Exercising with the Wii ... Pros and Cons

My husband bought the Wii when it first went on the market a year or two ago. We had glorious intentions of exercising with the Wii Fit and losing weight while having fun and spending loads of quality time together. That didn't happen. Instead we decided that my parents might benefit from it since it was just gathering dust at our house, so we sent it to them over the holidays.

About a month later I was diagnosed with RA and quite a few of the physical activities I used to do have become painful for me. Since I have not been as active, I have put on weight, which makes the pressure on my joints worse and there is more pain. It's a vicious cycle.

I was speaking to my husband about how I could lose weight when some days I am too fatigued or my feet are in too much pain to walk. That's when he surprised me with a new Wii. He apparently got a good deal on the new black one they just released and bought some used games and a used balance board at the resale place where he had credit from trading in other games.

I was really skeptical, but he convinced me that it did not dent our bank account too badly. Plus I know that he was doing all of this because he loves me and wants me to be healthy.

These are the pros and cons for me when using the Wii to exercise:

Pros -

• It's exercise. Even when you are not using the "exercise" games, you are moving around, which is better than watching tv or something of that nature.

Cons -

• The Wii Fit tells me how fat I am every time I do the evaluation. No, I'm sorry, it tells me how "obese" I am. It's not that I don't agree, it's that I do not need a cartoon pointing out how I am on the obese end of the scale. Worse yet, they make your little Wii person rounder after you weigh in.
• You are not supposed to use the Wii balance board while wearing shoes, but I cannot stand on a hard, flat surface without shoes. I tried to use the balance board several times without wearing my tennis shoes and after about ten minutes, my feet were in such pain that I could not do anything the rest of the day. So I wear my tennis shoes now, but it seems to be hard on the balance board and I am wondering if it will last very long. So it might end up costing us more money.
  
• Some of the games want you to run. One of my seven circles of hell (if I was a bad person of course) would be a fast running treadmill with no off button. Walking, fine. Walking fast, fine. Running, you're f*****g crazy!
  
• It may lead to the death of my husband by my hands. I am not an athletic person, but I can be a competitive person and these games bring out the worst in me. I absolutely hate to see him do better than me and can get pretty nasty when he does. I will even bite my lip through the pain to beat him. I don't like this part of me because I am not like this in any other aspect of my life. I am always happy to see him do well, but if he beats my hula hoop score, I will be forced to bring him down.

I don't know if the cons outweigh the one pro, but I try to use it when I am able to. Or at least until I break and kill that stupid cartoon scale.