Part 1
A few weeks ago, I strained my back moving furniture, and man, if you ever want to set off a midlife crisis, hurt yourself doing something completely ordinary, so you have to spend the next couple days lying perfectly still on a heating pad and thinking about your own mortality.
I’m trying to exercise more to keep this from happening again, but you guys, there is so much garbage weight loss culture in all exercise/fitness activities. The exercise I want is “do this to stay mobile in 30-40 years” and “train over the winter for longer hikes next summer” and I simply DGAF about fitting into a different size or about my calories burned. I deeply resent that messages to look better and different appear everywhere. I don’t think this is encouraging — it makes me angry when my fitness apps or exercise videos try to encourage me by talking about weight and calories.
What I really want is a gamified fitness app, where I get points for logging in every day, or for doing a longer workout or a harder stretch, but the points are gems for cute game stuff. It shouldn’t say calories anywhere. I think lots of people would want that app.
Also, I don’t want any of this fitspo encouragement to work harder or push myself. I want it to say good job after every thing, and include a “wtf, you are 40 and you’re gonna throw your back out again” popup when needed.
Part 2
I found this dance game app called Starri, it’s a rhythm game, a bit like Dance Dance Revolution, but without the dance pad. When you complete songs well, you slowly accumulate points and then you unlock new songs with your points. The app does estimate your calories burned, and there is a daily gem challenge to burn 10 calories dancing, but it doesn’t have any weightloss talk or diet encouragement, and I think 10 calories is pretty reasonable. The app is much more focused on getting a perfect score and unlocking new songs.
It’s really close to what I wanted, but doesn’t have a “wtf you are 40, mind your back” popup, and you’ll never guess happened next.
