Wii Fit Diary Part One – Welcome to my Wii Fit Diary. I got the Wii Fit for Christmas from my husband and so far, it is a HUGE hit. I was worried because my husband and I are very used to weight training (don’t laugh – we met at a gym, and we have our own weight room in the basement). I had read mixed reviews that the Wii Fit was not challenging enough. Also, I heard that once you got through all the challenges and unlocked everything, you would have nothing to look forward to.
In addition to the poor reviews, I have also heard many great success stories. I’ve been using it for about a week. My thoughts so far, it’s pretty amazing. My whole family uses it and LOVES Wii Fit. I seriously have to pull my kids away from it. It is so much fun, they don’t realize they are exercising.
Here are the pros and cons I have found in my first week of constant use:
WII FIT PROs
- I love that you can set up a Mii in your Wii. Basically this is the character you create to represent the person playing the game. You can go through different options to make it resemble yourself as much as possible. The kids also get a big kick out of it; even when I play a game, their characters show up in the background and they love finding them.
- The daily checks are nice because they monitor your progress. It totally keeps tabs on things and maintains the motivation. It tallies your workout time; it checks weight and balance; and it gives you your health “age.” Right now, I am not convinced this age feature is all too helpful or accurate since I went from 45 to 31 in a day. But I love how it notices if I missed a day – it will mention it; it’s enough motivation to want to get on it every day.
- The Yoga activities are great. If I am in a classroom, I don’t necessarily know if I am doing things correctly, nor do I know how to improve on the skills. With the Wii Fit, there is a yellow circle with a red dot that moves in sync with your movement. To keep your balance, you have to try and keep the red dot still and within the yellow area. This has helped my form and balance greatly. And, it scores my accuracy each time I do it so I can see if I am improving. This may sound unbelievable, but my posture already feels greatly improved, along with my core strength. I notice myself standing up straighter, without even trying.
- There is a calendar that allows you to go back and view your progress. It keeps track of all of your results from the body tests. The body tests can be done daily and they check your weight, BMI, balance and your Wii Fit Age. You set weight loss goals, and you can see your progress toward your goal.
- There is a great selection of exercises to choose from…yoga, balance games, strength training, and aerobics. Each category has several different exercises to choose from. When you earn enough credits, you unlock new exercises and games. Also, you move up in levels, e.g. you earn the option to choose the same exercise, but with more reps. The variety really keeps my interest.
WII FIT CONs
- The biggest drawback so far is that we like to play the Wii Fit as a family. Since each family member has his/her own Mii, we like to keep all the exercise tracked for each person. If we want to go from person to person and share the Wii Fit during the workouts, we have to back step several times and change the person in the beginning menu. It would be much easier if we could somehow toggle between players.
- Another concern I have is the actual intensity of the workouts. I don’t imagine Jillian or Bob from the Biggest Loser being big proponents of the Wii Fit. The workouts are on average 2 minutes each, and don’t involve a lot of sweat-breaking activities. There definitely are some that get the heart rate up, but others are more of a game that you do while standing up, for example, using balance to walk a tightrope. Improving one’s balance is important for overall health, but some of these activities are not big calorie burners. I’m guessing this will change as I unlock more exercises and levels.
I plan to review some exercises or a body test for my next Wii Fit diary entry.
