat infections, migraine, pregnancy complications) all with exact symptoms and a load of other incidents I didn’t expect to bring up (what my childhood was like, the death of my father and how I dealt with the aftermath, my relationship with my mother, character traits, how I deal with change, the move three years ago). I felt physically and mentally DRAINED and exposed at the end of it all.
• At the same time, she was very good at putting me at my ease. She freely gave information about her own life which in turn helped me open up more. I feel like I had an hour and a half of therapy thrown in free.
• A few things gave me pause for thought. In particular, she’s not keen on the Mirena (“women are meant to be cyclical beings”) and feels that it could well be a major factor in my declining health since having it inserted just over two years ago. I’m reluctant to have it removed quite yet (for one, we’ll need to re-evaluate our contraceptive options – another child really ISN’T in our plans).
• She didn’t just dole out a treatment at the end, which I found quite impressive. She wants to give it a few days deliberation before prescribing. She noted that I like to be in control and in a position of knowledge, so she has already advised that any remedy will be given in liquid form to more easily control the dose as per the effects.
• Next appointment due in 6 weeks.

Well, I have completed my first exercise session of my newly rediscovered-in-the-back-of-the-garage callanetics tape. I apparently have muscles that I never knew existed.

I’m celebrating with alcohol, icecream and chocolate… is that bad or mandatory?

… well for today anyway.

Since getting the SPD and OC diagnoses, I’ve been religiously practising daily yoga rather than relying on the bi-weekly antenatal classes, making sure I’ve been drinking eight glasses of water a day to help flush out toxins, and using a hypnotherapy/relaxation tape in the evenings. Not that I thought it would necessarily help, but wanted to at least feel I was doing *something* rather than blindly accepting spiralling medical diagnoses.

This has had three effects:

1. I can wear my rings again. For many weeks now, I have had to remove my wedding and engagement rings because they were just too tight and cutting off the circulation in my hand. I’ve now discovered that they fit perfectly again without the slightest feeling of snugness. Presumably, I’m now less “puffy” and have less water retention. Either way it’s very nice to be able to wear them again.

2. I’m keeping my mobility. A couple of times I’ve mentioned when I’ve overdone it (the walk to the hospital and carrying Akra Jr back from nursery yesterday) and I’ve hardly been able to get out of bed the next day. Every time I’ve “forced” myself to do yoga on waking and have found that it makes the difference between being in so much pain I can hardly move to being able to make fluid movement with only slight discomfort. On good days, I don’t have any aches at all as a result of the gentle exercise.
3. My last blood test came back normal. Yup, no more raised bile acids, next hospital trip not until the 22nd! Okay, I can’t necessarily claim it was the yoga/water/relaxation that has achieved this – maybe I just had a bug that my body was fighting off, maybe it was going to sort itself out anyway, maybe it’ll come back in a week or two. I don’t really care. I’m now back to “normal pregnant woman” status!

Going to be keeping this up for the rest of the pregnancy I think. I hereby declare that yoga is the best thing since sliced bread…

Why oh why am I so crap at keeping up with exercise?!

Finally managed to do some T’ai Chi tonight after hardly touching it for weeks. The daft thing is when I can actually motivate myself to do it, I really enjoy it and end up thinking “I really must do this more regularly, then I might get good”, only I know that I’ll have the same motivational struggle tomorrow.

If only it was just 15 minutes a day. The routine runs at about 30 mins (15 mins of warm ups, 15 mins of movement practise) and it’s so much harder to fit it into the day. Akra Jr really needs to be asleep when I do it or I’ll be distracted so that means fitting it into the 45 mins he’s asleep at lunchtime (not really going to happen with a few hundred other things calling for my attention) or after around 8pm in the evening by which point I’m so tired serious slobbing is in order.

It’s not so much that I’m worried I’ll be unfit. I have a toddler to chase around all day, and I usually walk for at least half an hour (I avoid using the car where I can). It’s just the catalogue of aches and pains since giving birth (I won’t list them all, it makes me feel old – plus we know it’ll only mean me getting more medical Google hits) that make me feel like I’m going to fall apart any minute and I’m desperate to grab onto anything that will ease them a little.

I know. It’s all about priorities. But answer me this. How the *hell* did I ever find time to work?!

Well had a great night out last night and managed to get pretty tipsy in the process which is all for the good. Fortunately for me, Akra Jr decided to give me a lie in and played in his room happily until 7.45am when he needed his nappy changing. Still a lovely change from his usual 6.30am though. No headache, but lots of joint aches due to dehydration (I really should have remembered to drink a pint of water before I went to sleep) so was nice to have a gentler introduction to the day! Big thanks to Wintermute for babysitting so I could escape for the evening.

Finally got my T’ai Chi DVD. Looks quite good so far, although a bit american hard sell in the introduction bits which I found annoying. The first couple of exercise sets though were very relaxing and therapeutic so I’m enjoying it. I might get away with breaking it into 15 minute chunks too – it wasn’t made clear whether you were supposed to do all three sections of the first volume in one session or could break it down into the components, so I’m going to assume I can do small chunks and see how it goes.

Suddenly realised last night that Akra Jr’s 2nd birthday isn’t that far away (6th May) and I really ought to get organised for it. I have NO idea what to get for his birthday (I’d hoped we’d have moved by now so I could get a toy for the new garden but that was not meant to be) and people have already started asking me what they should get him, so any ideas I do have will go to other people. ARGH! I wonder if I have to be supermum at this age and bake a fancy cake etc, or if I can get away with going down Tescos on the morning…

WTF is wrong with Amazon’s dispatch at the moment?! This is the second order that was supposed to have been dispatched in 24hrs and despite having an estimated delivery date of 25th April (which I think they’ve probably missed by now… unless we have some really committed postpersons in our area) while saying dispatch is imminent. Dispatch has been imminent all bloody day. I sent them an email which is supposed to be responded to within 24hrs – if that’s the same 24hrs they use to time dispatch I won’t hold my breath.

Now, I’m a devoted Amazon customer simply because their swiftness of delivery always used to be awesome. Now I’m going to have to find another internet retailer to bleed cash into. *sigh*. And damnit, I need that T’ai Chi DVD to channel some of this stress into, or you’re all going to have to suffer a very ranty blog over the weekend.

Following on from my recent exercise quandaries, I have just ordered a T’ai Chi DVD from Amazon. I figured that it should be pretty low impact, and something a bit different from yoga, and a DVD should be easier to follow than squinting at diagrams in a book. Probably won’t meet my 15 minute criteria though, but the fact that it’s also a martial art and can be used as self-defence once you’ve studied for long enough intrigued me. Will let you know how it goes.

I’m not a particularly lazy person, but I’m not big on exercise either. I know I ought to do more, but I’m not overweight (if anything, slightly underweight) and I leave the car behind and walk as often as I can (about half an hour every other day on average I think).

However, I am prone to getting back ache and just recently I’ve started getting painful varicous veins in my left leg (noooo it’s not fair! I’m too young to get varicous veins! Oh well, something else to blame Akra Jr for) – plus I’m generally stressed and run down as a result. I’ve started to think about whether I should plan some regular exercise back into my life.

Now, I have tried various exercise things. I have done: the gym, yoga, callanetics, swimming, various exercise bike type things and Mr Motivator. None of these really suited me. I’ve decided what I need to find is something that I can do at home (while Akra Jr is asleep), needs minimum equipment (if I need to get something out of a cupboard, it’s NOT going to happen), is reasonably low impact to avoid joint problems and only takes 15 minutes a day.

Why 15 minutes? Well, I figure 15 minutes a day is achievable – I can fit 15 minutes in somewhere without too much effort. I’m more likely to do 15 minutes a day (with the odd day here and there I skip) than trying to fit in half an hour 3 days a week, or an hour’s routine once a week. I had a 4-minute exercise machine/bike thing once but that was so hefty and awkward to drag out I never bothered – plus I was an exhausted wreck at the end of 4 minutes as it was too high impact.

Okay, so I’m thinking yoga is probably the only thing that’s going to meet all my criteria, but the only yoga routines I can find seem all to be half an hour or more. Or they lie and say 15 minutes when really by the time you’ve figured out what the pictures are trying to suggest then you’ve used 15 minutes up on the warm up.

Any suggestions?