I only had time to do the body test yesterday. I took my son swimming early in the morning for about an hour, so I got lots of activity in then.
The quick run down:
I am progressing quite nicely. How is Wii Fit working out for you after a couple of weeks?
Anyone who is interested or has bought Wii Fit has probably already wondered what life the balance board has beyond the exercises. I’m glad to report that it looks like there’s lots of great possibilities in the future.
I’m sure you’ve probably already heard about We Ski, the skiing game that extends the ski offerings in Wii Fit, but I was most excited about what I read last night in Nintendo Power magazine. It looks like one of the weirdest game franchises on the Wii will have embraced the balance board when it hits the shelves with its third installment. Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party should be coming to us around the holiday season. Of course, we’ll all be buff from the Wii Fit by then.
Alright, tonight was the night the sweat started pouring and I’m imagining that I’ll be feeling a bit sore in the morning.
I started out with Super Hula Hoop. Definitely not my best activity. I’m not so great (yet) at the motion to do it right, let alone alternate it between right and left. I was asked a day or so ago to make a video of me hula hooping. I meant to do it tonight, but forgot. I’ll do it tomorrow.
After Hula hooping, advanced stepping, and a jog, I switched to balance games. I managed to make new scores in slalom, ski jump, and soccer heading, with 59 seconds, 288 meters, and 88 points respectively.
Before doing my yoga cool down, I cracked open the strength exercises for the first time. My body popped and stretched all over the place during torso twists and rowing squats, but they felt good to do. I’ll definitely be doing more of those.
Push-ups/Side Planks = EPIC FAIL. I gave up mid-exercise. It’ll be a while before I try tackling that one again. I’ve never been that good at push-ups, and with the balance board forcing you to put your hands where they really need to be, well… enough about that.
Body Test results show that I’ve almost gotten my center of balance in the right spot, my BMI has gone down about a half point, and I lost 0.3 pounds from yesterday. My Wii Fit Age (WFA) is now 37. I’m quite close now to finally having my age and my WFA match.
I’ll start logging and documenting my activity a little better from here on out.
Alright, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The beginning of some fat pictures. This one comes courtesy of my friend Julie Parker. This was taken at last week’s Ad Wars.
So that gives me something to change. The next time I don a Large New Kids On The Block sweatshirt for a trivia competition, I’ll be looking a little slimmer.
After finishing up some work, I finally got a chance to unbox Wii Fit and get it set up for the experiment. I took photos along the way to document the initial readings. I forgot to take a picture of my summary in the Wii Fit Plaza, but my center of balance is pretty good, just barely favoring my left side.
Then, I got all the information put in.
The oddly chirpy Balance Board voice barked a few comments at me and then calculated the body mass index (BMI). I think the results should surprise no one. Note how the Wii plumps up from the last picture to the next.
There was a balance test, which I apparently did pretty poorly on since the game asked if I tripped a lot when I walked (the answer: no). Finally, my initial Wii Fit Age was calculated.
46.
I have the fitness level of a 46 year old. I’ve got some work to do. Next came time to set my weight loss goal. As you know, the ultimate goal of this experiment is to lose 40 pounds. Wii Fit would only allow me to put in a 22 pound loss goal.
Wii Fit warns that any weight loss goal that is more aggressive than a three pound loss every two weeks is more susceptible to bounce back, so I set my loss rate at 3.4 pounds every two weeks. This will put me at a 22 pound loss over 3 months.
That means it’s going to take 6 months to acheive my 40 pound loss goal. Hope you plan to stick around for the long haul. 
After getting everything initially set up, it was time to start the training exercises. I opted for Aerobics my first time out, and i have to say it was fun and got the heart rate going. Hula Hoop was fun. Despite being a drummer, the step rhythm exercise did not go as well as I’d hoped (i’m not good at DDR either). Jogging was pretty good too.
I ended the evening with a little yoga, which was relaxing, but I can already foresee a difficulty. The combination of my height plus the height of the ceiling in the basement is going to make some of the yoga poses (such as the half moon) a little tough, at least in the beginning. Ideally, I’ll gain some flexibility so that I can bend more easily and my hands won’t be as close to the ceiling.
Today, I’m not sore but I can tell that I did something that was beneficial to my well-being. I did another official weigh-in this morning on the bathroom scales.
This morning’s weight was 278.4 pounds, exactly the same as the weigh-in I did on May 9th.
I’ve decided that there’s a lot of the daily minutae involved in this project that I don’t want to clog up the blog with. I will, however, be tweeting them on Twitter. If you want to keep track of daily Wii Fit Ages, weigh-ins, and other data, I invite you to follow wiifitproject on Twitter.