Working out is really hard, why didn’t anyone tell me this? Or even more bothersome to me, how do gyms stay in business? Clearly I’m missing some large part of the mental process that leads to people spending five thousand dollars a year to be tortured three nights a week.

My first week of video gamercising has been both very fun and very painful.

First the bad news. My initial goal of six straight nights of sweaty limb waving turned out to be optimistic on my part. Due to conflicting family responsibilities and just being plain wrecked from my initial exertions I managed three nights of hourly work outs. Although in my pitiful defence I did spend another night walking a huge out of control bull mastiff named Boss with a bullet wound on his head (that’s a story for another time) who had two leads and a harness and required all my strength not to be dragged around like a piñata.

This week I hope to up my game to four consecutive nights and stagger increases in time spent exercising over the next few weeks.

The good news. I’ve dropped five kilos all ready. That’s two weeks no sugar or bread and one week of exercising which I’m pretty damn jazzed about. My work pants are all ready getting loose and I’ve moved a belt notch. I’ve done my research so I know the initial big loss is usually water as my body adjust to a new diet and exercise and to expect future losses to be tougher to achieve, but it’s a rocking start.

My first two nights were with Kinect Adventures. The adventure exercises turned out to be a good mix of low intensity stretching exercises mixed with more intensive jumping and squatting that had me sweating like a nun reading the love letters off James Joyce (note for the prudent minded, do not google the love letters of James Joyce, we Irish poets are dirty minded). On the third night Kinect Sports gave me a serious thrashing; an hour spent boxing left me with aching shoulders and upper arms, and completely out of breath. I went straight to champion difficulty for half an hour and then spent another half an hour getting virtually punched out by my kids. I cooled down with 15 minutes of soccer where I barely managed to redeem myself.

It’s pretty clear that these titles alone aren’t going to sustain me for ten weeks. I’m over halfway through the content of Kinect Adventures. I’ve got Dance Central and was planning on hiring out UFC Trainer for week three and I’ll start a forum thread for people to leave suggestions and share information. I’ve had The Fight for the PS Move recommended to me as well which is tempting to splash out for as I do not own Playstation Move controllers yet (are you reading Sony? Free publicity). Love me some punching games.