The following is a direct, unedited journal entry about my first day with Wii Fit. I'm still not sure how I'm going to keep this diary, whether offline until I have some results, or online in stages. I don't know whether I should leave it on my Livejournal, or for that matter on my laptop's hard disk, but for now I will post my initial thoughts. Feel free to skip the rest of this whole post if you aint interested in my exercise exploits, you won't find anything to enjoy from here on out!
DAY ONE
I intend to keep a diary of my experience with Wii Fit, made easier by my wonderful Macbook Pro, which will help me stay mobile and log things while my Wii Fit experiences are still fresh in my mind.
Today is Monday, the 5th of Jan, and I bought Wii Fit after a pretty extensive phone search. Post-Christmas sales made it a bit harrowing but I secured the game, board, and some rechargeable batteries. That reminds me, I better go put those on to charge now!
My first foray into Wii Fit involved setting up my Mii and putting in all my user data. My BMI is in the 40s, so Wii Fit told me to watch what I eat. I’m currently on a Lite ‘N’ Easy controlled diet so I’m not going to worry too much about that. (Check my Flickr if you're interested in seeing a sample of what I chow down on.)
So, I set a goal of losing 10 kilos in 3 months, slightly above the recommended weekly rate of weight loss. (A safe and consistent rate is apparently around 1.4 kilos a week, and I’m intending to go at 1.6)
So after my Mii got a bit of landscaping work done to its middle section, I jumped in and started with the aerobic exercises, designed to burn fat. First was the Step Basics exercise, which was pretty intimidating, because it featured some sort of Mii auditorium, packed full of people watching! I was hopeless at this, must remember to clear a space all around the board next time. Moving my feet off the board in time with the exercise’s rhythm was difficult to coordinate, as I’m not familiar with the board’s height yet. I expect this to get easier. Got one star out of four for my first attempt. Lots of room for improvement there.
Then I did some hoola-ing, which was hard to get the hang of initially but pretty fun, even though I know I looked like a total dork. I was a little concerned about the Jogging exercise because I have high blood pressure and usually avoid intensive exercises but it wasn’t too bad, I pretty much just marched on the spot but moved the Wii-mote quick enough to trick it in to thinking I was going faster.
Then I did some Muscle workouts and I have to say, this was really intense. I performed well, a three and a four star rating for the two I did, but the “lunge” exercise in particular really took it out of me. “Single leg extension” was fun!
Speaking of fun, I moved on to some balance games to wrap it up, and based on other reviews of Wii Fit I’ve read I will probably just burn through these to unlock everything and then avoid them, since they are mostly just light and fun. “Tightrope” took one false start and then a “professional” score on the second go, and I laughed every time I got smacked in the head by a flying shoe when I tried out the soccer-themed “Heading” game. I’d like to put more time into the skiing game since I was pretty tragic the first time around.
In the next few months I’ll be tracking my time spent with the Wii and reviewing at the end of each week. Today I clocked 16 minutes of actual exercise time and around 45 minutes with the game. Hopefully I can stretch that out to a full half hour in the coming weeks.
Later tonight I went back and tried out the yoga. I’ve done a bit of yoga before and three times a week I use Let’s Yoga on the DS for about 20 minutes in the morning before work. I did all of the yoga poses initially available, plus the Sun Salutation which I unlocked today, and getting that little dot to stay in the yellow circle was awesome fun, not to mention I did very well. Mostly threes but the occasional four out of four stars. Here’s my first problem with that. I know for a fact I wobble around like a maniac when I do yoga, and maybe it is my own insecurities coming through, but I’m quite sure I’m nowhere near the level of “yoga instructor” or “yoga master”. I think the Wii is being waaaay too generous here!
My other initial problem: I’m not confident in the system’s clock. I know it’s nice and neat to round out all the exercises to whole minutes, but all of that rounding is probably going to equal a lot of inaccuracies, and I don’t want to miss my goal just because I thought I had put in more time than I actually did.
A minor qualm, I guess, and having the Wii keep count for me is way more enjoyable than having to start and stop my own watch. This is especially important, because the Wii Fit board doesn’t have any buttons on it for navigating the game. You have to keep a controller handy at all times, and while I got sick of carrying it, I don’t always have pockets, especially in my workout gear. I just left the controller next to me on a coffee table and reached over to mash A when I needed to skip something or enter a command.
I’m excited for tomorrow’s session with Wii Fit, as it is the first day of my more full-on exercise regime. Pushups and yoga in the morning, half an hour of walking in the evening, and now some time with Wii Fit. I intend to do Wii Fit every day I’m at home in the evenings, which should be roughly six out of seven nights a week. Because I’m lame, and spend a lot of time at home =P
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