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.

4 Comments » | Email Link

A week or so ago I wrote about some people who are blogging about using the Nintendo Wii for exercise. On Monday one of them posted his results!

Hey_Suburbia underwent a six week experiment to lose weight by playing the Nintendo Wii (specifically Wii Sports) 30 minutes a day and meticulously tracking his progress. During that time he reports that he lost nine pounds and actually toned himself up a little bit. Looks like the Nintendo Wii really is a great form of exercise! I do have to question if all nine pounds of weight loss are from “exercise” or if a subtle change in diet also didn’t play a small role. He really didn’t have that much to lose, so nine pounds in six weeks is pretty impressive. I’m not sure if he tracked calories eaten each day or not. It would be interesting to see if he really ate the same as before he started playing.

My own results have been equally as impressive. I’m combining a change in diet (restricting calories) with 30 minutes of Wii playing using wrist weights. I have lost about 10 pounds in 17 days, but I’ll be posting all the final facts and figures at the end of the experiment. I really believe in the weights and based on my results so far I may extend my 30 days experiment indefinitely.

One more bit of exciting news: I turned “pro” in Tennis with both my right-handed and left-handed Mii today!

No Comments » | Email Link

I’m a little over two full weeks into my 30 day Wii Exercise Challenge and I have to admit, I think this is probably the longest I’ve stuck with a New Years Resolution Exercise Routine. That tells you, the reader, two things:

1. I’m a fat, lazy load who really doesn’t like exercise.

2. The Nintendo Wii, and especially Wii Sports, is an incredibly fun machine if it is still holding my interest.

Both are true.

I’ve been doing this long enough to kind of work out a regular Wii Sports routine that I go through most days. I mix it up a little bit, but I generally stick to this pattern:

1. Boot up the Nintendo Wii and strap on the wrist weights.

2. Stretch for a minute or two, just to kind of get myself woken up. I almost always exercise first thing in the morning.

3. I’m right-handed, so I play a “Best of 5″ match of Wii Tennis with my Mii that is right-handed. In the beginning my matches didn’t last very long, but now I’m up to around the 850 - 950 skill level so my matches last about 10-15 minutes.

4. I then switch to a left-handed Mii that I made and play another Best of 5 match. Curiosly, my skill level as a left-handed tennis player always seems to be higher than my right-handed tennis player. I think I just tend to put more spin on the ball when I’m playing left handed. This match also takes 10 - 15 minutes most days.

5. Based on a comment by one of my readers, I started playing some of the boxing training exercises, especially the punching bag one. I learned a lot and now I often tack on a quick round of boxing against a computer opponent onto the end of my work out.

6. If I have time (with a newborn in the house I sometimes don’t) I’ll take the Wii Fitness test. Though my skill level has obviously gotten better over the last two weeks the steaming pile of poo called the “Wii Fitness Test” doesn’t usually reflect that. I could get an age of “29″ one day and a “58″ the next day, all based on the tests I happen to draw by luck. My skill level is kind of spotty in baseball and I’m just mediocre at bowling.

I try to move as much as possible, shuffling my feet, swinging my arms, keeping both my arms in a “raised and ready” position at the waist while playing tennis so that I’m still hoisting the wrist weights. I tend to move by body left and right a lot and sometimes I even pull in my stomach muscles for short bursts while playing.

All of this gives me a light but decent workout. As long as I’m wearing my wrist weights I really am pretty worn out by the end of the 30 minutes. I tried my routine without the weights and found that though I was a bit faster at tennis, I didn’t really get nearly the workout I thought I would. I barely broke a sweat without weights. Even more disturbing, I found myself wanting to wear the weights just to add some resistance and “realism” to Wii sports.

Oh, and I’ve lost about 10 pounds since I started. The rate of weight loss is slowing down a bit, but that’s to be expected. The initial weight loss was probably mostly water weight and adjusting to the new regimen. I’ll post all my exercise times and calorie and weight charts at the end of the 30 days.

4 Comments » | Email Link