The Wii Fit Experiment: Week One

Wii Fit launches today in North America, and it's also the same day that I've finished my first week of the Wii Fit Experiment. But before I get into the details, I want to offer some words of advice to those of you who are embarking on your own Wii Fit journey today:

Take breaks every few days.

Due to the nature of my experiment, I cannot take a day off every few days. What I can do is to give myself light days of one hour balance or yoga sessions. It's become quite clear to me that you cannot do push-ups and jack-knives every day; your body won't be too pleased with you.

Wii Fit is broken up into categories: Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance. It's sort of surprising to me that Nintendo did not add warnings to the Strength Training and Aerobics sections in particular. I'd known that you cannot exercise the same muscles every day without giving them time to repair themselves, or you may do long term damage—something that friends and coworkers confirmed. Missing this important detail is troublesome, there are a few upper-body intensive activities that could fall into this category of pain.

With that in mind, though, I've successfully made it through my first week of Wii Fit. I've made some great progress, which you can see below; but as this is only the first quarter of the experiment, most of what I lost can be attributed to water weight, a natural flux of weight throughout the day within your body.


What I've really been impressed by this first week is how fun Nintendo has made watching the daily changes in weight. I've not once yet felt like Wii Fit is a chore, due to the fact that all the mini-games that aren't based on Yoga or Strength Training are genuinely fun and intriguing. Everything is presented in a friendly manner and nothing about Wii Fit stands out as negative, which is a hard feat to accomplish for a game that tracks something as sensitive as weight.

I've been recording what food I've been eating throughout the days, and I've most definitely not changed my eating habits. At the end of this experiment, I will gather all my data and we'll find out together if Wii Fit alone can get me back in shape.

Check back next Wednesday for the results of Week 2.