EA SPORTS is at it again. Last year they released the highly acclaimed EA SPORTS Active, and interactive fitness game for the Nintendo Wii that used the various motion detection equipment available for the platform to offer a wide array of physically challenging workouts in a convenient 30 day program. In the same year they came out with EA SPORTS Active More Workouts, expanding the already excellent game with a broader focus on core exercises and “leveling up” the challenge to last for six weeks. The franchise seems to be working out very well for EA SPORTS (no pun intended), so much so that they even expanded their advertising push to include the Sports Authority fitness equipment chain.

On Tuesday, EA SPORTS announced that they are expanding the line yet again. EA SPORTS Active 2.0 (working title) is currently in production at the Vancouver headquarters of EA Canada.

Elations product lineup (fresh fruit not included)

Not too long ago, a box arrived at ShrinkGeek Orbital HQ from the folks at Elations, with a few samples of their stuff. Since Mike isn’t the only one complaining about the inevitable grind toward getting old, and years of questionable behavior have been not entirely kind to my joints, I decided to give them a try. As a delivery system for glucosamine and chondroitin, Elations take a Flintstones Tablets approach (or maybe it’s Mary Poppins) – making what is usually One More Bland Or Yucky Tablet into a sweet-tasting beverage.

How well does it work? And why would you want to take glucosamine and chondroitin, anyway?

I browse through a lot of health and fitness related news every day in order to try and find things that can help our readers here improve their lives. In doing so I come across a fair number of unusual topics, but more often than not most of the things I read tend to get repetitive. That’s why, when I opened up my reader this morning, I darn near spewed a mouthful of coffee all over my dual monitor setup after I saw one of the headlines.

Bugs Bunny and Cecil Turtle are registered trademarks of Warner Brothers

Dieting is a touchy subject. We all have our own ideas as to what is the “best” way to lose weight, and with very little research we can often find studies that back up our claim. What’s more, we’re all pretty defensive of our choices. Getting together in a room full of low-carb and low-fat dieters and asking them which is the better way to diet is as fraught with danger as standing in the middle of the lobby of the Marriott at Dragon*Con with a bullhorn and asking what the best Science Fiction series is.

In the spirit of full disclosure I have to admit that I am a low-fat, calorie counting dieter. That’s what Weight Watchers® really is, when you get right down to it. They just wrap it up in a convenient system and assign food point values. I’ve been on Weight Watchers for over 9 years now and while the amount of weight I have lost has varied consistently I have managed to maintain the large majority of my loss following that program. As a result, I am obviously biased toward low-fat diets and a big proponent of them. I truly believe that portion control, exercise, and healthy food choices are the key factors in losing weight and keeping it off.

A study released in the Annals of Internal Medicine seems to back me up on that.

The penguins from "Happy Feet" doing their impression of the beginning of a crowded race. Lemming impersonation optional. (c) Kingdom Feature Productions

The assertion that we’ve got happy feet may be a slight overstatement, but it’s certainly more true this morning than it’s apt to be mid-morning on Saturday, when your intrepid scribes (that’d be me and Mike) will be hitting the road, literally, for a 5k race together for the first time. There will be several friends and colleagues of ours there, both from our day job and other circles, not to mention several thousand other other folks.

Much like the first time you step into a PvP arena (I’m partial to Quake ]|[, which tells you how long it’s been since I was any good at that sort of thing), where it’s you against other actual humans, the very act of being surrounded by fellow athletes with an actual scoreboard brings a certain crispness to the proceedings. Sure, it’s just going for a run – in our case, it’s pretty much the same one we do several times a week – but doing it “for real” brings another dimension to it, beyond the fresh route and, shall we say, interactive scenery.