My new fitness toy!

I've been debating on buying a calorie counter/heart rate monitor for awhile now.  When I was steadily at the gym last summer I was researching and looking into them and now I really wish I had gotten one.  I really want to know how many calories I'm burning each day!  It turns out we had a little bit of money leftover from our tax return, ya know, after putting money away to savings, for vacation, for church and for some car repairs.  It's like the one time of the year we can splurge on ourselves just a bit (we're talking $100 each here - whoopdidoo!), but we look forward to being able to get something we've really wanted without feeling guilty about spending the money.  Last year I got a cricut and Matt paid for an entire years worth of Sirius/XM.  This year he is renewing his subscription and I got myself a fitbit and Zumba 2 for the wii! 



I did a little bit of reading again on different monitors, the fitbit, the bodybugg, the jawbone up, and body media just to name a few.  They are all basically the same, as in they count calories, steps walked, some, including the fitbit, monitor your sleeping (which I'm quite curious about because I wake up every morning at 3:30 and can't fall back asleep), etc.  So I jumped on it and got myself a fitbit and thanks to amazon's free two day shipping, I hope to have it by midweek!  I even splurged and got myself the pretty plum colored one!

Wanting to up my activity level this week, I was considering going back to zumba at my gym twice a week in the evenings.  But the classes are not at a convenient time for our family.  We would have to rush to eat dinner and get out the door to be there by 6:30 and then when it's over it would be immediate bedtime for them once we got home.  I've already cut back on some things in my life to have some more "time" and I don't want to hinder it, especially the girl's!  So I was thinking that since I do my C25K training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I would do zumba at home on Tuesday and Thursday mornings!  I didn't even know there was a zumba 2, I saw it when I googled reviews for the first one!  I read the reviews and watched actual demos and reviews on youtube and can't wait to get it this week (thanks again to free 2-day shipping at amazon!)! 

I really can't wait to combine the fitbit with the C25K and zumba and hopefully see the weight come off a little faster than what I mentioned in my C25K week 3 update.  Have you ever used a fitness monitor? What about using the wii (or xbox or ps3) for exercise?