The GAME OVER, YEAH Wii Fit Blog

Hello! I am really sorry if you were hoping for some speedy updates on here, but I’m afraid its not going to happen at the moment. So many things are changing in my life right now and it is very difficult to keep up with it all, let alone stay fit and keep a log of it!

As you know I’ve started a new job and it is keeping me very busy. At the same time we’re going through the final stages of moving house so everything is tense right now! I’m hoping to exchange this week!

However things on the Wii Fit front are fantastic. Using last night as my example I am at my lowest BMI, the weight being 17st 7lb and my age being 20. I’ve fully embraced a healthier diet and I’m unlocking the tougher exercises. My routine is mostly split into three or four ten minute sessions or a couple of fifteen minute sessions over the evening. Starting with the advanced or super advanced boxing which can fill 10 or more minutes.

I couldn’t do much leg work last night after attempting the long jog at the weekend, which was 10 minutes long. My legs are dead!!

Rest assured I shall be updating the site soon and I have found a better way of illustrating my weight change using google docs. I just need to get round to doing it!

Hope you’re all having fun with Wii Fit too, and I’ll be back again soon!

I made it! Although we’re pretty sure that we’ll put it all on again tomorrow!

I lost half a stone! Now at 17st 7lbs I’m really pleased that I’ve made it to this little milestone already! The milestone that I set on Wii Fit was 16st 4lb and now I feel so much closer to reaching that target!!

How are you doing? Has it been difficult? Have you reached any mental milestones? If not, what problems have you had? I’d like to know!

Its certainly helped me having some exercise outside of the game. As I said yesterday I had a good swim and I’ve just finished a nice walk tonight which I logged as 45 minutes “Normal” activity in the log. I’ve also decided to watch my food intake after being presented with a lot of temptation at the new job today! McDonalds brekkies, Ice Creams from the van and all the snacks in between! Completely refused!

The mentality has certainly kicked in! We know we can do this!!!

As fully intended I’ve been somewhat lax on the Wii Fit front over the bank holiday weekend. You see I actually handed in my notice one month ago to my now previous employer and finished my job on Friday! Hence no weigh in and no results for the 2nd of May!

The weight hasn’t really shifted in the first week, there have been many ups and downs and I seem to be levelling out around the 17st 10lb mark. This led me to accompany the girlfriend and bump to the local swimming pool today so we could get some real world exercise and some good therapy for her 30th week of pregnancy.

The swimming was marvelous, I estimated around 20 minutes of actual exercise time when I told Wii Fit about it this evening. (which in itself is a difficult thing to find!) I also had a go at the recently unlocked longer jogging exercise which I found difficult but a lot of fun all the same. Apart from that I did a couple of yoga poses and some Super Hula. I know I’ve probably bored you all to death with my tales of Hula supremacy by now, but I must say I am rather good at it! Ha! I’ll start posting my high scores when I get enough time!

The best news on the Wii Fit front this second week is that my Wii Fitness Age is shaping up rather nicely. The game has definitely improved my balance and has made me more conscious of my posture, reflecting within the initial BMI weigh in. When moving on to discover the Wii Fitness Age I am finding the balance tests far easier now and this is reflecting in a positive match to my real age. Which is 25 by the way!

So far so good. The first week has proven rather interesting. I have not made any effort to adjust my diet and routine and I won’t be doing this until the third week so I can get adjusted to my new job this week. I hope anyone reading this has enjoyed my “progress” so far, trust me there is a lot more to come!

No time for exercise today, but we really want to make sure that we fit it in each day. Its just very difficult at the moment with getting ready to move and having a pregnant girlfriend! Did do a weigh in, and it wasn’t good news at all - went up 4 pounds to 18 stone. My Mii looks huge

Today was not a good day.

After only checking in for a few minutes yesterday we decided to actually take up the advice given by the virtual balance board and aim for our 30 minute a day exercise routine! When we got in from work we weighed in, and lost a pound over yesterdays depressing 2lb gain! We went a bit further this time and did the Wii Fit age test too, which proved worthwhile! Our age is now 26! That’s brilliant!! One year older than we are in real life!

We didn’t think this would happen so soon, with it being our fifth day into the game we thought that it would be measured on what fitness routines we’ve done. We’ll look into this some more another day though.

Here’s the breakdown of how we made up our 30 minutes:

• Heading - We were slightly better at this one today! Still getting hit in the head by bear heads and shoes. Who throws a shoe? Seriously?
• Ski Slalom - We did this a couple of times before unlocking the advanced version.
• Ski Jump - This is slowly becoming our favourite! Its the challenge of getting yourself balanced well within that dot while you’re flying down the slope!
• Tightrope Tension - We’re not very interested in this one, but curiosity gets the better of us and we must be the best at everything we do. We had one go and just about beat our previous score.
• Hula Hoop - Is our number one right now! (Possibly our girlfriend’s too because we look really stupid when playing this) Playing this unlocked SUPER HULA HOOP!
• Super Hula Hoop- UBER HOOP! This is marvelous if not a bit tough. We’re still bloomin’ great at it! Instead of doing the normal Hula you must go in the direction they tell you, either left or right. It put a little more strain on us!
• Step - Getting much better at this too! Feeling the beat, getting perfects. Not enough to get four stars, we had to settle with three.
• Jogging - Don’t even start. We are rubbish at this! We only get one star. We did somehow unlock an advanced version. We’re only doing this because the manual told us that there are some Nintendo things around the island.
• Jackknife - Sounds painful. It is. This involves lying on the floor with your feet on the balance board and then raising your arms and legs to make a v shape so you make your stomach hurt. You do this 10 times.
• Lunge - Not as painful, and a perfect accompaniment to the Jackknife. You put one foot on the balance board and one further back on the floor, then sort of squat awkwardly like your trying to pick up a stapler that you dropped.
• Balance Bubble - We unlocked this one tonight during one of the other exercises. Its really challenging but follows the same basics as the slalom. You need to lean forward a bit to get some speed as you move your bubble up the river. Then you need to lean left and right to avoid cliffs (not the Richard type, the rocky ones) and buzzing bees that wish to burst your bubble. We didn’t make it to the end of the course tonight.
• Standing Knee - Winding down with a little yoga, we went for something we haven’t don’t before. The standing knee is as it sounds - you just stand on one leg and hold the other one with your arms. We have large legs so we couldn’t bring them closer to our body as instructed but we managed to hold perfect balance. Yoga loves us.
• Warrior - Our favourite and most relaxing yoga pose! We’re awesome at this one too. Perfect way to wind down the evening and also the exercise recommended alongside the lunge.

Haha! No injuries for us!

This was our most constructive evening so far, an impressive Wii Fit Age and some real exercising! The Wii Fit train is moving full steam for us and we’re looking forward to getting back on it.

Put on 2lbs today which nearly brought me back to my original weight. Didn’t do a Wii Fit age either and I just couldn’t get the third section of that damned Ultimate Balance Test to work!!!

Today we’re making some sort of progress! We’ve dropped 3lbs since we started on Friday. In fairness this probably hasn’t got much to do with Wii Fit entirely, but instead more to do with the box packing, lifting and moving we were doing yesterday. Taking into account what I’ve eaten today, I’d think its rather lucky I’ve lost a pound since yesterday.

Eaten today:

• Brekkie: Toast, Scrambled Egg, Tomato
• Lunch: Chocolate Muffin
• Dinner: 2 Hot Dogs, Onions, Chips

No its not a strict diet is it? Remember though we’re not aiming to diet or dramatically change our lifestyle right now. Lets remember that we’re just hoping to start a fitness regime by fully embracing Wii Fit and letting it help us lose some weight.

After the weigh in we did the balance test to get todays Wii Fitness Age, which came out at 34. Since friday we’ve managed to take off 3 years already which is nice. Still not good though when you think we’re only 25!

Next we moved on to do 15 minutes of exercise: (which again is not good because they recommend that you do at least 30 minutes a day)

• Ski Slalom - This is one of our favourites so far. You need to carefully maintain a balance while moving side to side on the balance board to steer your Mii through the middle of the positioned flags. Where we keep messing up is when leaning too far to one side to steer our Mii, we compensate back the other way too far which means we completely miss the goal! Our highest ranking is 2 stars so far.
• Hula Hoop - 3 stars so far on Hula! We’re not as good as we thought we’d be but we do keep missing the hoops that the randomly selected Mii’s keep chucking at us as we spin ourselves crazy.
• Step Basics - This has to be the one that is causing us the most frustration so far! We just don’t follow the instructions very carefully. Sometimes while following the rhythm you have to move to the left or the right of the board. We just don’t follow is very well! So far we’ve only scored 2 stars.
• Single Leg Extension - Nice and easy, but we’re finding it difficult to maintain our balance. Its fun trying to stretch our arms and legs out at the same time in opposite direction! Only 2 stars.
• Press Up and Side Stand - Tough tough tough! We had to revert to do press ups on our knees and the hands were just getting too sore. The woman was impressed though, but only gave us 2 stars.
• Torso and Waist Twists - We seem to have rather good balance according to Wii Fit. So these are the types of exercises that we appear to excel in. Twisting the waist in different directions when prompted for 3 rounds gave us 3 stars.
• Sun Salutation - Ha ha! We are yoga experts! Well not quite, and not to sound cocky but we seem to do bloomin’ brilliant at yoga. It feels really good to do it too. 4 stars!!
• Half Moon - This is one of the simpler yoga stances that we’ve tried so far. Simply pointing upwards then moving the arms down while making controlled breaths. 3 stars.

Wii Fit will make us as great as this

We’re not as sore as we were this morning, so we can only think that sticking with Wii Fit is the right thing to do! This morning when we woke up there was an almighty crash as we fell to the floor. The left leg had strangely given up and shrieked out in pain, we’d pulled it slightly. Its something we hadn’t experienced since being at university - a stage in life when we actually used to have some sort of fitness regime. We’re ready to blame this on the jogging session we did on the Wii yesterday but it could well have been the packing and running up and down the stairs. Who knows?

What we do know is that we’re still going strong on the third day and its only going to get better from here, we are loving Wii Fit.

The first day! Boy I hope I’m going to be able to keep this up!

So first thing Friday morning we rolled down to Gamestation and picked up our reserved copy of Wii Fit, along with some free drawstring bag. Lovely stuff. It felt very weird walking the streets back to the car, looking like a walking contradiction. “Oh look, some big chap has bought himself a copy of the latest fitness fad.”

All this aside, we couldn’t wait to get it home to give it a go. After a boring day at the office we were home and opening the naturally elegant Wii Fit box. We must have been out of the Wii Fit loop for sometime as we were surprised to find that batteries were included. We thought we’d be expected to insert the Wiimote inside of the balance board. Apparently not, as we can’t find anything to support this on Google. Odd.

After popping the disc in, we went through the major steps. It’s just like going through the intro to the wonderful Big Brain Academy. Once again we have the friendly avatar in the form of the Balance Board itself, making odd little noises as it takes you through the first setup procedure ending with a request to step upon the very sturdy board.

Then came the inevitable. Something which we didn’t think would ever be presented so brutally, but something that were were expecting…

YOU ARE FAT

No we never really expected our usual podgy, yet eye pleasing Mii to suddenly burst out and gain the spare tyre that accompanies our real world persona. Yet there it was, the big wake up that we required. We’ve since decided that this is one of the real big winners for Wii Fit, the fact that it is completely honest and doesn’t hide anything from you at all. For people that have tried other weight loss solutions, even as far as Weight Watchers, you will never find anyone prepared to be completely honest and actually tell you that you are a fat git. Unless you go on Jeremy Kyle and have his hellish voice incorrectly spell out the word “overweight” to you.

That brings up another point, we’re not just “overweight”. No the evil Balance Board is actually more than happy to tell us that we’re OBESE. Oh yes and we’re at the top of that scale too.

Lets move past that now. On to the fun and games. We quickly set ourselves a target, it would only let us go as far a losing a stone and a half and we decided to try and do that in 2 months. So keep checking back to see how we do!

Wii Fit excels further on the 4 different types of routines that you can work through by either using the Balance Board or the Wiimote. We’ve tried a few from each section thus far.

Yoga. We’ve never tried anything yoga related before this was a shock to the system. We probably should have tried this last as it really relaxed us, while also amusing the girlfriend who is a yoga genious. The routines did prove that we have got a rather good sense of balance, with positions like the warrior hardly causing any misbalance whatsoever. The routine demonstrates your balance by visualising your position on the balance board as a dot within an area that you should try not to move out of. You are also encouraged to keep a regular breathing pattern as you work.

We’ll skip the balance and strength tests until the next blog. Moving on to the Cardio section clearly showed us what will be yet another massive selling point for Wii Fit as well as a true method to make this package a little bit more fun and something to show your mates when they laugh at that Balance Board sitting under the sofa. The cardio routines we played were all absolutely brilliant and a pleasure to play. We’ve heard compaints about the accuracy of jogging, where you place the Wiimote inside your pocket while jogging on the spot while other Mii’s from your console cheer you on as you jog around a lovely sunny island!

We have to say now that these complaints about the jogging seem completely unfounded, the game seemed to accurately represent what we were doing. We can only say that if you do have problems with the accuracy, try wearing a different kind of trouser. Another game that we’ll talk about another day include the Skiing jump which was our favourite so far!

So the first day was one filled with shock, horror and then cheers. Its pretty obvious that this is certainly no fad and is in fact a serious addition to the Wii, and Touch Generations library. Nintendo have done it once again and Wii Fit is going to sell millions.

We didn’t do a workout on the second day, but we did do a quick weigh in before dinner and after spending the afternoon packing boxes getting ready for moving. We lost 2 pounds! So far so good!