February 9, 2009 • 20 mins
With the advent of Wii Fit, consumers are coming to see video games as a way to get in shape, rather than fall into a sedentary lifestyle. Tune in to learn more about health and video games in this HowStuffWorks podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, everybody,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Pollette. I'm
an editor here at How Stuff Works, and sitting next
to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
(00:22):
they're big guy. Hey, you know that's a that's a
pretty sensitive spot for a lot of people talking about
big Yeah. Of course that's you know, it's the beginning
of the year or early in the year, so some
people are trying to uh follow through with that new
year's resolution and pounds. Yeah, and uh and of course
we're we cover text stuff obviously. Um. One of the
(00:45):
interesting things about technology isn't supposed to make our lives easier,
but one of the drawbacks is that by making our
lives easier, we tend to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.
I can't imagine what you would mean. You know, I'm
comfortable sitting at my desk for eight hours a day
staring at the monitor and then going home and playing
(01:06):
four or five hours. If we first unleashed It's funny
you had mentioned the Wei. Yeah, yeah, that we actually
Nintendo is really good about about tackling this problem. They
you know, when they designed the Wei, they came up
with an idea that they wanted to, uh, to target
this to sort of non traditional gaming communities. When you
(01:29):
think about video gamers, you often think about those guys
who have the headsets on with the microphone up and
they've got the control in their hands. They're leaning forward
and they're yelling obscenities into the mic as they gunned
down their friends online. And I mean, I know that's
how I am. But that would be the Xbox Crew.
That would be the Xbox Crew, and I you know
what represent But uh, Nintendo decided what they wanted to
(01:51):
do was stop competing with those guys and to create
a system that appealed to a broader audience. And so
that's wherein the we came out. They were like, you
know what, we want to concentrate on gameplay. We're not
concerned with being the most graphically advanced. We're not concerned
with having the best sound. Uh you know, we don't
care so much about all of those kind of elements.
(02:12):
We want to make a system that's fun for everyone.
To play, whether they have been playing video games since
they were three or if they're seven years old and
had never played a video game before. And they were
very successful with the Wii. In fact, it's still hard
to find a we sometimes. I mean you go to
these sometimes. Yeah, well once in a while you'll run
(02:34):
across one, but that's they're pretty rare. Well, they came
up with another great idea, which was this wonderful little
pad called the we Fit, and it's a it's a
combination of this, um, this this pad, what's really kind
of a console most uh that hooks up to your
we UM that has sensors in it, uh and some
(02:55):
exercise software and um and boy did that take off off.
As a matter of fact, I own we Fit, so
yes it you, Yes, I do. It's tell me that
the balance board is pretty cool because, um, when you
unwrap it and it requires its own set of batteries
(03:17):
and it sinks with the we using Bluetooth. Um and uh,
it's really kind of funny because what I didn't realize
when I first, you know, pulled it out of the
box and set it up, it's got a scale at it,
which you know, then one of the very first things
you do and we fit is you, you know, basically
put yourself in the game. You know, say this is me,
(03:37):
and it says, well, you know how tall are you? Well,
you know what kind of clothes are you wearing? Um?
And then it you know, it takes your weight and
uh it says well, and it gives you read out
of how heavy you are. And then it gives you
an idea of how you know your b m I,
which is the body mass index, which is theoretically, uh
reasonable facsimile of how healthy you are based on your weight.
(04:01):
And it also will make your me pudgy if you
happen to be carrying a few extra pounds. And we'll
also make your very small children worry about their weight,
as I'm finding out from personal experience, because I'm not
sure that they took young children into uh consideration, because
you know, you know any well, yeah, well let's just
(04:23):
say that that Mimi could substitute as a bowling ball. So, um,
that's not that violate. You're turning violent violent, It's not
that bad. I'm not that out of shape, but I'm
carrying around a few extra pounds. Uh, And um, you
know I haven't even created one on my we yet
because my wife and I are actually in the process
of converting our guest room into a digital exercise room.
(04:47):
Really yeah, and the we Fit is playing a major
role in that, in that uh plan. And so we
got we got a new plasma TV and we got
a the weef has a small plasma TV. We didn't
go out crazy. Actually I'm sorry, it was an l
c D. We couldn't afford the plasma. We went with
the l c D TV. Yeah yeah, um, so anyways,
(05:07):
an HDTV of any comming. It's pretty. And so we
got the We've got that. We've got the we Fit,
and then we picked up an extra Xbox, the old Xbox,
not the three sixty, so that we could hook up
and blow people away. No, no, we we have the
Dance Dance Revolution game pad as well, so it gets
(05:28):
you moving exactly. So you know that the we Fit
really is was designed specifically from the ground up as
a game and system that would allow you to exercise
and practice healthy habits. Um it's really you know, it's
just like any kind of exercise regiment. It's just part
(05:49):
of what you need to be doing in order to
have a healthy lifestyle. No, one should ever expect technology
to solve all their problems. It's going to take a
lot of work on your end to do it as well.
That's true. I mean, we Fit has a pretty decent
selection of yoga um in the game UM, which really
doesn't require you to you know, do a whole lot.
(06:11):
You do the yoga poses, which is very good, you know,
but so that's one part of it. And then it's
got some other things too where you can work on
your balance and posture. UM. All kinds of games like
walking on a tight rope or trying to get a
marble in a hole sort of like in that the
old Marble game where you had yeah or um, the
(06:34):
kind that the physical game where you had the two
different dimensions and you're trying to, uh to make the
ball roll down through the maze and into the hole
where you actually part. Yeah, I didn't go an a
long sorry um and uh, essentially you have to lean
a certain direction and it does help you with your balance.
But there there's a long distance running game and uh, okay,
(06:56):
let's be honest, you're basically jogging in place, UM and
it's not like you are going out and running a
ten k in real life or you know, or anything
like that. But again, sort of like D d R.
You do get up, you do get moving, maybe get
the heart rate up a little bit, right, So I
mean we're not talking. Yes, you don't get your heart
(07:17):
rate up a little bit, it's not bad. And uh
and they also have strength training as well. True, that's
done a little bit of that as well, not that
you could tell, but um so yeah, So going back
to the Dance Dance Revolution, now that that was a
game that was just sort of designed. It is this
fun interface where you know, you you follow the instructions
on the screen and try and you know, make sure
that you hit the pad in the right spot at
(07:38):
the right time the rhythm game. Um, but they also
have an exercise mode where it keeps track of how
many calories you're theoretically burning, assuming you're doing everything that
the screen is telling you to do and not just
sitting on the ground and hitting the pad while the
arrows come up. But um, the issue there is, you know,
do you get your heart rate up high enough and
(08:00):
sustain it long enough for it to be considered aerobic
exercise And a lot of people say not really, Um,
it's better than sitting still. Don't get me wrong. You know,
if if you're gonna be sitting still instead, it's better
than nothing, But it's it doesn't replace real exercise or
you know, or you know, like jogging or something like that. UM.
And some people will tell me, hey, you know, the
(08:22):
way I play Dance Dance Revolution, my heart rate gets racing,
and that that could be true. I'm talking about kind
of generalities here, UM, so that those are like, you know,
you can actually use video games to help you stay
healthy or even get in shape. But that's not the
only tech we can talk about, you know. Actually, UM,
it's not even the only WE game. Uh. We Fit
(08:42):
It's not sorry, not Dance Dance Revolution. We Fit is
not even the only WE software that helps you with
or attempts to help you with your fitness level. UM
would be soft has a whole series of might fill
in the blank hare coach um. You know, they have
my word code, my Spanish coach UM, but for for
the Wei, they have my fitness coach UM and it's
(09:06):
got a similar kind of feel to it. UM. It
helps you work on weight loss, upper body, lower body strength,
your flexibility, cardio fitness, and it offers um, different kinds
of activities like yoga, pilates, kickboxing, UM, strength training, and
a weight loss routine. And they even have one for
the Nintendo DS called My Weight Loss Coach and it
(09:29):
even works with It comes with the pedometer to get
you walking and uh basic based on your nutrition and
your physical activity. It kind of helps you. It kind
of gives you some guidance trying to to work on
weight loss. Right it becomes a virtual personal trainer. Really
yeah yeah, and um, that actually reminds me of another
product that you mentioned to me. And Uh, I don't
(09:49):
know if you've had a lot of time to to
look it up, but the body bug remember that. I
do remember that. Yeah, I haven't had chance to look
at it at all. I heard what it's supposed to do,
and I was immediately curious and a little skeptical. Well
I can understand why when I actually went to the
site to look at it. Um, it's a it's a
(10:11):
an electronic device by Apex Fitness, and it it monitors
the calories you burn. Um, it's actually a little thing
that you wear in your arm, and electronic device you
wear in your arm, and uh, it's got an accelerometer
in it. It measures your heat flux and your galvanic
skin response and your skin temperature, so it's a biometric
(10:31):
device as well. Essentially, yes, it's UM. It's calculating how
much you're sweating, how warm you are, and the accelerometer
is is judging how much you're moving. UM. So if
you can, you know, get your arm wet and warm
and then move it around a lot, it will think
you're losing weight. So if you were to say, step
(10:51):
outside in June in Atlanta, it would think you were
losing weight. I'm making jokes because I don't. It's actually
gotten some ray of reviews UM, but it's actually more
than just that. Really, there's a there's a service, UM,
a web program that has UH that where you log
your food, what you're eating. UM. You tell it basically
(11:14):
your age, your gender, your height, and your weight, and
based on the information that you get back from the
arm monitor, it can sort of give you an idea
of a you know where you are, how much you're
actually using as far as you know you're supposed to have,
for example, a thousand calories a day and you're taking
in twelve calories a day and you're only burning eight hundred.
(11:36):
Well you're gaining weight in that situation. Um, so it
can kind of give you an idea. It's like, yes,
you are burning calories, No, you're not burning calories. Um.
And it will also if you sign up for a subscription,
a six month subscription, you actually get to talk to somebody.
You get a phone session with an expert who can
kind of help you through the process. They even have
(11:57):
they had three basic levels. You can buy the you
can just get the web program without any of the
digital stuff. The gear itself for nine dollars. That's the
six month subscription, and then um with the arm man
it's two forty nine. And then there's even a digital
wrist monitor that gives you an idea of what's what's
going on at ending given time so that you don't
(12:18):
have to you know, I guess download the information. Uh.
But that's um almost three fifty so it's uh, it's
not inexpensive, but you know, if it works as well
as the reviews say, it might be something worth looking into.
I mean, especially if you're actually going out and getting
some exercise and not as we were joking about, trying
(12:40):
to fool the monitor into believing that your exercise. Yeah,
what's the point at that point? Yeah, would be like
if you spent three on a wristband and I hope
you're not trying to cheat it. Well, that would be
like the we fit and doing the running long distance
running thing. Really all you have to do is shake
the remote upside, you know, up and down, and you're
fooling it into thinking you're running self. That it really
(13:00):
kind of defeats the purpose I made it think I
lost weight by putting my checkistile terrier on it and
saying it was me. I'm not very healthy. Apparently I've
lost everything but my head. But you, but you work
like a dog. I do. I do. I like one too.
So um we well that that's a pretty expensive way.
(13:22):
But let's say that you already have um well, let's
say that you were one of those people who bought
an iPhone. There are several iPhone apps that are geared
geared towards weight loss. Um, I have a few, actually,
I can mention there's a several that are more about
you know, your nutrition and what in your diet. For instance,
Restaurant Nutrition is a free application that you can get.
(13:44):
It has information nutritional information for foods, from various restaurant chains,
so things like RBS and McDonald's or Chilies or whatever,
big nationwide chains. It has information on the basic foods
you find there, so you can kind of get an
eye idea of you know, should I really get that whopper?
UM this will tell you no, No, you shouldn't, but
(14:08):
I could come in yeah. But there are other ones.
There's the livestrong dot com calorie tracker that that logs
calories um and uh it will tell you how many.
It's kind of similar to the what you were talking
about with the body Bug. Um it lets you log calories,
tells you how many calories you would lose through exercise.
If you know you you tell it how much you've
(14:30):
exercise that day. Um so essentially tracks your caloric intake
and tells you whether or not you're taking in more
calories or you're burning up more calories. It's a good
way to kind of keep track of how you're doing
from that perspective. But there are other ones as well.
There's um Eye Fitness that lets you create and organize
a workout routine so that you can target whatever body
(14:51):
parts you specifically want to target when you're working out.
Um Jim goal Light, which is another similar UH application.
It also lets you create workouts UM. And then there's
run Keeper, which some of the people here at our
office probably would like. We've got some marathon runners in
our office. UM And run Keeper uses the GPS and
(15:13):
the iPhone to keep track of your location when you're running,
so it can tell you how far you ran. It
can kind of give you an estimation of how fast
you ran. It can even create a map of your
route the route that you ran, including things like elevation
like if you went up hills and things like that,
and it can tell you kind of all this information
(15:33):
give you a complete rundown. Now, that could be very
helpful for someone who is training for something like a marathon,
you know, especially if you're you know the route of
the marathon ahead of time, and you know, hey, you
know what, there's a mile and a half long UH
stretch where it's a slight upgrade. I need to train
so that I hit an upgrade at that time, so
(15:54):
I know that my body is ready to go through
that kind of torture. So run Keeper can actually help
you out with that. Speaking for a personal experience, that's
really important to remember whether or not they're hills. Yeah,
I would imagine, so I don't run unless someone is
chasing me. Yeah, every other day. I was gonna say
it's probably fairly often. Yeah. UM. You'll notice that that
(16:17):
a lot of these have similar themes, basically tracking what
you eat and exercise. Really those are those are going
to be something that you'll find in virtually all of
these products, and UM, you know, I think one of
the advantages that some of these things have, UM, is
that they make it fun to to work on your way.
(16:38):
I mean, we're you guys who are listening to us,
UM are tech people. So you're the kind of person
or you're the kind of people who like to to
mess with gadgets and software and things. UM, if you're
the kind of person who wants to lose weight, looking
into something like this might be good because if it
can make it more enjoyable for you to stick with
the program, you're probably more likely to uh to actually
(17:00):
lose some weight and get into a healthy routine. And
that's that's what virtually all of these is is about. Yeah,
it really helps your with your motivation. Like we said before,
a lot of this actually most of it depends upon you. Um,
so if you bring it, they can help you out.
But I have one other tech. I'm betting that because
(17:22):
I was going to mention it too. Yeah, there's your
particularly involved with sitting at your computer, and right, there's
one gadget that we would be remiss if we did
not mention it when we're talking about getting in touch,
and that is of course, go ahead, Chris. The Hula chair. Yes,
the Hulu chair, also known as the Hawaiian chair. If
you have not seen the videos, go to YouTube, type
(17:45):
in Hulu chair and h don't drink anything at all
when the video comes up, because you will lose it completely. Um.
I'm not really convinced that this does anything other than
give your anyone who looks at you full immunition to
make fun of you for the foreseeable future. But um,
(18:05):
and I mean this as a compliment, even to the manufacturer.
It's really funny. Yeah, it's The entertainment value cannot be overstated.
There's no way you could go beyond. Is it even
better than the the virtual bowl riding thing? C. S
(18:26):
two thousand eight Pletni Long day at Ces. We're looking around,
we come to this uh booth that's filled with massage chairs,
which kinds of massage, and they were very, very enticing
at that point of the day. But they also had
a saddle, an electronic saddle, yeah, like a mechanical bowl,
(18:47):
but without the bowl, just the saddle part. And the
idea is that you sat on it and then you
would try and stay not not like trying to stay
on it, because it wasn't going to try and buck
you off, but that you try to keep your you know,
artical base, try and stay upright, and that that would
work your muscles. Um. Really it was. It depended on
(19:07):
who got up there, whether or not it was really
funny or you know, you felt uncomfortable watching. I'm just
gonna leave it at that. Well, that's a great discussion
about tech getting in shape. So I would like to
invite our listeners. If you want to us to talk
about specific topic or you have comments on something that
(19:28):
we've already addressed, please write to us. We have a
great email address just for us now. It's called tech
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and we would
love to hear from you. We really enjoy when we
get to cater these to our listeners. Otherwise it's just
me and Chris sitting around saying Hu, why do you
think to be fun to talk about? So? Uh? And
(19:49):
if you want to learn more about a lot of
these items, we have information on many of the things
we've talked about already up live right now at how
stuff works dot com. And we'll talk to a again soon. Now,
let's let's go exercise the hit the track all right,
all right. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com, brought to you by
(20:14):
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, everybody,
welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Pollette. I'm
an editor here at How Stuff Works, and sitting next
to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
(00:22):
they're big guy. Hey, you know that's a that's a
pretty sensitive spot for a lot of people talking about
big Yeah. Of course that's you know, it's the beginning
of the year or early in the year, so some
people are trying to uh follow through with that new
year's resolution and pounds. Yeah, and uh and of course
we're we cover text stuff obviously. Um. One of the
(00:45):
interesting things about technology isn't supposed to make our lives easier,
but one of the drawbacks is that by making our
lives easier, we tend to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.
I can't imagine what you would mean. You know, I'm
comfortable sitting at my desk for eight hours a day
staring at the monitor and then going home and playing
(01:06):
four or five hours. If we first unleashed It's funny
you had mentioned the Wei. Yeah, yeah, that we actually
Nintendo is really good about about tackling this problem. They
you know, when they designed the Wei, they came up
with an idea that they wanted to, uh, to target
this to sort of non traditional gaming communities. When you
(01:29):
think about video gamers, you often think about those guys
who have the headsets on with the microphone up and
they've got the control in their hands. They're leaning forward
and they're yelling obscenities into the mic as they gunned
down their friends online. And I mean, I know that's
how I am. But that would be the Xbox Crew.
That would be the Xbox Crew, and I you know
what represent But uh, Nintendo decided what they wanted to
(01:51):
do was stop competing with those guys and to create
a system that appealed to a broader audience. And so
that's wherein the we came out. They were like, you
know what, we want to concentrate on gameplay. We're not
concerned with being the most graphically advanced. We're not concerned
with having the best sound. Uh you know, we don't
care so much about all of those kind of elements.
(02:12):
We want to make a system that's fun for everyone.
To play, whether they have been playing video games since
they were three or if they're seven years old and
had never played a video game before. And they were
very successful with the Wii. In fact, it's still hard
to find a we sometimes. I mean you go to
these sometimes. Yeah, well once in a while you'll run
(02:34):
across one, but that's they're pretty rare. Well, they came
up with another great idea, which was this wonderful little
pad called the we Fit, and it's a it's a
combination of this, um, this this pad, what's really kind
of a console most uh that hooks up to your
we UM that has sensors in it, uh and some
(02:55):
exercise software and um and boy did that take off off.
As a matter of fact, I own we Fit, so
yes it you, Yes, I do. It's tell me that
the balance board is pretty cool because, um, when you
unwrap it and it requires its own set of batteries
(03:17):
and it sinks with the we using Bluetooth. Um and uh,
it's really kind of funny because what I didn't realize
when I first, you know, pulled it out of the
box and set it up, it's got a scale at it,
which you know, then one of the very first things
you do and we fit is you, you know, basically
put yourself in the game. You know, say this is me,
(03:37):
and it says, well, you know how tall are you? Well,
you know what kind of clothes are you wearing? Um?
And then it you know, it takes your weight and
uh it says well, and it gives you read out
of how heavy you are. And then it gives you
an idea of how you know your b m I,
which is the body mass index, which is theoretically, uh
reasonable facsimile of how healthy you are based on your weight.
(04:01):
And it also will make your me pudgy if you
happen to be carrying a few extra pounds. And we'll
also make your very small children worry about their weight,
as I'm finding out from personal experience, because I'm not
sure that they took young children into uh consideration, because
you know, you know any well, yeah, well let's just
(04:23):
say that that Mimi could substitute as a bowling ball. So, um,
that's not that violate. You're turning violent violent, It's not
that bad. I'm not that out of shape, but I'm
carrying around a few extra pounds. Uh, And um, you
know I haven't even created one on my we yet
because my wife and I are actually in the process
of converting our guest room into a digital exercise room.
(04:47):
Really yeah, and the we Fit is playing a major
role in that, in that uh plan. And so we
got we got a new plasma TV and we got
a the weef has a small plasma TV. We didn't
go out crazy. Actually I'm sorry, it was an l
c D. We couldn't afford the plasma. We went with
the l c D TV. Yeah yeah, um, so anyways,
(05:07):
an HDTV of any comming. It's pretty. And so we
got the We've got that. We've got the we Fit,
and then we picked up an extra Xbox, the old Xbox,
not the three sixty, so that we could hook up
and blow people away. No, no, we we have the
Dance Dance Revolution game pad as well, so it gets
(05:28):
you moving exactly. So you know that the we Fit
really is was designed specifically from the ground up as
a game and system that would allow you to exercise
and practice healthy habits. Um it's really you know, it's
just like any kind of exercise regiment. It's just part
(05:49):
of what you need to be doing in order to
have a healthy lifestyle. No, one should ever expect technology
to solve all their problems. It's going to take a
lot of work on your end to do it as well.
That's true. I mean, we Fit has a pretty decent
selection of yoga um in the game UM, which really
doesn't require you to you know, do a whole lot.
(06:11):
You do the yoga poses, which is very good, you know,
but so that's one part of it. And then it's
got some other things too where you can work on
your balance and posture. UM. All kinds of games like
walking on a tight rope or trying to get a
marble in a hole sort of like in that the
old Marble game where you had yeah or um, the
(06:34):
kind that the physical game where you had the two
different dimensions and you're trying to, uh to make the
ball roll down through the maze and into the hole
where you actually part. Yeah, I didn't go an a
long sorry um and uh, essentially you have to lean
a certain direction and it does help you with your balance.
But there there's a long distance running game and uh, okay,
(06:56):
let's be honest, you're basically jogging in place, UM and
it's not like you are going out and running a
ten k in real life or you know, or anything
like that. But again, sort of like D d R.
You do get up, you do get moving, maybe get
the heart rate up a little bit, right, So I
mean we're not talking. Yes, you don't get your heart
(07:17):
rate up a little bit, it's not bad. And uh
and they also have strength training as well. True, that's
done a little bit of that as well, not that
you could tell, but um so yeah, So going back
to the Dance Dance Revolution, now that that was a
game that was just sort of designed. It is this
fun interface where you know, you you follow the instructions
on the screen and try and you know, make sure
that you hit the pad in the right spot at
(07:38):
the right time the rhythm game. Um, but they also
have an exercise mode where it keeps track of how
many calories you're theoretically burning, assuming you're doing everything that
the screen is telling you to do and not just
sitting on the ground and hitting the pad while the
arrows come up. But um, the issue there is, you know,
do you get your heart rate up high enough and
(08:00):
sustain it long enough for it to be considered aerobic
exercise And a lot of people say not really, Um,
it's better than sitting still. Don't get me wrong. You know,
if if you're gonna be sitting still instead, it's better
than nothing, But it's it doesn't replace real exercise or
you know, or you know, like jogging or something like that. UM.
And some people will tell me, hey, you know, the
(08:22):
way I play Dance Dance Revolution, my heart rate gets racing,
and that that could be true. I'm talking about kind
of generalities here, UM, so that those are like, you know,
you can actually use video games to help you stay
healthy or even get in shape. But that's not the
only tech we can talk about, you know. Actually, UM,
it's not even the only WE game. Uh. We Fit
(08:42):
It's not sorry, not Dance Dance Revolution. We Fit is
not even the only WE software that helps you with
or attempts to help you with your fitness level. UM
would be soft has a whole series of might fill
in the blank hare coach um. You know, they have
my word code, my Spanish coach UM, but for for
the Wei, they have my fitness coach UM and it's
(09:06):
got a similar kind of feel to it. UM. It
helps you work on weight loss, upper body, lower body strength,
your flexibility, cardio fitness, and it offers um, different kinds
of activities like yoga, pilates, kickboxing, UM, strength training, and
a weight loss routine. And they even have one for
the Nintendo DS called My Weight Loss Coach and it
(09:29):
even works with It comes with the pedometer to get
you walking and uh basic based on your nutrition and
your physical activity. It kind of helps you. It kind
of gives you some guidance trying to to work on
weight loss. Right it becomes a virtual personal trainer. Really
yeah yeah, and um, that actually reminds me of another
product that you mentioned to me. And Uh, I don't
(09:49):
know if you've had a lot of time to to
look it up, but the body bug remember that. I
do remember that. Yeah, I haven't had chance to look
at it at all. I heard what it's supposed to do,
and I was immediately curious and a little skeptical. Well
I can understand why when I actually went to the
site to look at it. Um, it's a it's a
(10:11):
an electronic device by Apex Fitness, and it it monitors
the calories you burn. Um, it's actually a little thing
that you wear in your arm, and electronic device you
wear in your arm, and uh, it's got an accelerometer
in it. It measures your heat flux and your galvanic
skin response and your skin temperature, so it's a biometric
(10:31):
device as well. Essentially, yes, it's UM. It's calculating how
much you're sweating, how warm you are, and the accelerometer
is is judging how much you're moving. UM. So if
you can, you know, get your arm wet and warm
and then move it around a lot, it will think
you're losing weight. So if you were to say, step
(10:51):
outside in June in Atlanta, it would think you were
losing weight. I'm making jokes because I don't. It's actually
gotten some ray of reviews UM, but it's actually more
than just that. Really, there's a there's a service, UM,
a web program that has UH that where you log
your food, what you're eating. UM. You tell it basically
(11:14):
your age, your gender, your height, and your weight, and
based on the information that you get back from the
arm monitor, it can sort of give you an idea
of a you know where you are, how much you're
actually using as far as you know you're supposed to have,
for example, a thousand calories a day and you're taking
in twelve calories a day and you're only burning eight hundred.
(11:36):
Well you're gaining weight in that situation. Um, so it
can kind of give you an idea. It's like, yes,
you are burning calories, No, you're not burning calories. Um.
And it will also if you sign up for a subscription,
a six month subscription, you actually get to talk to somebody.
You get a phone session with an expert who can
kind of help you through the process. They even have
(11:57):
they had three basic levels. You can buy the you
can just get the web program without any of the
digital stuff. The gear itself for nine dollars. That's the
six month subscription, and then um with the arm man
it's two forty nine. And then there's even a digital
wrist monitor that gives you an idea of what's what's
going on at ending given time so that you don't
(12:18):
have to you know, I guess download the information. Uh.
But that's um almost three fifty so it's uh, it's
not inexpensive, but you know, if it works as well
as the reviews say, it might be something worth looking into.
I mean, especially if you're actually going out and getting
some exercise and not as we were joking about, trying
(12:40):
to fool the monitor into believing that your exercise. Yeah,
what's the point at that point? Yeah, would be like
if you spent three on a wristband and I hope
you're not trying to cheat it. Well, that would be
like the we fit and doing the running long distance
running thing. Really all you have to do is shake
the remote upside, you know, up and down, and you're
fooling it into thinking you're running self. That it really
(13:00):
kind of defeats the purpose I made it think I
lost weight by putting my checkistile terrier on it and
saying it was me. I'm not very healthy. Apparently I've
lost everything but my head. But you, but you work
like a dog. I do. I do. I like one too.
So um we well that that's a pretty expensive way.
(13:22):
But let's say that you already have um well, let's
say that you were one of those people who bought
an iPhone. There are several iPhone apps that are geared
geared towards weight loss. Um, I have a few, actually,
I can mention there's a several that are more about
you know, your nutrition and what in your diet. For instance,
Restaurant Nutrition is a free application that you can get.
(13:44):
It has information nutritional information for foods, from various restaurant chains,
so things like RBS and McDonald's or Chilies or whatever,
big nationwide chains. It has information on the basic foods
you find there, so you can kind of get an
eye idea of you know, should I really get that whopper?
UM this will tell you no, No, you shouldn't, but
(14:08):
I could come in yeah. But there are other ones.
There's the livestrong dot com calorie tracker that that logs
calories um and uh it will tell you how many.
It's kind of similar to the what you were talking
about with the body Bug. Um it lets you log calories,
tells you how many calories you would lose through exercise.
If you know you you tell it how much you've
(14:30):
exercise that day. Um so essentially tracks your caloric intake
and tells you whether or not you're taking in more
calories or you're burning up more calories. It's a good
way to kind of keep track of how you're doing
from that perspective. But there are other ones as well.
There's um Eye Fitness that lets you create and organize
a workout routine so that you can target whatever body
(14:51):
parts you specifically want to target when you're working out.
Um Jim goal Light, which is another similar UH application.
It also lets you create workouts UM. And then there's
run Keeper, which some of the people here at our
office probably would like. We've got some marathon runners in
our office. UM And run Keeper uses the GPS and
(15:13):
the iPhone to keep track of your location when you're running,
so it can tell you how far you ran. It
can kind of give you an estimation of how fast
you ran. It can even create a map of your
route the route that you ran, including things like elevation
like if you went up hills and things like that,
and it can tell you kind of all this information
(15:33):
give you a complete rundown. Now, that could be very
helpful for someone who is training for something like a marathon,
you know, especially if you're you know the route of
the marathon ahead of time, and you know, hey, you
know what, there's a mile and a half long UH
stretch where it's a slight upgrade. I need to train
so that I hit an upgrade at that time, so
(15:54):
I know that my body is ready to go through
that kind of torture. So run Keeper can actually help
you out with that. Speaking for a personal experience, that's
really important to remember whether or not they're hills. Yeah,
I would imagine, so I don't run unless someone is
chasing me. Yeah, every other day. I was gonna say
it's probably fairly often. Yeah. UM. You'll notice that that
(16:17):
a lot of these have similar themes, basically tracking what
you eat and exercise. Really those are those are going
to be something that you'll find in virtually all of
these products, and UM, you know, I think one of
the advantages that some of these things have, UM, is
that they make it fun to to work on your way.
(16:38):
I mean, we're you guys who are listening to us,
UM are tech people. So you're the kind of person
or you're the kind of people who like to to
mess with gadgets and software and things. UM, if you're
the kind of person who wants to lose weight, looking
into something like this might be good because if it
can make it more enjoyable for you to stick with
the program, you're probably more likely to uh to actually
(17:00):
lose some weight and get into a healthy routine. And
that's that's what virtually all of these is is about. Yeah,
it really helps your with your motivation. Like we said before,
a lot of this actually most of it depends upon you. Um,
so if you bring it, they can help you out.
But I have one other tech. I'm betting that because
(17:22):
I was going to mention it too. Yeah, there's your
particularly involved with sitting at your computer, and right, there's
one gadget that we would be remiss if we did
not mention it when we're talking about getting in touch,
and that is of course, go ahead, Chris. The Hula chair. Yes,
the Hulu chair, also known as the Hawaiian chair. If
you have not seen the videos, go to YouTube, type
(17:45):
in Hulu chair and h don't drink anything at all
when the video comes up, because you will lose it completely. Um.
I'm not really convinced that this does anything other than
give your anyone who looks at you full immunition to
make fun of you for the foreseeable future. But um,
(18:05):
and I mean this as a compliment, even to the manufacturer.
It's really funny. Yeah, it's The entertainment value cannot be overstated.
There's no way you could go beyond. Is it even
better than the the virtual bowl riding thing? C. S
(18:26):
two thousand eight Pletni Long day at Ces. We're looking around,
we come to this uh booth that's filled with massage chairs,
which kinds of massage, and they were very, very enticing
at that point of the day. But they also had
a saddle, an electronic saddle, yeah, like a mechanical bowl,
(18:47):
but without the bowl, just the saddle part. And the
idea is that you sat on it and then you
would try and stay not not like trying to stay
on it, because it wasn't going to try and buck
you off, but that you try to keep your you know,
artical base, try and stay upright, and that that would
work your muscles. Um. Really it was. It depended on
(19:07):
who got up there, whether or not it was really
funny or you know, you felt uncomfortable watching. I'm just
gonna leave it at that. Well, that's a great discussion
about tech getting in shape. So I would like to
invite our listeners. If you want to us to talk
about specific topic or you have comments on something that
(19:28):
we've already addressed, please write to us. We have a
great email address just for us now. It's called tech
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and we would
love to hear from you. We really enjoy when we
get to cater these to our listeners. Otherwise it's just
me and Chris sitting around saying Hu, why do you
think to be fun to talk about? So? Uh? And
(19:49):
if you want to learn more about a lot of
these items, we have information on many of the things
we've talked about already up live right now at how
stuff works dot com. And we'll talk to a again soon. Now,
let's let's go exercise the hit the track all right,
all right. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com, brought to you by
(20:14):
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