“Wii Fit” Causes Weight Loss: Truth or Fiction?
Getting a workout while playing Nintendo games sounds like a contradiction in terms. I mean, who hasn’t been sprawled out on the coach, hunched over the controller in the zone right when Mom walked into the room and warned us: “You’re going to waste away in front of that screen!”?
According to most people, Mom is right. We usually associate the gaming genre with a sedentary lifestyle, a leading cause of obesity. However Wii fitness games have sold millions of copies because they do the opposite; they help you lose weight. They get off you the coach, onto the exercise mat and into that much desired fat burning zone. You see, the Wii fools you. The games draw your attention to the screen and the fun activities you’re doing. You don’t notice that your thighs are burning or that your trick knee is predicting a thunderstorm – you’re probably too busy working on your trick skii or your bowling pitch. That’s how this Nintendo hen laid it’s golden egg – you don’t even realize that you’re working out, so workout = fun. And it gets better.
The game gives you specialized instructions and tips to help you achieve your fitness goals. The Wii Fit game gives you a workout age and then compares it to your real age. So if you’re a 35 year old woman and you’ve been avoiding the gym like the rest of us, your workout age might actually be older. Yikes! Let me tell you from experience, its not fun to discover that the Wii rates you as a 33 year old when you’re still under 30. So let’s say you need to work on your balance, or you’ve noticed that you are noticeably stronger in one side of the body than the other. No problem, the game detects this, adapts to you and sends you customized exercises to complete over a set period of time. When you do the work, the game rewards you by unlocking new exercises and activities. Needless to say, curiosity quickly becomes a motivating factor to keep going.
If you’re trying to achieve healthy weight loss, the game will weigh you initially and then track your weight loss for you in a custom profile as you go along. You can focus on cardiovascular exercises, one of which is a fun race along a mountain trail. I know it sounds hard to believe. Let me tell you, there’s been plenty of backlash on both sides – a Mom accusing Nintendo of infecting her daughter with low self-esteem and a cynical man from Forbes on one side, and a lot happy customers on the other. Whether or not you choose to side with the qualms that the Wii can lead children to develop eating disorders or with the happy woman who claims to have dropped 40 pounds thanks to the Wii, its clear that there may be some truth in all that Nintendo hype. However you want to look at it, The Wii Fit game makes losing weight not only a serious possibility, but seriously fun.
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