Wii Fit Wish List
I am generally enjoying the heck out my Wii Fit.
I especially love the Yoga bits. I always thought I was crap at yoga (and I probably kinda am) and could never get the poses right or get the breathing down. But Wii Fit spend a decent amount of time demo-ing each pose before you do it the first time - unlike yoga dvds. More importantly, though, it measures where my center of balance is, which helps me concentrate more on maintaining the pose. Where before I would usually strain myself to try to look just like the super skinny person who always leads the yoga poses on every game and dvd, I now just try to match them as best I can and work on holding the best pose I can. The whole "breathe in, breathe out," on the dvds was never very helpful either. But the Wii Fit does this things where the virtual yoga trainer is superimposed over a circle that expands and contracts. I still mix up if I'm supposed to be breathing in or out sometimes, depending on the pose, but I maintain a better rhythm.
I also like the fact that it doesn't just weigh you for the daily tests, it gives you actual tests. And I like that it scores you on all the activities so you can see if you are improving (or not) on more than just your weight.
Overall, the strength training is "meh" and the cardio is generally crap (I've heard it's much better on Wii Active, which makes sense), but most of the games are still fairly entertaining, if not the "calorie incinerators" their scoring says they are. The My fitness routine is cool, except that it doesn't score me (or doesn't show me the scores?) and I can't figure out how to save more than one routine. I'm not sure you can. (Do the people that designed this game not mix up theuir routines? so they can concentrate of cardio one day and strength training the next? Or just for the hell of it?)
My biggest HATEHATEHATE about it though, is how it reacts to even the slightest weight gain or when your BMI is higher than it thinks it should be. (Or even that it measure BMI to begin with.)
I do like that it weighs me, because while weight is far from the focus of my fitness plan, much less the end all and be all, moderate weight loss is a part. Also, because of how the "game" works, I'm guessing it's better if you weigh yourself with it semi-regularly so that it calculates the shifts in balance properly.
However, the game's reaction to my gaining even as little as a pound* is to tell me to "think about what has contributed to my weight gain," as if I was a fucking child that needed to sit in a corner and think about what I have done wrong. It then gives you about 10 options to choose from. As all of them are stupid and fat-shaming, I only ever choose "I don't know." Stupid game, however, has noticed that I keep saying that, and the last time I choose it, it asked me "Are you sure you have no idea?" or some such as if I was lying or something. Seriously? I do not need to be lectured by a fucking machine, thank you very much.
So, my biggest wish is that I be given the option of simply being weighed and not having to listen to any crap or forced to think about what I have done. Absent that, I'd like some more realistic options for the "why are you such a fatty, fatty?" question. Such as:
-Well, see, I've been doing this thing called strength training lately. You may have heard of it. It tends to build muscle. Which tends to weigh more than air.
-Dude, I'm on my period. Leave. me. the. fuck. alone.
-I bought awesome cheese from Trader Joe's the other day. cannot! stop! eating! awesome! cheese! and I don't care
-You know how you, yourself, noticed that I weighed myself today at a completely different time of day than the last time I did so? And informed me, as if I didn't already know, that a person's weight can fluctuate up to 2 pounds per day? I'm thinking that might be the issue.
-Dude, I'm about to start my period. It's called water retention people.
-Clearly, I underestimated the weight of my clothes. Shall I take them off and try this again?
Also, I'm thinking that I should be asked to consider why I've lost weight:
-Cuz I iz teh awesome!
-I had the flu. That's not actually a good thing, you know.
-Trader Joe's was all out of cheese last time.
-I lied and said I was wearing sweats when I'm only wearing a soccer jersey.
-I hiked over the weekend.
Any further suggestions?
*possibly less, I keep weighing myself at different times of the day, so my weight generally fluctuates by a pound or two, so I don't know yet.