I have officially completed my 30 Day Wii Exercise Experiment in which I spent approximately 30 minutes each day playing the Nintendo Wii (mostly Wii Sports) while wearing a four-pound wrist weight on each arm. During this time period I also tried to eat a healthy somewhat lower calorie diet than I was used to. I also tried to walk at least 5,000 steps every day.

Stats and Results
Starting Weight: 269.2 pounds
Ending Weight: 252.8
Total Weight Lost: 16.4 pounds!
Average Daily Wii Time: 33.1 minutes per day
Average Daily Calories: 1986
Average Daily Steps: 4619
Wii Fitness Age Low: 25
Wii Fitness Age High: 52

How I Felt After Each Workout
At the end of each session I was usually a little out of breath, sweaty and moderately tired. I’d felt as though I’d had a good, healthy but not exhausting workout. Some days I struggled through the 30 minutes, but most days I was having enough fun that I barely noticed the time going by. This was the longest stretch of consecutive days I think I have ever exercised and I found myself actually wanting to play more than just the time I had allotted most days.

Differences In Wii Sports Games
Boxing and Tennis definitely require the most activity and definitely seem to burn the most calories. The action in both of them is fairly constant, with only a few real pauses in the action. Tennis volleys can go on for three or four fast-paced minutes and boxing only has a small pause between rounds and when there is a knock down. Bowling, Baseball and Golf seem to have too many small breaks in the action. Some of the Wii Sports training modes are short, but can keep you moving for short bursts of time.

Wrist Weight Observations

The wrist weights definitely made a large difference in my activity level. Four pounds doesn’t seem like much until you have to hold that weight up and swing it around for 30 minutes straight. I always tried to at least keep my arms at waist level and never just let them dangle.

I could definitely feel a difference in my arms at the end of the 30 days. While I was initially fearing an increased chance of injury by “throwing out” on of my joints I soon found myself compensating and moving my arms in ways that didn’t thrust them out and risking a nasty case of “Wii elbow.” It’s really not much different than swinging a real bat or tennis racket. The weights really add to exhaustion factor of playing the Wii, especially with games like Wii Boxing and a few of the Rayman Raving Rabids games that require lots of very fast motion.

I played a few tennis matches without the weights and found that I barely worked up a sweat at all. More weight would definitely mean a more taxing workout. I’m sure I could get a pretty sgood workout without the weights, but I would have to play a lot more than 30 minutes each day. Towards the end I found myself wanting to add even more resistance.

Importance of Diet
While the Wii does provide a good means for exercise and it is a lot of fun, I’m not sure how many calories it really burns. The wrist weights definitely helped me burn calories, but my lower calorie diet also helped with the weight loss. If I wanted to lose weight without modifying diet I really feel as though I would have to play for longer than 30 minutes each day or significantly increase the weight resistance. Playing Wii Tennis for 30 minutes while eating a Big Mac every day for lunch will probably not lead to much weight loss.

Overall Conclusions
Playing the Nintendo Wii, and especially Wii Sports, is a great way to get kids and adults alike to be more active and to burn a few extra calories. You get out of it what you put into it. If you jump around the room and wave your arms wildly and play for extended periods of time and even add resistance with weights then you’ll undoubtedly burn a lot more calories.

Right now Wii Sports seems to be the runaway winner for getting people up off the couch and sweating to the Wii. People just naturally move their entire body when playing these familiar sports games. Most of the other Wii games I’ve played and read about require short bursts of activity with a lot of pauses between the action or very little real arm movement required.

The fact that the Nintendo Wii can keep my interest through a tiring workout and keep me coming back for more each morning is a true testament Nintendo’s revolutionary and long-overdue view of the potential in video games.

What’s Next?
I’m going to continue my weight loss with video game experiments with other systems, not just the Nintendo Wii. I’ve decided to continue this experiment at its own domain: http://www.VideoGameFitness.net.

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I’m coming down the home stretch of my 30 day Wii Exercise Experiment. For the past 25 days I have worn wrist weights while playing Wii Sports at least 30 minutes each day. I’m hoping to have my final results posted on January 30th, so check back.

So far I can confidently say that I’ve lost more weight than Mickey DeLorenzo, though to be fair, I should mention that I started out with 80 pounds to lose and started out with… five? I think I’ve also made a decision about what I’ll do after the 30 days are up, but I’ll post more about that in the final results.

For now I just want to mention that Wii Sports Tennis is a darn fine game not because it’s fun and gets you moving, but because the skill level in Tennis always seems just perfectly match my playing skills. For the past week or so I’ve been neck and neck with the computer player through all of my matches, left-handed and right-handed. I play the “5 out of 5″ option and almost every single game has come down the last 5th match and often down to just a point or two one way or the other.

I’m consistently having long volleys, getting fun gameplay and a decent workout by the end of each game. That alone makes Nintendo a top-notch game company in my book.

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Media outlets are abuzz over Mickey DeLorenzo’s nine pound weight loss with his six week Nintendo Wii weight loss experiment but most of the media stories I’ve read are all missing the important points.

It should be no surprise that he lost weight. To lose weight you simply need to burn more calories than you take in. When you compare sitting on the couch for 30 minutes doing nothing with standing up and flailing your arms while diving around the room with Wii Sports then you are of course going to burn more calories with the Wii.

That’s simple. All other things being equal (including your own eating) means that vigorously playing Wii Sports (or engaging in any other activity) versus doing nothing means you will lose weight.

Period.

Guaranteed.

End of story.

You could also burn the same calories (and probably lose the same amount of weight) if you spent those 30 minutes painting your living room walls or jogging in place or simply waving your arms around like an idiot. Yet, curiously, Sherwin-Williams has not tried to sell their paint brushes as exercise equipment and America still has an obesity problem (myself included) even though many of our living rooms are freshly painted.

The real story behind the Nintendo Wii and anyone else’s weight loss is that the Nintendo Wii (and especially Wii Sports) makes exercise fun. If something is more fun then you’re more likely to do it. The more you play the Wii, the more calories you burn, the more weight you lose.

My own Nintendo Wii Weight Loss Experiment is not necessarily concerned with how much weight I’ve lost (ten pounds and counting!) because I know that I will drop some pounds. Rather, this experiment is to see if the Nintendo Wii can keep my interest for long enough to serve as an actual exercise method which I will continue to use every day.

All of this being said, just about any video game system can lead to weight loss. What if played Halo on the xBox and jogged in place? Then I would lose weight. What if I played Metal Gear Solid 4 on the PS3 and had to carry it up the stairs to set it up? Then I would lose weight. All video games have the potential to work as weight loss methods if you put in the right effort.

Any activity versus no activity will cause you to burn calories and potentially lose weight. What’s more important is for the activity to be fun enough to keep you playing, and exercising, again and again.

So far the Nintendo Wii has succeeded for me where other activities have failed.

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