Wii Fit: A better way to track your weight
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Mike Chesney
The Wii Fit takes the whole concept of games as exercise to a new level by including a “balance board” peripheral that tells you on the fly exactly how well (or how poorly) you're doing with various activities. It's a decent alternative for those bored with the repetitiveness of going to a gym or too self-conscious to join a yoga or aerobics class. Unfortunately, you are not able to create your own program from the available exercises and questionable health advice which limits its effectiveness as a fitness tool and as a gaming device.
At the core of the Wii Fit experience is the new balance board, an elegant yet sturdy peripheral which features several internal scales that can detect changes in weight and pressure as you're standing on it. The balance board interacts wirelessly with the Wii, and uses four included AA batteries. The board has four rubber feet to help prevent it from slipping on smooth surfaces and even comes with four extra feet that can be used to raise your balance board higher should you have thick carpet on your floors. Like the Wii Remote before it, the balance board is intuitive to use once you get into an exercise or game in Wii Fit, with its extreme sensitivity allowing it to pick up even the most minute shifts in weight. Its sensitivity only goes so far, however, with the board able to take only 330lbs. so Aunt Agnes might have to find an alternative!
Wii Fit isn't a total fitness solution, with its included exercises focusing more on improving muscle tone and balance than on cardio and weight loss. What it does offer is a better way to track your weight, body mass index (BMI), and time spent exercising both within the game itself and from any other external activities, giving users a clearer picture of how their health is progressing over time. It's not going to make you super-fit, but it can provide a strong anchor for a more expansive fitness regime once you have the motivation.
As a title focused on health, Wii Fit makes some fairly significant judgments about its users' fitness. This happens right from when your Mii is first registered with the game; after inputting a date of birth and height, you're asked to step on the balance board for a weigh-in, all guided onscreen by a cartoon version of the board). From the height and weight data, a user's BMI is calculated, with the user tagged as underweight, ideal, or overweight depending on the BMI score. A simple balance test then occurs (usually involving having to shift your balance to certain areas within a time limit) before your Wii Fit Age is displayed in large numbers on the screen. Only one Wii Fit Age result can be recorded daily, although you can practice the variety of balance tests as many times as you want.
It's here where Wii Fit could possibly become problematic for some. Judgments such as BMI and fitness levels usually come from doctors and health care professionals, not cartoon versions of a computer game peripheral--and Wii Fit doesn't do a good job of explaining the science behind its measurements. While BMI, for example, is a well-established tool for measuring a person's ideal weight, Wii Fit fails to make players aware that variables such as muscle mass and age can significantly affect a score (giving an otherwise healthy person with more muscle an overweight rating, for example). The title also throws the term "metabolic syndrome" around quite often, stating people with poor balance and low health can suffer from it without ever explaining what it actually is. Although most users of Wii Fit will probably not take the game's BMI or fitness age calls too seriously, but there's bound to be some overanxious player who does.
There are several games that are balance-based that the Wii Fit allows the user to play and unlocks more advanced levels of these games as a reward to the user giving the feeling of accomplishment. The games include skiing, a ski jump, tennis, bowling and boxing. You can even purchase other games such as the new We Ski that are balance board compatable.
One important thing is that the Wii Fit by itself will do you no good. You first have to own the Wii itself and with shortages of the console are still very high, finding one will not be easy. You just have to continue with the drive-by searching of electronic and game stores.
