You Know You’re Overweight When Your Video Game Console Tells You So

After several attempts to use technology to nab a high demand Wii Fit, I finally got one. Lucky for me, I just happened to be in front of my computer when I received a text message alert from Amazon.com telling me a select few will be in stock in the next couple of minutes. A few days later I had a Wii Fit sitting on my front porch.

If you are not familiar with the Wii Fit, it is basically a balance board and a disc that plays on the Nintendo Wii game console. I hesitate to call the Wii Fit a game because it’s really not. Instead it’s designed to help you stay healthy and in shape. It does this by tricking you into thinking you are playing fun little games when in fact you are actually exercising.

Prepare to be shocked

One of the biggest wake-up moments for everyone I’ve talked to that owns a Wii Fit is the moment when you have to step on the balance board and let it determine your weight and your body mass index (BMI). For most people, the wake-up call isn’t in seeing their weight or BMI on the screen—most of us could probably guess where we are with both numbers. No, it’s when the little guy that you choose to represent yourself, called a Mii, suddenly transforms himself into an image that more closely resembles what you look like based on your weight and BMI.

The pictures below are my actual results after weighing in:

As you can see, a wake-up call is not enough to describe how I felt after seeing my newly transformed Mii. Rather, I felt like crawling in a hole and hiding for a few weeks where no one could find me.

But since there were no available holes close by, I decided I better start taking care of myself a little better. So I did a series of exercises on the Wii Fit balance board including running in place (a lot funner than it sounds when you run with a pace guy on the screen), ski jumping and hula hooping. I also threw in a couple of strength training exercises and some balance activities.

The Wii Fit lets you set a fitness goal which is another nice little feature. I set mine to lose 6 pounds by the end of the month. That isn’t even close to how much I need to lose but I’m taking baby steps here.

As much as I’d like to do a Wii Fit only experiment, times are more desperate for me. So instead I am going to combine the Wii Fit activities with my own non-Wii Fit activities like running and start paying much more attention to what I eat.