“Welcome to 2007!”
I would wish you a Happy New Year, but I’m too out of breath from typing that first line. You see, today I’m officially the most out of shape and fattest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Yay for breaking personal achievement records!
Like everyone in America I figured I would resolve this year to lose some weight and try to become more fit. I resolve this every year and by January 5th I’m usually sick of the whole thing and change my resolution to something more like “I resolve to keep next year’s resolution to lose weight,” and then have a second helping of leftover Christmas cookies from the office conference table.
This year will be a little different for two reasons:
1. This is the first new year’s day that I am a daddy. I now realize that anything I do affects Baby Coffee just as much as it affects me.
2. I have Nintendo Wii.
Japanese people with bad fashion sense enjoy the Nintendo Wii.
In case you’ve been just been chiselled out of a prehistoric glacier and thawed in a lab by a scientist that looks like Pauly Shore (remember him?) the Nintendo Wii is perhaps the most coveted electronic gaming system on the planet… nay… UNIVERSE.
The Nintendo Wii gaming system doesn’t require you to mash buttons for hours on end to play games. Instead it has two different controllers which require you to wave your arms and hands up and down and in and out and all around to play the games on your TV screen. Some of the games require much more motion than others, but most games get you moving your whole body at least some of the time as you get caught up in the action.
So if you want to swing a sword on screen you wave your arm around in front of you and the sword swings. If you want to hit a baseball you move your arms as if you have a bat in your hand. If you want to bowl you bring your arm down and roll it up, just like in real bowling.
The possibility to exercise with these remotes is obvious. Any game that gets you to stand up and wave your arms around instead of just sitting on the couch and hitting buttons is bound to burn a few extra calories. As a fat nerd I need to burn about a bazillion extra calories, so I’m excited about the potential.
There are, admittedly, lots and lots of people already using the Wii to “exercise” and lose weight. I’ll highlight some of their efforts in the future. For now, though, I’m going to give you the basics of my exercise regimen.
The Rules
- For the next 30 days (every day in January 2007) I plan to spend at least 30 minutes playing fairly “active” games on my Nintendo Wii. For the record, I count games like Wii Sports or Rayman Raving Rabbids
as active games that really get your body moving and your blood pumping. I do not count Zelda: Twilight Princess as a game that will get you off the couch. It’s a good game, but it isn’t going to help you burn many calories.
- I may not post every day, but I’ll try. I’ll take the Wii Sports Fitness test every couple of days. I don’t really put too much stock in it as a measure of progress or health. The first time I did it I got a fitness age of 67 and the second time I did it, a day later, I got a fitness age of 35.
- I’ll stand up for all the exercising with my Wii. Can I sit on the couch and play Wii Baseball? Yep. But that kind of defeats the point. I have noticed that when I stand up and play I natually involve my whole body in a lot of the motions.
- Here’s the big one: While waving your arms around with the Wii will get you a little out of breath at times, I also don’t think it’s intensive enough to burn many calories. So I’m introducing Wrist Weights
into the equation. I’ll wear these on both wrists while exercising with the Wii. This will add resistance and an anarobic aspect to the already aerobic exercise motions.
While doing all this I’ll also be trying to walk at least 5,000 steps each day and I’ll be curbing my unhealthy eating. I will almost definitely lose some weight in January if I stick with these plans.
This experiment is not meant to measure weight loss but rather to measure the Wii’s “entertainment” value and ability to keep a lazy guy like myself on some sort of exercise program. I’ll be commenting on the Wii games that I’m playing, the boredom factor of exericising, whether or not I feel as though I’m getting a good workout and a number of other subjective things about using the Wii as an exercise medium.
I’ll also try to detail some of the other great ways you can lose weight with other video games (yes, there are plenty of ways) and try to kick out some fun Wii pages for all you Wii owners. I’ll even give you some tips on how to get your hands on your own Nintendo Wii if you don’t have one.
Finally, some stats about me:
Chronological Age: 35
Height: 6′ 1″
Weight: 267.6 pounds (oy vey!)
Off to play some Wii tennis!
4 Responses to “Wii Exercise Experiment – Day 1 – The Beginning”
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Wii Bits for January 1, 2006 | The Wii Experience says:
[...] – Here’s another person doing a Nintendo Wii workout program, for 30 days, he will follow a strict regimen of playing the more active games on the Wii and charting his success. He’s going to try to post every day with his results, so keep an eye on his blog if you’re interested. We’ll do a followup with his progress as it goes as well if he sticks to it. [...]
January 1st, 2007 at 3:29 pm -
Contra Gears: Gaming News - Gaming Blog » Blog Archive » Wii Exercise Experiment says:
[...] Umm… your link is broken. The full story can be found here: http://www.spillingcoffee.com/2007/01/01/wii-exercise-experiment-day-1-the-beginning/ [...]
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Spilling Coffee with Humorist Tom Coffee » Wii Exercise Experiment - Day 6 - Other Wii Workouts says:
[...] Okay, I’m closing in on a week of using the Nintendo Wii as a method of getting 30 minutes of exercise in the day. If you’ve missed anything you can start back at the beginning of my 30 Day Experiment to Exercise and Lose Weight with my Nintendo Wii. [...]
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melissa says:
i am looking forward to reading more about your experiment. =)