Fun With Wii Fit, Part 1

I received Wii Fit about a month ago as a super cool birthday present.
I'm attempting to play it every day, at least for a week. So far, so good. Came home from ballet class last night and figured I couldn't get any smellier.

Wii Fit is like Brain Age in a lot of ways; there's the fitness age evaluation, you start off with a few different activities and unlock more as you go along, there's a helpful little animate whatsit to encourage you and provide tips. I really enjoyed Brain Age for about 4 days, and then a month later for about 3 days, and then I enjoyed the Sudoku side game. It's a great little game, and at some point, I even had the sense that I was adding and subtracting faster than I ever had, but addition and subtraction have very little bearing on my life. Body fitness is different from brain fitness, but Wii Fit is subject to some of Brain Age's pitfalls. I dislike push-ups a little bit more than I dislike fast-paced math operations, which is quite a bit, come to think of it. There are going to be some activities that some players aren't good at or just don't like, and this actually limits the amount of game to play quite a bit. The balance games are the most frivolous and colorful of all your options: they use the Miis on your system, and it's certainly amusing to see a little round version of your mom throw a shoe at your head--but you chuckle, marvel at how the board knew which way you were leaning, and then you're finished.

As actual exercise equipment, Wii Fit and the board have some real potential. Exercising at home always seems like a great idea, because there's only the one-time cost (rather than a membership for a gym) and then you're feet away from your shower and your bed. At-home workouts lack supervision and motivators. There have been times when I thought about trying leg lifts in my bedroom, but I know I never did enough reps or sets, or sets of reps or repeated set reps, and there was no one to demonstrate the form. The strength and yoga exercises in Wii Fit have instructors to demonstrate perfect form. I work with lady instructor and so far, have very few complaints. She does helpful things, like count for you and remind you to breathe. How is this different from a video, you ask? She also knows if you're wobbly, and if you stop doing the exercise. Instructors on film might be more energized and more or less dead behind the eyes, but if you decide to transfer to a couch-based workout halfway through the video, they've got no way of knowing.

Each activity takes about 2 minutes, and you get a token for each minute you spend, which is nice. They go into a fitness bank, which is round and occasionally wiggly and kind of cute, which I also like. You unlock more activities with more tokens--so even if you're not lowering your BMI or fitness age, you're lighting up little gray boxes, and as I've seen with the achievements on X-Box Live, that's enough to keep some people playing even games they don't like. At least until all the boxes are lit up.

Anyway, more information to come as I travel along my own fitness river in a bubble I steer by shifting my balance, metaphorically. I'm in the Normal BMI range, but my cute little Wii Fit Board thought I could stand to fit-it-up a little more. I think I'm supposed to lose 6 pounds to get to a healthier BMI. I'll try to spend about a half hour on the board a day, and we'll see what that does. Even if my heart rate doesn't rise enough to burn any calories, (which I suspect is very possible) it will be a half hour out of the day that I won't spend eating crumb cake...or will I?