Winning at losing Weight

… is the plan for this summer. Mr. and Fräulein Schön have a plan to get in shape for summer and as everything is more fun with a little bit of competition we have a bet going on: whoever is in better shape by the end of June / middle of July (we should really set a date here, shouldn’t we?) has to pay for a weekend trip for two. The one who loses can suggest the place, but the other person has to be ok with it. So just going to Cologne from Düsseldorf does not work. Although… could also be nice.

So far, sorry honey, I think I am a little ahead of you. Although we still have not the desirable middle-of-May-weather, at least it is not freezing anymore and the days are significantly longer, so being more active, doing exercise is much easier than it was during the horrible winter. As I cannot torture my peers and colleagues with a grumpy and hungry me, I definitely cannot do much of a diet. So plan 1 is: less sweet stuff, but other than that: eat healthy, not less but exercising more than before.

I installed a very nice app on my phone, shape up. The green design is refreshing and instantly makes me think of health and sports. You enter your personal data, plus the aspired weight and the program will calculate how many calories you can eat per day in order to loose weight. I know that it can only be a rough guide, as every metabolism differs hugely from another, but still it is a great motivator. Entering what you ate doesn’t take long, as everything is either there in the program or you can search it in their database. A plus is also that you can see how much protein, carbs and fat you consumed and can thereby decide what is still missing in your nutrition. Sadly, vitamins are not on the list, which should also be given some consideration. Every exercising shall be entered as well, which rewards you with a reduction of your calories, or leaves you with more calories yet able to eat. To be fair, I only started a few days ago, but I am always so motivated to put some nice food or exercise in there and see the effect, it is amazing. I don’t know whether I lost any weight yet, but I definitely feel better already.

One of the exercises I have been doing lately is Zumba. We used to do a lot of running and I still like it a lot, but I have to admit that I am a bit of a clear-blue-sky runner and as there is so little of that lately I am very grateful for my Wii-Zumba. I also considered a gym, but as I have very irregular office hours, plus always a full schedule of free-time activities as well I decided to at least start with the Wii game. And what can I say, I love it! Me, who has never enjoyed videogames or computergames. But dancing in front of the tv, hoping that no neighbours will see you, because it might look really stupid, is a lot of fun and very exhausting. I always knew with my background of ballroom and Latin dancing I would enjoy Zumba for sure, but hey, it is not only fun, but an even better training than running. Cardio, muscles, fun! Plus, you definitely improve your dancing skills, handy in your free-time as well. I sometimes meet up with Eva-Melina to dance and I don’t need to tell you that this is even more fun. Although I will probably never have a body like the zumba-trainers, for the obvious reason that I am not a Zumba-trainer, I am already looking forward to the next training. 

I have never been someone that uses new media excessively, funny being a media scientist, which is why I came to blogging quite late, I guess I am a bit conservative when it comes to digital changes. Still, I love digital innovations when they have a positive effect in what I like to call the Real World. So I love that Maps on my phone help me find my way (necessarily a lot of times…), the Shape Up app, that helps me eating healthy, Zumba on the tv that makes me sweat so many times a week and many more. I will let you know about the weekend-trip I am going to win ;)