Wii Fit - 30 Days!!!

• Day 30... down .4 pounds, 37 Wii Years old... and far too tired for an effective workout. Basically, I set the Free Step for 30 minutes and watched the first third of the movie, "The Wedding Planner". That's it. Call it a workout and be done with it! I have to admit, that if it wasn't the last day of my experiment, I would have skipped the workout completely. I'd been ignoring a headache all day and by the time bedtime rolled around, it was pounding. I tucked the boys in and thought I'd lie down with them for a bit of a rest. I woke up 2 hours later still snuggling Connor, ready to crawl into my own bed. I was very, very tempted to skip working out but Cory said "You should do it anyway or you'll regret it", so when he left for work at midnight, I hauled my butt downstairs and went through the motions.
  
  He was right, I'm glad I did it. Now I can say that I set a goal, and I stuck it out. I did not skip a single workout! I started on August 6th, and with the exception of the 7th (because I started the workout at midnight so it counted on the 8th), I managed to get a pretty little stamp on each date on the calendar.
  
  

So, why did I do this? It wasn't always easy, and I certainly didn't always feel like working out with the chirpy, guilt-slinging, scale or the perfectly proportioned know-it-all trainer. There were nights I would have rather just gone to be early and said "screw it, exercise is for people with more time on their hands". Or sat on the couch eating ice cream and watching Law and Order re-runs. Or, get ahead (that's a joke, when am I ever ahead) on the housework. Or, heaven forbid, scrapbook.

My intention was to try the Wii Fit out for 30 days and see if

1. I see any weight loss results
2. I can establish a daily workout habit

So... let's see... Did I see any weight loss results?

Last night's BMI results...

The whole month's worth of results

So... not really. If you've been doing the math, I have lost a grand total of 1.5 pounds in the past 30 days. However, my brother seems the think perhaps that I've built a bit of muscle. My husband says my legs look more toned (was hoping for for stomach toning, but hey...) and apparently my Mom thinks my face looks slimmer.

We've all heard the explanation, muscle weighs more than fat, so when you're gaining muscle, you lose inches rather than weight. Still... 1.5 pounds in 30 days isn't the most encouraging number. My BMI hasn't changed a whole lot, I'm still comfortably entrenched in the "obese" range.

My Wii age is all over the map, as well, but I'm not overly traumatized by that. Some days I'm balanced, some days I'm not. Big deal!

No improvement in Wii Age - 39 when I started, 37 when I ended, looking pretty young a couple of weeks ago...

Did I establish this as a habit?

Probably too early too tell. I will admit, though, that I've already been downstairs today and done my body test and a 35 minute workout. And I feel good about it. I don't have any intentions of quitting any time soon. I won't blog about it daily anymore... well, maybe once in a while, but I will probably keep at it for another 30 days to see if maybe I was just off to a slow start.

My varied workouts!

Here's what I'm thinking about the Wii Fit:

The good:

• It is fun: Seeing all my family in Mii's jogging or exercising along with me if kind of neat. Having my boys throw hula hoops at me, or kick soccer cleats at my head is a riot. Catching the odd glimpse of Super Mario while I jog across the bridge or hearing the distinctly Nintendo music playing during the balance games is nostalgic.
• It is reinforcing: I like seeing all the stamps on the calendar. Collecting fit credits is cool, too. At 10 hours, my counter turned from white to bronze. I imagine at some point in the not too distant future, it'll turn silver, and eventually gold. Platinum maybe? Unlocking new exercises was cool, too. I have everything unlocked now, except for higher reps in the strength training... there's still a few more of those to unlock.
• Most of the games are easy enough for the whole family to play.
• I have had more exercise in the past 30 days than I have probably had in the past 6 years. Maybe an exaggeration, maybe not.
• I have more energy (most days) and I don't feel as stiff and old as I was starting to feel.
• You don't have to go to the gym and work out. You don't even have to get dressed, if you don't want too. There's no expense, after the initial purchase, and there's no embarrassment or waiting in line for an available treadmill.
• I enjoy yoga! I took a yoga class in 2003 which I did not enjoy. Too much pressure to be good at it when you're surrounded by people that know what they're doing. In the privacy of my own basement, I actually like it. Cool! Maybe at Christmas I'll let Eric tell me whether or not I'm doing the poses properly. Maybe I won't.

The Bad:

• I've said it before. This is not a fluid workout. Unless you do a 30 minute run or the free step, a lot of time is wasted switching between games. You have to wait for the trainer to stop talking, or the counter to stop racking up the minutes, then you have to scroll through the exercises to select the next one. You have to get on and off the balance board, and wait a lot. This is a big problem if, like me, you really want to keep moving the entire 30 minutes. I hope that Nintendo comes up with a game (maybe they already have) that will allow for 30 minutes of solid aerobics. That I would spend more money on!
• This is a one player at a time game. Yes, you can have profiles for your entire family, but you can only be logged on as one character. So, no working out simultaneously. There is the option for the 2 player run, which Alex likes to do with me, but you can't select "Alex" so that he gets Fit credits at the same time.
• The darn scale insists that you check in every day for a body test. If you don't, it makes you feel guilty. "Too busy to work out yesterday, Alex?" Or "I haven't seen Eric in a while". I don' t think that seeing my weight go up and down every day is very motivating. I only want to see my weight once a week. It's more representative of what is actually going on with my body. Simple, then don't do the balance test every day! Fair enough, but the problem with that is, if you don't do the balance test, you don't get to stamp the calendar, regardless of how many minutes you've racked up.
• The most frustrating thing about the Wii Fit is the relatively low weight limit. This fabulous piece of equipment, designed to get otherwise inactive people, moving... excludes the very people that would love it. The people who don't want to drag themselves to the gym or outside for a run. If Nintendo comes out with a balance board with a higher weight limit, I'll be buying it. I want my whole family to be able to benefit from it right away, not have to lose weight before they can use it to lose weight. How dumb is that?

So... there you go! I'll stop rambling about the Wii and get back to blogging about the things I love the most, my kids!

I might have to do a Wii Fit update sometime down the road, anyway, because apparently Nintendo has developed a new game, Wii Fit Plus... which I hope addresses some of the kinks in this first version. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10334061-1.html