100,000 calorie resolution, are you game?

[prayerwarrior35]

My resolution for 2007 is to track 100,000 minimum calories burned of DDR ALONE.

Would anyone like to join, my wife and I will do it together.

We'll be using StepMania 4.0 with an ITG theme which records how many songs you play in any mode, and how many calories you burned. This way progress is recorded and can be viewed at any time with no effort. Post if your interested and I can help you get setup, make sure you are willing to purchase a USB dance pad and can run SM4.0 on your PC (minimum specs).

[xstatic]

Roughly 300 cal a day. I think that's doable. You don't neeeeed those specs to play. Peoiple could turn on workout mode and cal count at home on any of their games. It's highly inaccurate, sure... but it's more about the goal of getting up and moving (cliche I know) than anything else.

You can always count me in.

[The Charming Canuck]

Sounds cool, I am game...

[prayerwarrior35]

Xstatic, well that's true, but then you would have to manually add up every day's worth of playing, and the calorie counters are usually skewed higher. This one on SM4.0 seems to be the most realistic. Not to mention you don't have to play in workout mode which bores me immensely.

My personal song library is 3537 songs, and takes up 17GB (loads of music vids) I have it on 4-DVDs and I wouldn't mind sharing with a few people.

We could even have meetups on StepMania Online and play as a group if a few are interested. It's an amazingly fun way to workout especially if we all had the same songlist. Best situation would be if I could send it to one person and they sent it to the next to install.

However your cliche is 100% correct and I honor that, I'm just a total DDR freak and love to have it all.

[xstatic]

I'm not really into SMO. (and my computer room isn't suitble for my dance equip) But I can easilly count cals.... some of the newer versions will cal count for you even when not in workout mode, and if you have a usb drive that will count the cals for you on the ITG cab.... once again...inaccurate, I know, but I still believe that it will be fun to achieve. I like goals. ;D

[prayerwarrior35]

I just tried to play SMO tonight, those people are all keyboarders and it totally kills the fun

I think I remember SuperNova having a calorie counter in all modes, I rarely touch all my PS DDR/ITG games since I have all the songs in StepMania.

If you don't mind, I would like to keep track of this 100,000 task over at www.ddrextreme.co.uk in this thread ddrextreme.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2025&highlight= you have to be a member to read the forums, and I go by HellRazoR. There's a couple of people there who will join in this resolution as well. It's one of the nicest DDR forums around.

[xstatic]

Why not keep track on both threads? GuM is sortta my home. I've been to that site and I did like it, but GuM is more cosy and small. And if we beg....abrannon might give those who complete this a schnazzy banner.


oh....and I'm not trying to be all frumpy-frump with your goals or anything....I'm trying to make it more general so that everyone can participate. We have the 100 hours competition and we all had a lot of fun with that. And this community is here for weight loss help and support. I think that not putting your idea here would be kinda a shame.

[prayerwarrior35]

So be it, I'll update on both forums, I agree your community is great and quite unusual for the weight loss / health aspect of ddr. I'm a huge supporter of that.

[prayerwarrior35]

I'm up to 16,500 calories burned in StepMania only. This counter is neat, I'll erase and begin at 0 on Jan. 1st but I'm expecting 200,000 by the end of 2007.

[Ixi0n]

Prayerwarrior, I have a USB pad and I can get SMO if you'd be up for playing with me, I have 2500ish songs so we should have alot in common.

Send me a PM if you're interested

[prayerwarrior35]

Sure PM sent, and tomorrow let the counting begin... If you check out in the download section at ddrextreme.co.uk I've been allowed to upload the SM version with the ITG theme that has the calorie counter and Online capabilities.

[prayerwarrior35]

Okay it's nearly the middle of the year, I don't think I'm going to get close to 200k, but I'm trying for the 100 still. The number of songs played is wrong, I got to ~23,000 calories and I had upgraded the program (I can now access doubles play in fitness mode, and have an accurate % counter for scoring, with all the proper ITG graphics displaying) but it zero'd me out. I went through fitness mode, doubles, on keyboard just mashing buttons to make up the 23000 calories, so it only took me a few songs, thus the counter is probably half of what I've done song wise, the calories are accurate.

There's no reason for me to mess with the program for awhile since everything works perfectly now, but I did run in the marathon and I even placed in a local 5k run at 22 mins. All the training made me behind for my DDR goals. I need to catch up to 50,000 calories by the end of this month to catch up.

Here's a screenshot of my calories, and some show-off videos of my latest simfile that I created.

[prayerwarrior35]

It's been a month and a good month indeed:





My wife also recommitted, said something about 50,000 as well, dunno if she meant on top of the 20,000 she had back when she was keeping up or if she's shooting for 70,000 by year's end? Back at 20,000 I figured how to add two players to fitness mode and fixes for other issues, but it erased our calorie counter info, so I went through mashing buttons as a 500-lb person on doubles to get to where we were before the numbers were lost. So, the # of songs seems lower than it should be but the calories are close to what they should be, and I don't expect to do anything to erase the calorie data for a long while...

It also seems that in about 70 minutes (playing through my 40-song random course usually puts me at 70 mins) of constant gameplay with no pause inbetween songs (that's how this theme handles courses, I can't even get a drink of water for 2 seconds before I'm missing arrows) that I burn just under 1000 calories. No doubt in my mind Machine Dancing >> Cardio Classes at the gym, except for the weight lifting class that I go to twice a week to get toned.

Anyone else counting calories with me?

[prayerwarrior35]

Well the wife pretty much quit again, women are all talk :evil:

Here's where I'm at as of August 1st, I figure I'm ahead of my goal by about 5,000 cal's now since to reach 100,000 I should be at 58,333 on month 7. That doesn't mean I'll play less, I actually plan to play more however for the next three months there's some challenge at the Gym to attend about 35 cardio, 20 weight training, and 12 mind (yoga ) classes in three months so I may be spending more time at the gym to see if I enjoy any of the cardio classes to be able to complete that (I already go twice a week for weight training).

[prayerwarrior35]

Mediocre update for this month, no screen shot cuz I forgot to snap it last time I played...

I'm at 70,440 calories, but I spent way too much time in boring Step Aerobic classes at the gym trying to meet that 'Mount Rushmore' challenge, ended up leaving the card in my shorts and it got destroyed by the washer machine, so I don't have to go to boring Step Aerobic classes anymore.

I also spent WAY TOO MUCH time working on simfiles this month. Cheesemix IV came out, I've been adding MUNGYOdance simfiles, and Best Mix 1 came out as well, and I have an entry in it. Also I joined ITG Rebirth project as the official syncher so that's more work on my plate.

MUNGYOdance is the huge time killer of the bunch tho' but I've wittled down the 520 simfiles into ~200 that I'm keeping, I added banners to them all, and I've re-synched and added 140 simfiles to my library thus far and should have the last 60 done by next week... Cheesemix IV is added entirely. I also added about 100 music videos for many of the official DDR simfiles. It's been a very busy month of working in StepMania.

All things aside, I have many new simfiles to play, and soon I'll have less work and more time to enjoy the fruits of my labor, but there's a race in November a 5k that I want to run in, so I'll begin running again early November up until the May 29th Marathon again, but after that I don't plan to run anymore (it's BORING) as well and keeps me from my beloved machine dancing.

Oh and I've also begun building new dance pads, they are going to be Cobalt Flux style with a few modifications (solderless connectors, start / select buttons on the top / embedded control box / and I am going to route the wires into the back of my PC so there will be no more tripping (yanking and breaking) the wires. I'm looking forward to new responsive dance pads and I need to do something before the next DDR home version comes out since I've had to move panels around based on solder points falling out and now I can't plug in my DDR/PIU PlayStation control boxes, not to mention I no longer have 9 functioning panels... I plan to have new pads built by the end of October.

[prayerwarrior35]

This has been a strange month (or two?). Well my counter was at 72,300 when I installed a new operating system, I thought I backed everything up but I forgot to back up my profile under my documents, thus my calorie count was erased...................

But after awhile my pad had gotten to the point that I was about ready to burn it since the up arrow pretty much quit working. So I decided to play on the P1 pad and it has issues as well (my pads were old). Which led me to build new dance pads ($250 + 2.5 weeks = no dancing for over 2 weeks). But now one of my pads is built so I've been back to playing (its been functional for 1 week today) but it works like a brand new dance pad so I'm really playing alot.

I'm still going for the 100k by December, so 72,300+ 12,300 = 84,600 calories. I was really playing alot before my pad died and this week so I am still on course for my goal.

[prayerwarrior35]

And now I am done, Dec. 27 with 4 whole days to spare...


27,730+72,3xx = 100,030 Calories Burnt in StepMania this year.

Obstacles were (did my PC crash this year or last??) my wife quit early on and quit offering support, my dance pads died and it took me 3 weeks to have a functional dance pad (home made). And marathon training takes up alot of my free time and energy. It's also much harder to reach 100,000 cals than I initially thought. I also spent too much time playing standard video games this year, and working on StepMania content such as ITG Rebirth, ITG 3, MungyoDance, DDR Supernova, DDR Universe, my own simfiles and other stuff...

Next year I'll aim for 100,000 again but I plan to seriously cut back on adding new content to my StepMania library.

As far as the health benefits, playing DDR style games keeps my aerobic ability up and helps me to stay slim. I've been weight training all year so my muscle mass has increased (although my weight has not changed all year long). Mostly I have become more dedicated to exercise this year and I hope to do much better in the next (last) marathon I run in about 14 more weeks.

Will somebody join me next year, you have only a few days to get ready such as installing the software / theme and getting a USB dance pad (you shall not play keyboard style with the same profile that you are calorie counting with). It is a bigger challenge than playing for 100 hours, since the calories don't increase when waiting to choose the next song, and it's actually hard to burn 1,000 calories in an hour. Plus this did not include time spent playing Pump It Up (probably around 4 hours this year at the arcade) nor time spent playing console DDR and PIU games (and yes I bought SuperNova 2 when it came out and played it a bit).