It’s day 11 and I’m still going strong, spending at least 30 minutes each day exercising with the Nintendo Wii. Most days I strap on the wrist weights and do various activities in Wii Sports and most days I really enjoy it.

It turns out that all this video game exercising stuff has now been “proven” to be good for you. The Mayo Clinic has just completed a study claiming that moving with video games can be an effective form of exercise. This “study” compared the energy expenditure of a group of people who sat on the couch and played traditional console video games with people who stood up and had to move around to play the game. This isn’t stated, but one can guess they used a Sony Playstation 2 EyeToy or something similar. The group that had to move around burned more calories. Is this amazingly obvious? Yes. However, it is good to see that even professional organizations like The Mayo Clinic are now taking video games and exercise seriously.

If you really want to see a mix of video game exercise ideas from homemade to professional to one-of-a-kind prototypes, head on over to VideoGameWorkout.com. I’ve been reading it since it started and love to see some of the great stuff coming down the line.

Of course, you can also keep checking back here because exercising and losing weight with video games is one of my interests as well and I’ll try to bring to light some ideas that haven’t been seen before.

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The first week of my 30 day challenge to exercising using the Nintendo Wii is done and I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I’ve lost about seven or eight pounds, but I can’t attribute all that to swinging my arms around while playing video games. I’m also eating better and cutting out the extra calories. And as anyone who has ever dieted will tell you, the first week or two of a new eating pattern almost always results in weight loss of some sort.

Again, I’m not doing this to lose a lot of weight as much as I’m hoping I can raise my general fitness level, get into exercising and improving my health and maybe lose a few pounds in the process.

Some general impressions:

• Wrist Weights Make a Difference: A day ago I tried a little experiment. A few hours after my regular workout with wrist weights I brought up Wii Tennis and played for about 10 minutes. I didn’t get nearly the same workout I did when I was using the wrist weights earlier that day. I’m going to go another week with the weights that I have, but I’m already thinking I might want to increase or add to the weight at some point in the future.
• Wii Sports is the Best Workout Game: At least, it seems to be for the moment. Zelda doesn’t really require much movement except in some combat and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids can give you a quick workout, but most of the really fast moving games are so short that it’s hard to get much of a workout. The exception might be the Rayman dancing games, but only if you make a conscious effort to move your arms with the beat and not just flick your wrist. I don’t have any games right now, but I’m open to suggestions. Wii Play looks promising, but I don’t know if I can afford to keep buying Wii games.
• Don’t loudly proclaim “I love my Wii!” in the office: ‘Nuff said.

Onward to week two!

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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. My general rules again: 30 minutes a day with Nintendo Wii games that require me to be “active and I’m wearing wrist weights to increase the overall workout.

I have to admit, this is working out far better than I expected. I’ve easily done 30 minutes of exercise every day, easily broken a sweat every day and I can feel that my arm muscles are a little tighter. I actually look forward to exericising each morning. I don’t seriously expect to lose a lot of weight in 30 days, but I do hope to get into a habit of regular exercise in 30 days.

Today I wanted to highlight two other guys out there who are doing something similar and also using their Wii as a means for getting in some exercise.

WorkoutWithWii.com - S Warley has an entire website dedicated to working out with his Wii. He is taking the novel approach of actually jogging in place with ankle weights while playing the Nintendo Wii. That will clearly burn a lot of calories, though you could obviously do this with any video game system. I like his approach, though, because he’s offering a lot of details about what he’s doing most days. I think we’re both about on the same 30 day schedule, so it should be fund to see if we draw similar conclusions at the end of the experiment. And, for the record, I’m much fatter than he is

The Wii Sports Experiment - hey_suburbia will soon be about done with his six week (42 day) Wii Exercise experiment. He is not posting during the experiment, but rather, will be posting all his results at the end. It looks like he’s taking a ton of scientific measurements to really properly guage how much of a workout Wii Sports is. Unlike some others, he’s not going to change his diet at all during the six weeks, but just add 30 minutes of Wii Sports in as his activity every day. Judging from his thumbnail photo he definitely doesn’t look like he really needs to lose much weight, so this is really going to more of an overall fitness test.

It should be interesting to see if the three of us reach similar conclusions at the end of our Wii Workout periods and it will be even more telling to see if we all continue to use the Nintendo Wii after our set deadlines.

These are, as far as I can tell, the other other people really actively blogging about their Wii exercise experiences. If you know of others, please send them my way and I’ll give them a mention.

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