Hello, I am 49 yo turning 50 in July. I am 5'2" weighing in at 170 lbs. My goal is to lose 50 lbs this year.

Good luck to everyone on your weight loss journey. I too bought Xbox360 Kinect for weight loss. As our children have already grown up and moved away.

Let me give you a little background on myself, so that we can get better aquainted. When I was younger I was very thin weighing only 103 when I got pregnant with my son at the age of 21. I gained 50 pounds with each of my two pregnancies, but soon lost 95% of it after each. I then started to gain a little here and gain a little there. Before I knew it after I hit 30 I had gained about 30 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. I went on a strict carb diet and lost half of it getting down to 116 lbs. That caused so many problems with my body. All the things you can eat while doing a restrictive carb diet now make me swell up. All my favorites like cheese and pickles I have to limit. Once I hit 40, I went through a divorce and quit smoking, I gained another 30 pounds fairly quickly.

In 2008 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through a mastectomy then chemo. People think that you lose weight during chemo, but it is not true, due to the meds now, you actually gain weight. I spent the past 2 years going through a second mastectomy and numerous surgeries for reconstruction. I am finally at the end of my reconstruction with only one more procedure to go. Yipppeee I am so excited as it has been a long two years. I have just had my 2 years of being cancer free anniversary. Through all of this I have gained another 10 pounds. I lost 10 pounds last year by walking 10,000 steps a day and dancing on "In the Groove" on the pc, and eating better. Then I had another surgery and couldn't do much and got lazy. I have gained back all that I had lost before the surgery. I vowed to lose weight no matter what as I am now pre-diabetic. I have several health issues now, like high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, and high cholesterol. So all these factors make it very difficult to lose weight. I have a sedentary job, so I don't get much movement at work. Every bit of movement I get is after work. Although if it is really slow, I will walk for 30 mins to get some extra calorie burns.

Ok back to today. We bought the Xbox 360 Kinect for Christmas for myself to exercise, even though we bought the Xbox360 for my husband as he is a serious gamer. He doesn't get into the exercising part of it, but does enjoy the sports, adventures and kinectimals. He has tried DC once and gave up quickly as he felt silly. He has also tried YS with the yoga part of it. He doesn't need to lose any weight himself as he is thin already.

I have started to watch what I am eating which can be difficult as I am really sensitive to sodium and can retain 3-5 pounds of water in any given day and then it can take me almost 5 days just to lose the water weight. I am trying to do the Kinect games "Dance Central and Your Shape", every night but it is usually about 4 nights a week for an hour a night. I just bought Zumba, and have only tried it once. What an intense cardio workout that is. I think I will really like integrating that game into my routines. I am also thinking about getting the EA Active sports, as that is intriguing to me. I will probably buy a HRM for my workouts on Dance Central and Your Shape, as I believe their calorie counters are no where near accurate. I have Cardio Trainer app on my Droid X phone, which monitors my movements. I put my phone in my pocket and then do the Kinect, the calorie burns on that app are considerably higher than the games' monitor. Thank you for reading my blog as I will try to keep it updated as much as possible and do a weigh-in and measurements on Fridays, as the scale can sometimes not accurately tell you if you have lost inches.

Well last night I went and bought the EA Sports Active 2. Had a little time to mess around with it. Spent probably 20 mins setting it all up. Once I got it set up I started right in with my first program. I wasn't able to finish the workout because I was out of time, but the 10 mins that I did workout were great. On first impressions, I thought it was better than YS. I will probably still do the hoola hoop on YS, but I believe I will be spending most of my time doing EASA2 and Zumba and Dance Central. So excited......

Last night had my first real workout on EASA2, and all I can say is it definitely is a more interesting workout then YS. I worked my butt off. Played for 23 mins, and danced for 20 mins on DC. I have been kind of ill this week so have only gotten in 2 days of exercise. Did a weigh in this am and since I started out retaining water @ 171.4, I am now 169.8. So yeah... Wish me luck

Well it is a very slow process for me. I am now @ 169.4. I know my weigh-in isn't until Friday but I thought I would document it. That isn't too bad, since Valentine's Day, I had way too much food and sodium. Yuk. Been working hard to get rid of the water from just that one day. Didn't get to dance last night, stomach was acting up. But plan on doing it as soon as I get home from work today.

Wow what an echo in here!!!! lol I guess I am just doing this blog for myself. No biggie!!!! Weigh-in time. I had a setback last weekend as we had a dinner party and I drank about 3 glasses of wine. Made me swell all up. So it has taken me all week to get down to 168.4. But I guess it was better than last week.

I just read through your blog. Looks like your doing great. Nice and steady is the best way to go How do you like Zumba? Does it have any way of keeping track of the calories you burn?

Auntie Particle, thanks for the reply. I haven't done much of the Zumba yet. I have mainly been concentrating on the EA Active Sports2 and Dance Central. You see because of the Tamoxifen I take, I get a lot of hot flashes. As it is when I am dancing or doing the sports, I will get about 2 or 3 in an hour. When I do the Zumba, in 10 mins I will get 2. So I haven't spent much time on it. I would love to, but I think I am trying to lose a little weight first so that I don't have such a hard time exercising. I get winded pretty easy then it makes me hot and then I get a hot flash. So that being said, I am working my way up to Zumba with the more weight I lose. Oh and to answer your question, I don't think there is a way to keep track of your calories in Zumba. Thanks for reading my blog.

I've just bought the Kinect yesterday together with the EA Active Sports 2 and Dance Central. I'm going to dance now with some friends, but I bought it mainly for loosing weight, not entertaining guests.
I have to lose 60 lbs.

Anyway, just wanted to wish you luck, energy and high spirits!

Thank you PatinageArtistique, I need all the luck I can get... Good luck to you as well.
Since my last weighin, I have became a grandma. My son and daughter-in-law had a baby girl on Saturday Feb 26 in Seattle. They named her Ileana. I am so excited to go see her in 5 days. We are taking the Kinect with us, so I can continue to exercise while away on vacation. Plus it is fun to play with other people as well. Trying to talk my son into getting one himself. We'll see if I can sell him on it.
As for my weighin, I weighed 167.4 this am. This is what I weighed before Valentine's Day hit, then I gained about 3 pounds. It has taken me this long to get rid of it. It is going pretty slow but at least it is going. Have not been able to exercise much in the last two days on the Kinect because I am trying to get ready for our trip and had to finish sewing a couple things for the baby. Not sure how much I will get in this weekend, as I have to help my sister sew some things for a show she is going to next weekend. I just have to really watch my food intake so I don't go over...
So with that being said, Good luck everyone and we'll talk to you on the flip side.... ;^)