`I’d like to preface this by saying that on April 5th I experienced a pretty gnarly bowling/ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom/chihuahua lifting related ‘incident’ which left my back and right leg pretty bad off.  I’m just now getting back to mostly normal.

When I first started using the Wii Fit, I was pretty excited about it.  The balance and cardio games were my favorite and a lot easier on my back than yoga and strength training. Plus it’s a lot more fun jogging around your house with a remote in your pocket, confusing your sandwich-making husband, than laying on the floor being licked in the face by 3 dogs.  I did some simple strength training exercises once my back felt up to it and was surprisingly sore the next day. That’s always a good sign!  I had the fever for unlocking advanced levels and more games.  After 3 or 4 days the initial excitement wore off and I continued with my original plan of action.

I’m a real estate agent, so my job often requires running here and there, computing, telephone conversing, and a lot of general non-stability.  I decided to use the Fit on the days that I was not running around.  This plan is working pretty well for me so far, except that I’ve been pretty busy and took a vacation this month.  (So those are my excuses from a 16-day workout hiatus). 

The good news is that even with my crazy schedule and lack of ambition, I feel like the days I’m not working out are still days that are better than they were before the balance board came into my life.  I’ve had awful balance for most of my life and my posture isn’t terrible but could stand improving.  After just a couple of days working out I became much more aware of my body.  I’ve been standing up straighter and keeping my balance much better.  I find myself shifting while driving to sit up straighter, noticing poor posture when standing, and my back and legs definitely feel stronger.  The improvement must really be there, because even after that 16 day stretch I mentioned, I did better on every balance game than I’d ever done before when I returned to the game.  I did spend my weekend last week walking around New York City until I nearly dropped, to be fair, but I honestly think that just the awareness of my body has really strengthened the muscles in my back and legs.

Unfortunately, I can’t’ say much in the way of weight loss.  My problem is clothes.  Every time you weigh yourself, it asks you to select if you’re wearing light or heavy clothes (or to enter some other number).  While working out in the nude sure sounds fun, I chose to wear clothes.  While never again washing clothes also sounds fun, I’m usually wearing a different pair of shorts, pants, dress, or whatever and I don’t know how much they weigh.  So there’s always a variance of a couple of pounds..and since it’s only been a few weeks and I’m pretty close to my natural weight to begin with, it’s hard to calculate that marginal balance when the weight of my clothes is also approximated. 

I also have one small complaint about the balance board.  Why would they make it white?  I know that the Wii is white, the remotes are white…whatever.  I’m stepping on that thing!  It had my little footprints on it by day 2!

I took the plunge and cancelled my gym membership today, so I’m going to keep it up.  I should have some more concrete numbers for the next update!

written by rexburner