Wii Fit, Fire Emblem
May 19th 2008 -
I got a Wii Fit two weeks ago. The board is quite a bit better at doing balance related tasks than improving fitness, but that’s fine by me. I’m enjoying the yoga exercises in particular. The game gives feedback on your centre of gravity, and using that as a focus is quite calming for me.
One thing that bugs me, though, is that it relies on BMI. The game can weigh you and calculate your BMI given your height. The trouble is, for my weight of 84kg and height of 183cm, it claims that I’m overweight. And then makes my “Mii” (the Wii has avatar figures for players) rather pudgy.
Now, I could just suck it up and admit that I’m overweight, but on balance I’m quite happy with my weight and have no intention of changing it. I don’t feel overweight. From what I understand, BMI doesn’t take into account body type. But it’s a bit irritating: the Wii Fit keeps trying to make me commit to losing weight down to an ideal 73kg(!), which I suspect would be rather scrawny. I’d like to tell it to get stuffed, but there isn’t that option. My quick hack fix is to adjust my height to about 200cm, but I can’t even find the option to do that. And it feels like cheating.
Von and I have also been playing Fire Emblem, an unapologetically old-school turn-based strategy game. It’s a real time sucker. I suspect it’ll suck up a lot of the time that really ought to be going into wedding planning…
Dave Says:
May 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am
We’re also getting a Wii shortly so that Fi – the distance from whose interest in all things computer game-y can be measured in astronomical units – can do the Wii Fit thing.
Most of the reviews I’ve seen heartily recommend ignoring the WF’s opinion of your body shape and just use it to track progress and provide incentive i.e. tell it to get stuffed.
Me, I just want to use it to play balance games and try out that ski jump thing.
admin Says:
May 20th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
The balance games are pretty cool, though mostly in a proof-of-concept way. I’m not sure how much fun I’ll get from them beyond the novelty.
polly (calypso) Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
http://kateharding.net/
is “Shapely Prose”. Worth a read, I think, but as a super-fit but undeniably fat belly dancer I have to admit to bias against the BMI as a measure of my health.