In what can only be seen as complete universal injustice, we here at ShrinkGeek have to hold down regular old nine-to-five jobs in order to put our healthy food on the table. Fortunately, the job that I’ve got is a pretty decent one – especially when you factor in the benefits. In particular, the employee gym we have in our corporate headquarters is pretty nice. I’m down there at least once a day, and it has helped me considerably in my efforts to refocus on my weight loss in the last year.

One thing we do not have, however, is a cafeteria. We’re a decent-sized company, but we don’t really have enough staff in our main location to justify that kind of expense. The only access we have to food comes in the form of vending machines, and as someone who traditionally doesn’t carry cash, that has never been a viable option for me… up until last week, anyway. We recently switched vendors, and now all of the food dispensary units in our break room take debit cards.

Unfortunately, many of the options in those machines can’t really be slotted into the “healthy choices” category. In fact, some of the ones that seem obvious choices in that arena are far from it.

January 1st is, traditionally, a day that many people use as the motivation to make positive changes in their lives. From getting in shape to going to church more often and everything in between there are countless ways in which many people are vowing to improve themselves, starting today. If you’ve made a resolution to improve yourself but you’re not quite sure how to go about doing so, you may find value in taking on some kind of challenge to help you reach your goals. We’ve collected a list of 10 of our favorite ones for you to check out below the cut.

There was a lot of buzz on the floor of E3 this year after Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, and rightly so.  The potential to have a game system that can track your movements so precisely that it can actually recognize who you are when you walk into the room is pretty amazing (and, admittedly, pretty creepy at the same time).  While attaching a camera to a console to use in a video game is nothing new, the level of interactivity that Project Natal is promising is going to be a huge leap forward if it ever actually makes it out of development.  Needless to say, this kind of tool could totally revolutionize the fitness gaming industry.

Ubisoft, however, isn’t waiting around for Microsoft to finish development of Project Natal.  This Christmas they are bringing the hands-free fitness gaming concept to the Nintendo Wii.

I first caught wind of this particular Nintendo DS exergame when I was at E3 with the Joystiq crew. As I work on Joystiq’s sister-site, Massively, I had zero chance of checking it out there, sadly. Nonetheless, my curiosity piqued, I filed this title away in memory to check out for ShrinkGeek once I was back and everything was sane again. The truth is, I should have had this product well before E3, because I’ve gotten addicted to checking out my step progress every day, and probably would have been much better prepared for the walk-fest that is E3! No, it’s not a deep game – and if you go into it expecting that, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. That said, for what Personal Trainer: Walking sets out to do, it nails it effortlessly.

What is that exactly, you ask? Well, I could call this a pedometer, but that’s just not doing it justice. Sure, the small peripheral you carry that comes with Personal Trainer: Walking counts steps like any regular pedometer does, but it also acts as something of a fitness mentor – a feature you’re just not going to get with a regular pedometer. When you first fire up Personal Trainer: Walking, you’re given the option of creating your own personal mini-Mii, or importing one from your Wii. That said, when I wanted to import my Wii Mii, the program suggested I do some strange Wiimote chicken dance where I had to press four buttons, stand on one leg and sing Louie Louie. Needless to say, this didn’t work very well. Thankfully, I found my Wii had anticipated this peripheral, and instead there was an easy on-screen option in the Mii area to connect to my DS. I took the easy way out – a move which I heartily recommend to anyone wanting to import a Mii.

Once imported, my Mii then made friends with my new pedometer peripheral, and they proceeded to take me through the initial setup steps. The program started me out at a very reasonable 3,000 steps based on my initial information (37, overweight, sedentary job) and explained just what I could expect in terms of the program. In exchange for checking in, Personal Trainer: Walking would not only check my daily number of steps against the target, but also how fast or slow I was stepping, when I was stepping – an overall life rhythm, essentially. Easy enough, I thought, and headed for bed – ready to try out the peripheral the next day.

I remember my first night playing Dance Dance Revolution, in the back room, on a 13in TV I had the PS2 hooked up to. The mats were the ones it came with, laid out on a tile floor. Some weird cover of Ordinary World giving me a run for my money even on the Beginner Mode. Lots of hopping around, slip-ups, sweating, and a very low score. But it was fun and I played for quite a while.

As stated in my bio, this was my replacement for World of Warcraft after I deciced I had to quit. A healthy step toward getting in shape, along with putting away all the sodas and pretzels I had been devouring while in Azeroth.

The next morning…my body was a road map of pain. My back was all messed up, knees hurt, feet hurt, everything…hurt. I guess playing on a tile floor with socks on was not a good idea. I then put some exercise mats under them to help out. Which it did, but not by much. After that it was an upgrade to mats that had thick foam in them, like really thick. Much better, but still could use a bit more.