Wednesday, July 9, 2008


I've been hearing good things about Wii Fit, the exercise peripheral for the Nintendo Wii.

Allard at work claims to have lost 20 pounds using it, although I think that probably has more to do with his new aggressive diet.

Stonelake: I love mine. But I moved the board from the carpet to the floor and it made me gain a pound.

So I bought one. Now video games will make me fit!

As I've mentioned before, according to the BMI I'm officially obese. And Wii Fit agrees. My Mii (the little character that looks like you) was immediately turned into a little fat guy.

The game measured my (totally unscientific) Wii Fit Age and said I have the physical fitness of a man of... 73. Yikes! Then I realized I'd done the balance test wrong. I redid it and my "real" Wii Fit Age was 34. Only two years older than I am. Not bad. The next day I tried again, and my age was 30. I'm getting younger! At this rate I'll be a teenager soon.

My weight has been going down too. But here's the thing... I haven't done much of anything. I've used Wii Fit every day for the last few days but not for very long and not particularly aggressively. I set my weight loss goal to 5 pounds in two weeks and somehow lost that in three days. But... I don't really... buy it.

I'm not conspiracy minded, but if the makers of the game programmed it to register steady weight loss no matter what... well... they'd sell like hotcakes. Which is to say, they'd sell to a lot of fat people.

4 comments:

Jon said...

I know you love mysteries, Arnie (Mystery Cove), but a bathroom scale could solve the mystery. I hear they're less expensive than Wiis.

John P. Glynn said...

Way to Photoshop that 8 into a 3.

jpg

Anonymous said...

I promise it's not programmed to register steady weight loss. I've gained a net 9 pounds since using it. I went from "normal" to "overweight" and now it grunts when I step on it.

Arnie said...

Sarah: [via IM] I may have beat some of your balance records.
Me: That's fine. My fat little mii doesn't need to be in first place.