Exercise, Lose Weight With 'Exergaming'

As the beeps and whistles emanate from the family room, are you afraid Junior is going to develop thumbs the size of bananas and a belly to match?

According to Judith Sherman-Wolin, exercise specialist with the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and author of Smart Girls Do Dumbbells, dietary guidelines may come and go, but the one constant is exercise. Over half of Americans don't get enough (now pegged at 30 minutes to an hour a day), and a quarter of us are total taters.

But -- get this -- what if playing video games did provide some exercise? Some do! It's a new trend called "exergaming" or "exertainment."

The jam-packed hit of this year's Consumer Electronics Show was a "Cardio PlayZone," featuring some of the new workout and movement video contraptions.

Dance Dance Revolution

DDR, as its many aficionados hiply call it, runs on the Xbox platform. This started out as an arcade game, played on a floor display sort of like an amped-up Twister. The system is loaded with catchy tunes and can be calibrated to different levels of intensity as the players dance to the pattern, either individually or competitively. When the manufacturer, Konami of Japan, migrated it to PlayStation in April of 1999, 3 million copies flew off the shelves.

"I am familiar with DDR," Cedric Bryant, PhD, chief exercise physiologist for the American Council on Exercise, tells WebMD. "My four boys play it. It can be strenuous and can really get your heart rate up. It has different levels of intensity." (Reportedly, there is even a module for the Lawrence Welk -- make that Rod Stewart -- set.)

Nicktoons Movin'

Sherman-Wolin once was asked to do an energy expenditure study on Nicktoons Movin', a game played on the PlayStation2 Eyetoy platform. "I tried it," she says. "It was fun."

Atop the TV is a motion-sensitive Eyetoy USB camera that allows the players to sort of "jump inside" the game.

The games and characters are based on Nickelodeon characters and "hosted" by SpongeBob SquarePants. Up to eight players wildly move their arms to fix Cosmo and Wanda's fishbowl, go for a drive with Mrs. Puff, help Timmy smash robots, go bowling with SpongeBob, and other cartoonishly entrancing activities.

Did smashing virtual robots really up the heart rate? Sherman-Wolin says yes. Fifteen percent of kids aged 6 to 19 are overweight, she notes. If sitting still and watching TV consumed 16 calories an hour for the average 55-pound 8-year-old and standing only expended 20 calories, sweating with the Spongester burned 50 calories.

"I liken it to Ping Pong," she says. "You are sort of standing there and sort of moving at the same time."

Golf Launchpad

In this one, back off, kiddies, you use your own golf clubs to play 800 of the most challenging golf courses in the world. The USB game controller package runs on PC and Mac platforms and is coming to PlayStation. Tiger Woods gaming software is included, and it can also be used with Microsoft's Links.