Jack and Andy liked the ski slalom a lot, but being five year olds, they didn’t really weigh enough to steer properly, so I would help them out by “steering” them from behind. The mechanic that they latched on to fastest was the star rating showed with the score at the end of each trial: They quickly could tell from the disappointment of the mii that one star wasn’t good, and started trying to predict how many stars each person would get, and celebrating when they got two stars or three stars. The penguin iceberg sliding game was a hit as well. Seeing other people struggle with the Tree yoga pose and the timing of the step exercise made me feel a little better about how I’ve been doing.

I took a quick body test while showing the system (even though I was wearing jeans), and accidentally had it add 5 pounds to my weight instead of subtracting, so it made me 10 pounds heavier (the nomenclature of +5 pounds versus -5 pounds threw me off — but why does it even allow negative clothing in the first place?). I intended to do a real workout this evening (instead of a fake one earlier when I was just showing a few of the activities to the group), but my head’s hurting, so I’m heading to bed instead. This’ll look a bit strange on the graph.

Tuesday morning I tried an early morning workout, and I felt that worked better. I like the evening workouts because I don’t feel time pressure and can experiment with new Yoga poses, but after working out in the morning I do feel more energy for the rest of the day. I even had a second workout Tuesday night, and ended up having a pre-midnight and post-midnight workout, and taking a final body test post midnight. That worked great, because I had credit for a half hour workout on Wednesday and ended up not being able to work out again either Wednesday morning or evening.

This morning was another early morning workout, with Sammy picking the activities for me to do after he woke up. I got a “you’ve been working out for seven days straight” message, which was nice to see. Some good progress overall on BMI as well.

Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I’ve unlocked and tried almost all the activities, and have started to get longer duration workouts. That’s good, because for a 30 minute workout I was spending 45 minutes or more of actual time, doing menu commands and clicking through results and choosing the next activity. Being able to do longer sets of pushups and jack-knives and leg raises gets my heart going and makes the time more efficient, even if the variety of activities is lessened.

Reading online, I can see why people complain about the game — the lack of multiplayer and online is a serious problem, and having the ability to program a workout that skipped a lot of the screens and UI falderal would be a great boon. But on the other hand, I think this game is an amazing development in turns of innovation — marrying the theme of your balance with the gaming structures of unlocking activities and building up levels and points really works for me. It’s only been a week but I still really look forward to the workouts.

I’ve lost about 4 or 5 pounds so far. Yesterday I wore a belt that I hadn’t been able to wear in a year. So, progress is being made.

The real truth is, I stopped exercising regularly even a year before Sammy was conceived.

The sad, genuine, unvarnished truth is, my weight is not where I want it to be.

Technology perhaps to the rescue? After reading reviews and testimonials about Wii Fit, and seeing the Wii in action at my brother Phil’s place, I managed to find a Wii and Wii Fit (thanks to Zoolert), ordered online, and all three boxes arrived today.

Setting up the Wii involved surprisingly large amounts of waste packaging and cardboard recycling, but the process was easy. My wife was quite skeptical at first, but a quick game of bowling won her over. (“This is fun, isn’t it!” Sure is, especially when she beat me 126 to 95.) Then it was time to get going with Wii Fit.

Much has been written elsewhere about Wii Fit itself. There are some curious UI decisions, an odd mix of a cartoon aesthetic on some screens and 1970s fitness brochure aesthetic on other sections.  I agree that there’s a bit too much time spent loading and explaining when I’m standing there tapping my foot and just want to get going with exercising. I’m also extremely skeptical of the “Wii Fit Age” (took the body test twice today, before and after exercising, and was first put at 49, +8 from my actual age, and then put at 52. Kimi was put at +11 years. If repeating a test generates results that vary wildly, how accurate can that test be?

But the activities seem (after day 1 at least) to have some variety, and the format is perfectly suited to appeal to my desire to unlock things and complete things.

Some may feel the constant unlocking of hidden exercises and activities combined with the corny motivational screens and dubious emphasis on balance is just so much rat-maze navigation, but to me it’s like a game, and anything encouraging me to view exercise as a fun activity can’t be too bad.

Microsoft has reportedly claimed that 60% of Wii Fit users try it exactly once. Seems like sour grapes to me.

So, my poor long-suffering reader, I’m about to embark on the most banal of all blogging activities, and keep track publicly of my progress against my Wii fit goals.

My BMI is at 26.06, which is overweight. My goal is to reach a BMI of 22 (normal) in two months, losing twelve pounds in the process.

Day 1: After setting things up, I tried a couple of exercises in each of the four areas, starting with Aerobics. The step exercises impressed me immediately. Running seemed less well implemented but the scenery made it interesting — my problem was that I kept trying to game the system by trying to shake the remote in order to figure out how it calculated my pace. In the Strength category, the first activity, leg raises, made me feel very uncoordinated. For Yoga, I tried just the breathing and half moon poses; it seemed fine but I’m unlikely to put a lot of emphasis on this section. I did notice that just doing the half moon made me sweat. Finally, for balance, I was terrible at soccer ball headers, but not too bad with the ski slalom. And then I rounded things out with some hula hooping. I have to say I enjoyed myself.

Day 1 stats: 30 minutes of banked exercise, Wii Fit age 49, BMI 26.06.