I have survived the first week of my Wii Fit experiment. I exercised with the game every day for 7 days. As embarrassing as it is to say, this is the longest I have ever stuck with a daily exercise program. So despite the results, Wii Fit has already accomplished something no other exercise program has in the sheer fact that I haven’t given up yet.

What follows are my daily logs for the first week. After those I have written a small wrap-up. I have also weighed myself again to see how I am progressing. So how was the first week? Read on.

Day 1 (February 5th)
BMI: 25.73
Body Age: 42
In game training time: 34 minutes
Actual playing time: 1 hour 26 minutes

My first day of Wii Fit went really slow. Before you can do each exercise you have to watch a tutorial of how to properly perform each action. Actually you have the option to skip this but I wanted to make sure I was doing each one correctly. That way I will get the most benefit. So I spent most of the workout watching my “trainer” (you can choose male or female) go through the motions. I focused mostly on the stretching exercises today, deep knee bends, squats, etc. I also did some push-ups for good measure. My warm-up was some easy yoga and I used it to cool down as well. I really need to work on my balance. The hardest part of Yoga is just staying still and I need a lot of practice in that area.

Note: If you do the daily test a second time you can update your chart. It appears that in the 4 hours since making my character I have lost a bit of weight. This is just “water weight” I know, but my Mii sure looked happy about it.

Day 2 (February 6th)
BMI: 25.44
Body Age: 26 (?)
In game training time: 40 minutes
Actual playing time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Today I unlocked a few new exercises and 2 “endurance-training”, training modes that I look forward to using in the future. I’m still sitting through a lot of tutorial information for the new exercises but I can jump right in to the exercises I have done before.

It was a bit harder to do the deep knee bends today since I am a bit sore from doing them yesterday. I guess my body is not used to it yet. For tomorrow I will try to focus more on another area of the body to give my knees time to rest. Unlike yesterday, where I spent most of the time sitting and watching, I actually worked up a bit of a sweat during the last few minutes of today’s workout. It felt good. Like I am accomplishing something.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday is that the game will also test your “body age”; this is like the “brain age” from Nintendo’s brain training series. Yesterday my “body age” was 42. I thought, “Great, a goal to work toward. I want my “body age” to match my real age before my wedding.” I checked my body age at the end of the workout today and it dropped from 42 to 26 (a year younger than my actual age). Nice to know I guess.. But it kind of threw the credibility of this system out the window.

Day 3 (February 7th)
BMI: 25.44
Body Age: 40 (!!)
In-game training time: 36 minutes
Actual playing time: 52 minutes

Once again my ratio of time spent sitting around to actual training time is getting better. I was able to spend almost my entire workout today actually working out. Because of this my workout is getting harder. Since I had frequent breaks the first 2 days, I didn’t notice that all these exercises, one right after another, are actually quite tiring.

I had a stressful day at work today so I though I would calm down with a bit of yoga to start things. It was a bad choice. The pose (and balance required to hold it in place) was beyond my ability and my struggle to stay upright was anything but relaxing. Luckily I unlocked a boxing mini-game (which uses wiimote and nunchuck as well as the balance board), which proved to be a nice stress reliever.

I did the “endurance training” mode for sit-ups. The first time I went into the game it had me do 10 sit-ups. The next time, it had me do 20, the time after that, 30. I think that each time I successfully finish, it adds more sit-ups. This mode, while not flashy, is very good exercise.

Today my “body age” is 40. I don’t know why it’s 40 and I no longer care. As far as I can tell, the “body age” is based on the performance of 2 balancing mini-games. I can’t believe that there is any real science behind it. The fact that in 24 hours my body can age 14 years is proof enough for me. Tomorrow I anticipate my “body age” will be either 97 or 2. Utterly useless.

Day 4 (February 8th)
BMI: 25.57
Body Age: 21 (whatever)
In game training time: 35 minutes
Actual playing time: 55 minutes

Today I went back to some of the exercises I was too sore to do yesterday such as the deep knee bends. I’ll see if I’m sore again tomorrow. If I am I will focus more on upper body activities.

According to the game, my technique is improving on a lot of the exercises. I tend to agree. They are starting to “feel right” or at least less awkward. Still having a lot of trouble with the yoga exercises and because of that I don’t do them much. Of course the fact that I am not doing them much is why I am having trouble with them. It’s a vicious circle. Starting tomorrow I will try to focus a bit more on yoga.

40 yesterday? 21 today? “Body age” clearly means nothing.

Day 5 (February 9th)
BMI: 25.32
Body Age: 28
In game training time: 32 minutes
Actual playing time 45 minutes

I didn’t have as much time as I would have like to do Wii Fit today. Some friends came in from out of town and by the time I returned to my house it was very late. I still managed to get in 32 minutes before midnight hit. I realize now that there might be days when doing Wii Fit is impossible, but I am still going to do my best to workout with it everyday.

I did a lot more yoga today and I am slowly improving at it. I hope that in the future I will be comfortable enough with the yoga poses that they are actually relaxing. I think this will come with practice.

Today I was able to get perfect scores on 2 of the training exercises. It’s a good feeling to know that you are doing something correctly. When I started just 5 days ago, for many exercises I was happy to get 50%. Tangible progress is being made, but the going is still slow.

Day 6 (February 10th)
BMI: 25.44
Body Age: 45
In game training time: 32 minutes
Actual playing time: 50 minutes

My friend was visiting today so I had to do Wii Fit with him watching. This is embarrassing, especially on the exercises that I am not so good at. He watched and laughed as I did yoga that was far from graceful.

Still, it was actually to my benefit to be a bit embarrassed. It caused me to work harder to do well at the exercises. My scores were higher than usual today and I was able to get through the endurance mode on sit-ups for the first time. My old record was 61 but I made it all the way to 100.

After I was done I started to put the game away but he actually insisted of making a profile of his own and giving it a go. It was my first time to watch someone else play that game and I have to say it was pretty fun. Not as exciting as watching someone play a game like WarioWare but it still was a good time. And if the person you are playing with were supportive (and not just laughing) it would probably be quite encouraging as well.

Day 7 (February 11th)
BMI: 25.76
Body Age: 26
In game training time: 41 minutes
Actual playing time: 55 minutes

The workout felt good today. I am no longer getting sore at all from the exercises, so today I decided to increase the difficulty level on some of the exercises. Adding more repetitions to the exercises allows me to get more training into a shorter amount of time. My in game training time and actual playing time is getting closer and closer.

The boxing game gets very difficult in the harder levels, which is good. It keeps me interested. I had pretty much memorized the patterns on the easy level. I haven’t played the dance game in a while. Early on I thought that the Wii balance board was not picking up my steps right, but now I realize that it might be my rhythm and timing skills at fault. I will give it another chance tomorrow.

As I said before, the workout felt good today. I am starting to get the hang of using the balance board and my body is starting to adjust to the concept of a daily “exercise time”. It has become a part of my evening routine.

Week 1 Wrap-up

Total time spent this week: 4 hours 10 minutes
Current BMI: 25.76
Current weight: 80 kg (176 lbs)
Total weight change: 0

I have to say that I enjoyed my time with Wii Fit. It is nice to add some exercise into my daily routine. I wasn’t expecting dramatic weight loss in a week (or on 2 months, to tell the truth), however I could not help but be a little disappointed by the fact that there was no weight change at all. I do however feel healthier. True, this may be entirely psychological but regardless, it feels good. Good enough that I have no problem going into a second week of Wii Fit. I will continue posting daily logs to the main Wii Fit page so if you find that interesting, feel free to check it out. If not, I will be posting a week 2 report 7 days from now. Will I finally begin loosing weight? Gaining weight? Time will tell.