Wii Fit Plus

I am somehow forty-two days into Diet 115 already. Which is hard to believe because it actually feels more like forty-one days, twenty-three hours. It’s like we inexplicably lost an hour somewhere along the way.

The good news is: I’m down five pounds. The bad news is: I was down five pounds thirty whole days ago. So things started out well, then it was back to the usual roller-coaster ride, ending up where I am now. Same place I was about a month ago.

Anyway, in my last blog post, I said that this time around would be different. Mostly because of things I don’t usually do while dieting. (We’ll just ignore the fact that my net loss for the last month or so has been zero. As diets go, it’s still way too early in the season to mathematically eliminate myself from the playoffs.)

So without any further long and pointless and completely unnecessary (not to mention meandering) words that seem to drag on and on for no particular literary or entertainment value other than to serve as a bridge between two unrelated paragraphs, let’s get to it. This post is the first in a short series on What I’m Doing Different This Time Around.

Wii Fit Plus

Our family first brought a Wii Fit Plus into our home three years ago. Everyone tried it for at least ten minutes, but I stuck with it daily for a good two months. And that was even during chemo. But as with most toys, the novelty eventually wore off and I discovered that I enjoyed French fries far more than hopping up and down in my living room.

About a year ago, though, I once again decided to do something about my growing French fry collection. I remembered the Wii and thought, “I’ll start that up again.” So one February morning around 5:30, I jumped out of bed with all the get-up-and-go that only a Day One can bring, dusted off the Wii Fit, and set it up.

Ta da!

It was quite the let down. Here I was all fired up to start working out again but instead my training partner seemed intent on driving me back to salty, deep fried starches. I thought about getting the unit repaired; instead, I simply waited ten months for my mom to give me hers. Problem solved.

Now, as an exercise device goes, Wii Fit Plus is average. There’s nothing about it that will keep your heart rate in your target zone for very long. In fact, a typical Wii Fit session begins like this:

• Turn it on.
• Press A.
• Select Wii Fit Plus from the disc channel.
• Press A.
• Stare at a screen warning you about the dangers of Wii Fit.
• Press A.
• Read all about how playing the Wii may lead to the need for television, furniture, or window replacement.
• Press A.
• Nintendo is not responsible for any injuries sustained while swinging your hips around trying to keep an invisible hula hoop from hitting the ground.
• Press A.
• Begin Body Test.
• Press A.
• Go through The Weighing Ceremony, which itself involves pressing “A” about fourteen more times plus receiving daily message that says, “Oh, it looks like you’re a little off balance.” I know I’m a little off-balance. You tell me that every single day. There is no way for anyone to be completely balanced. You could set the Statue of David on this thing and Wii Fit Plus would still complain about it being “a little off-balance.”
• Press A.

After about twenty minutes, you finally get to the training menu. Here you will find four selections: Strength, Yoga, Aerobics, and Balance Games. Or, as I see them:

The balance games have absolutely nothing to do with exercise and everything to do with Nintendo trying to figure out a way to make playing the Wii burn fewer calories than if you just sat there and watched someone else play. It’s an engineering miracle.

There’s only one game I play every day: head butting. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth a million. Watch this movie starting around the one-minute mark to really see what the head-butt game is all about:

Even though this exercise doesn’t exactly confer any sort of health benefit, it’s turned into a “thing” for me. What the Head-Butt game does is pit me against my own brain in a daily struggle for who controls whom.

For example, when the soccer ball comes right up the middle, one of two things will happen:

1. I stand up straight, thus straightening my Mii and hitting the ball.
2. Or, in the span of a half second, I violently alternate between leaning right and left until eventually landing on a hard-right lean, just as the soccer ball whooshes by.

It’s at this point I curse my inability to complete a simple physical task and descend into pondering deep philosophical concepts such as the existence of free will. Which is, I’m sure, exactly what Nintendo had on their minds when they designed this game.

It took more than a few days but eventually I got a perfect score:

Satisfied that I was now master of my own destiny, I hopped on it again the very next day only to score 481 and once again question the very essence of my being. Well played, Nintendo. Well played.