When my editor recently asked me to test out Ubisoft’s Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, a fitness-simulation program for the Xbox 360’s new Kinect peripheral and compare that experience and my fitness results verses working out with a personal trainer at the gym, I jumped at the chance.
The reason: I’m a new mom and losing the post-baby weight has been a tad harder than I anticipated. In the first few weeks following my son’s birth, the weight literally fell off. Three weeks after delivery, I had shed 15 of the 27 pounds I’d put on during pregnancy without so much as thinking about it.
But then my body hit a wall and the subsequent 12 pounds weren’t proving as easy to get rid of. My son is now three-and-a-half months old and those last dozen pounds still loom around my waist and thighs, as does a less-than-tight tummy and weaker back.
So, over the next three weeks, as I sweat my way through virtual fitness classes at home and sessions at the gym, I’ll be reporting on the challenges, successes, and drawbacks I encounter along the way in a quest to find out whether working out with virtual fitness games could negate the need for gym memberships in the future.
On Thursday I’ll be reporting on my first training sessions at the gym.
