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Weight Loss through Dance Dance Revolution?
An anonymous reader writes "Looking at the beer gut that's developed over the winter, and the excercise schedule that I haven't kept for more than two days at a time, I realize that I need a new plan. A gym isn't the answer; I can't keep a schedule for working out in my apartment, there's no way I could make it to the gym on any regular basis. I've had multiple people in the last few weeks tell me stories involving weight loss through Dance Dance Revolution, and it sounds like a great idea to me! working out is hard, playing video games is easy, and dancing is fun. But a Google search turned up way too much info, and way too little of it was useful unless I want to spend the next four weeks researching this. Does the Slashdot community have any ideas, suggestions, or personal experience that they cared to relate on any of these topics?"
"First, what's the best pad to get? What kind of differences are there between pads? Is it worth spending $100+, or will the cheaper pads do? Second, what software is best to use? Ideally I'd like to have something expandable, which means getting a PC rig rather than a PS2 one. Are there any open source DDR-type programs? How does one acquire songs?"
You don't need a "new plan," you just need to screw your head on straight. Your answer isn't coming up with a "schedule for working out" in your apartment, or even a gym membership. Just go outside, and run. Just go. Don't develop a schedule, don't come up with a "plan." Just get it done. Run as far as you can, then walk, then run some more! You will see results, probably faster than playing DDR. That game is a slight workout, but it doesn't compare to amount of energy burned running three miles.
:-) Such competition amongst the fast food companies to be seen as healthy may just be a passing fad, but damn, take advantage of it.
And before you say, "I can't run three miles," neither could I before this most recent spring break. Since I wasn't leaving town or really doing anything, I decided to take the initiative to run, just to see what happened. It's been about a month, month and a half now and I've lost more than eight pounds. Running that far isn't an insurmountable task like it was before. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't particularly fun, and it certainly wasn't exciting, but it did work. Believe it or not, diet and exercise are the absolute best path towards your goal. And exercise is as simple as making yourself run. Times have never been better for the fast food junkie wanting to diet. You can still munch Jack in the Box, just get a pita or a salad instead of, well, anything else on the menu there.
One last recommendation: If you can afford it, invest in a treadmill. Running outside takes more commitment than running indoors. Once I didn't have to leave for a gym, or even go out in the cold, running quickly became a daily thing.
see?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
DDR is not easy! It took me a lot of practicing to pass the first stage. By the way an hour of playing DDR is much more tiring than working out for an hour. However it is fun and even addictive so you'll keep on playing it.
StepMania is fantastic, and is open source. The only tricky thing is finding the songs to play on it, there are a few free ones and people have converted a lot of the (copyrighted) Dance Dance Revolution ones, but they're obviously of dubious legality. There are a few IRC channels around where you can download packs of all the songs.
:-)
It's a fantastic program, and there's even an Xbox port! Try it, I think you'll be surprised how polished it feels!
I don't have any experience of losing weight with it though - I kind of have the opposite problem.
Meep meep
Start out on a local DDR machine. http://www.ddrfreak.com/ has a game locator. Play 20 bucks worth, and see if it's worth investing in.
If it is, get a good, durable pad. DDRFreak will have suggestions. You can get the pads for Playstation or PC.
There are also instructions on building your own, but if you have trouble with the motivation to exercise already, just buy a pad. Don't give yourself excuses.
Howewver, what I can tell you is:
1. change your diet. veggies and veggies. Eat healthy, no more double bacon cheeseburger 3 times a day. No more soda. Instead, always have a liter of water on you. Sit down, have a meal, leave. Don't dibble dabble at the table with food infront of you. It will only make you eat more.
2. start moving. If your thinking, pace. Sure you may seem like a nervous wreak to your boss, but atleast your going to look sexy doing it (some day that is).
3. Remember. Energy in > Energy out = weight gain
Energy out > energy in = weight loss.
Laslty. If you feel the urge to swallow something, swallow water.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
It's been around for a while, but may be worth
a fresh mention:
www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
I'm down about 50 lbs from my heaviest, about 30 of which I can attribute almost directly to DDR.
Arcade play beats home play, for the most part. Home pads that are actually good quality run several hundred dollars. And if you find an arcade community you like, the social aspects are a lot of fun too.
The key is to have fun. As long as you manage that, everything else will be easy.
All right, first off, I would like to say that I have lost weight by playing DDR - not much, mind you, but some. Enough for me. (I do other things too, but primarily DDR.) As far as equipment goes, it sounds like what you are looking for is very similar to my own setup. I use an open-source DDR emulator called Stepmania that runs under Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. (Note, I run it under Windows, personally, and cannot vouch for how well the other versions work.) I use a pair of pads that I bought off eBay for about $40 (similar to these), which I like a lot better than the really thin ones that tend to be more common. Finally, I have an adapter to hook the Playstation gamepads to my PC through USB. As for songs, there are several places around the Net to find them...I'm sure someone else will mention them, but just know that it's illegal to have them unless you own a copy of them (which sometimes means having a machine). As such, I'll leave that as an exercise for you to find, if you so wish.
Having said that, I don't exercise if it's boring. I cannot stand walking for long periods of time unless I have music or company with me. Obviously, exercise is hard work, and because exercise is fundamentally the most effective way of losing weight combined with sensible eating, trimming down to that size 8 or whatever is hard work too.
I don't do DDR becuase yes, it is harder than it looks and I feel stupid everytime I try. My friend has a DDR mat which she connects to her PC and she has a go at that but it's painstaking work to set it up, put the disc in and wait for it to load. Going out to the city to Intensity or Playtime is just too embarrassing because I'm terrible at it.
I dance, choreograph dance, do competition aerobics and play all sorts of team sports because it is just that much more fun and it's never monotonous and repetitive (no I'm not gay, I'm a girl - sorry but that stereotype exists, sadly). Unlike DDR, which I get bored of after about ten minutes, sport and dancing to music without jumping around on a crazy mat is a lot more appealing. Sure, DDR can improve your co-ordination skills and make you sweat a bit but that's about it in my opinion. You can achieve better co-ordination skills in playing sport as well as dancing and aerobics not to mention the benefits of flexibility, improved cardio-vascular system, creativity and social skills.
Of course, it's ultimately up to the individual. I understand that what is fun to me, isn't necessarily fun to everybody else, as there are other factors to account for such as fitness level, personal interests and expenses etc. There are so many ways to exercise it's not funny, so experimenting with different methods will surely find the right one for you.
By the way, try Capoeira - Brazilian martial arts which combines self-defence and dance!
pydance is another open source DDR clone, with support for all sorts of different mats and dance games.
They also have a good faq with information on what mats to buy, and how to convert a soft mat into a proper hard mat.
In true Slashdot style, I'm going to presumptively answer a request you didn't ask: "Help me lose weight."
Also, you're doing what I used to do, so I'm going to be harsh. Very.
YOU'RE PROCRASTIPLANNING!
Close your browser.
Now.
Do ANYTHING that works up a steady sweat for 30 minutes.
Then do it again tomorrow.
Unless you've exercised in the last 72 hours, researching "the best pad to get" (oh my god) is bullshit, and I think you know it. STFU and sweat. Now. Go on, scram. Posting questions to slashdot about exercise is like the salesman who optimizes his contact management software instead of picking up the damn phone.
Trust me. I know how good it feels to plan out the good things you're going to do. That way, you're not really procrastinating. No, no. You're preparing. The project is underway.
No, it's not. "Research" isn't "doing".
If your question to Ask Slashdot is anything other than delusion and procrastination, you will be sweating each of the next five days, whether or not you've (again, oh my god) found an "open source DDR-type program".
About what to eat...
There's a lot of confusion about how to eat to lose weight. Here's the nutshell.
Remember the 3 Cs...
Not easy, not simple, but straightfoward and effective.
Result: Your body has a steady supply of just-in-time fuel. This discourages fat storage, big time. It also prevents energy spikes and crashes, big time. The 5% deficit is pulled from the fat stored while you were procrastiplanning.
Am I a bodybuilder? No. Am I shredded? No. Am I a trainer? No. Was I a contract programmer for someone who was? Yeah.
(Attention detail-mongers and nitpickers: Shhh! Go do something useful! These are generalities!)
Godspeed, anonymous sweating guy. Stop planning and start sweating.
P.S. Feel free to curse that asshole Grabble all the while. Just as long as you're sweating.
Until you make losing weight a real priority in your life, you're never going to achieve much. (I don't really get the sense that the poster is ready to make it a priority)
Making it a priority inevitably means giving up other things... giving up time for exercise and/or giving up food to diet. I chose to go the time route because I love food too much. I give up about 10 hours a week to run now, which means I sometimes miss going out with friends, TV shows, reading time, etc.
However, it's not all bad news. When I finally decided to get off my ass, I joined a running club. Believe it or not, this group is almost more social than exercise ("a drinking club with a running problem") and there are runners of all abilities. Having a group of people sharing the pain really helps and we all encourage each other. These days, I actually look forward to the group runs and I'm constantly challenging myself to go faster.
Good luck... but the first step is really deciding to make health/weight loss a priority.
I bought an elliptical machine for my house and I have lost over 20 lbs now. I like ellipticals better than treadmills because they have much less impact which helps your knees.
You have to make exercising a priority or else you will get nowhere. I used to be about 10 lbs over my ideal weight, and now I'm 10 under and am in the maintenance mode (I don't want to lose anymore!). I have increased energy and feel great. I don't feel like such a sack of shit when I haul up loads of stairs.
Here are some things that helped me that might help you.
1) Drink only 0 calorie things. No pop, No juices. Just water or diet pops (I've actually developed a taste for Diet Pepsi after having hated the stuff all my life).
2) My workout routine is simply 25 minutes at max, 5 minutes cooldown. The machine tells me I'm doing about 200-240 watts. Equals about 400 calories burned when I'm done (though I think the calculation is a little off because other machines rate it higher, like 500). I work out every other day, usually at night when I get back from work. DO NOT SKIP A DAY. If you do, make it up by doing two in a row. I tend to eat at 6 o'clock or so, then I let my system digest and then I workout in the 8-9 hour. Throw in a DVD or charge up the iPod, and I'm kept busy.
3) Avoid high-calorie foods. Basically, eat whatever you want. No restrictions on fat or anything. But avoid super high-calorie foods. For example, don't buy an apple pie from McDonalds (they are like 500 calories!!).
First, you need a good pad. There's a Red Octane foam mat you can get for $100 that's pretty decent, or you can shell out $300 and get a Cobalt Flux/a pad which is pretty much indestructible (someone tested it by running it over with an SUV and it still worked perfectly).
Second, if you want to lose weight, you need to eat properly. A good gague is your body weight x 10 in calories per day. 40% of which must come from protein and carbs while 20% come from fats (you can change up numbers to suit your own body). Eat good fats found in Salmon/Flaxseed Oil and eat carbs low on the Glycemic Index (brown rice, natural oatmeal, vegetables, etc..)
Third, you need to workout. DDR is considered HIIT (high intensitiy interval training) which means you go through small bursts of aerobic activity. For example, you do a song on standard mode, your heart rate could get up to 90% of its max. When you're done, rest for a minute or two till your heart rate goes back down to 60-65% then start again. This cycle will cause your body to burn more fat than a steady cardio session.
I've actually compared 30 minutes of DDR vs. 45 minutes of aerobic exercise and DDR is by far the best. For me, I burned around 600 calories in 30 minutes as opposed to burning 600 over 45-60 minutes with regular cardio. On top of that, it's fun. Running on a treadmill is boring as hell and the time goes by so slow, but when you play the game and workout, time flies and before you know it, it's done.
As long as you eat properly and workout so that you have a 1000 calorie deficit a day, you should be able to lose 2 lbs of fat per week.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
As long as you are not the most creepy person in the gym, you're safe.
A lot of guys have a misguided idea of what "most creepy" means. Usually it means "most threatening". Most women have a creep-o-meter, and if you exceed the green zone they'll start to mind. Some women like to be looked at, but most of the pretty women shy away (and stop showing up) if they get stared at by anyone.
Appearances matter, but not the way you think. Good looks doesn't count as much as good hygene. Women usually don't mind a clean-cut guy, unless he's good looking or leering, both of which will get you marked as predatory.
If you don't want to scare women away in the gym, follow a few simple rules:
1. Don't look directly at them the first day that you notice them. Yes, I said DAY. If they're there on your next visit, then they're safe to briefly check out.
2. Never stare. If you don't get enough information from a breif glance, you need to come up with an excuse to talk to them. If you don't think you'll get anywhere talking to them, then staring will only make things worse.
3. Exercise while you're there. Don't just wander around, look exhausted, sit on a machine, set the weights, look exhausted, change to another machine, sit on it, look exhausted, play with the weights some more, maybe do a few slow reps, then go get a drink of water and stand around the fountain looking exhausted, (etc., etc., etc.) Women notice that kind of thing and quickly tune in to the fact that you aren't there for the machines, you're there for the people using the machines.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.