My husband, daughters and I all created profiles on our Wii Fit software. For those of you not familiar with Wii Fit, it is a series of exercises broken up into categories: yoga, strength, aerobics and balance games. At first only four or five activities in each category is available in an individual profile. The program keeps track of how much time you spend doing the exercises and unlocks activities in each of the categories as you go. You also have the option of adding fitness credits for activities done outside of the program. For instance I spent three minutes on the rowing machine. This is considered a “hard” activity, so the program added 6 minutes of credit towards today’s activities. I also completed 30 minutes of Wii Fit activities. For today, I received 36 minutes of fitness credits.
The program also weighs you and your Mii (this is the character that represents you in the program) is thinned down or plumped out to represent your actual weight. The program allows you to set a weight loss goal and indicate the time frame you want to reach your goal. Your Mii gains or loses weight with you.
Now here is where my family’s competitive nature kicks in. The program gives you points on how well you completed each activity and keeps track of who holds the top score. My husband and kids would work on a specific activity, especially in the balance games category, repeatedly until they would take over all of the top 10 score slots pushing everyone else off of the scoreboard for the activity.
You also have the option of taking a single fitness test each day. Two random balance tests are given and based on the results of this test combined with your actual results you are given a fitness “age” which can be higher or lower than your actual age. I had been bragging that my fitness score was five years below my real age to my husband. Right after that, he caught me in the middle of the test and pushed me off the balance board (a pressure sensitive board used for most of the activities). This resulted in my fitness age being calculated as 8 years more than my actual age. He received the usual name calling as a reward, which made him even happier that he’d messed up my score.
The pranks aren’t limited to me. He jumped onto my daughter’s profile before she had taken her test and weighed himself in her place. She was furious when she got on later and saw her little round Mii waiting for her. To get even with him the girls tried to weight themselves together to increase his Mii’s weight, but the balance board is too sensitive and they weren’t able to hold still enough. Failing at this, they instead changed his height to 3 foot 11 inches and waited. Sure enough, the next day their dad went to get onto his profile and his Mii bounced out like a little rubber ball. The girls laughed their butts off, but their dad didn’t notice the difference until he took the fitness test. It took him a little while to figure out how to change his height back.
The Wii Fit is a fun way to create a workout routine and track your results. It can also be a good way to get your entire family involved. As with any exercise or weight loss program, the results you get will be equal to the amount of effort you put into it. If you don’t use it, it won’t work.
