Wii Fit?

Our local newspaper ran an article about a woman who lost 80 pounds in the last year by using a Wii Fit for an hour a day thus burning around 200 calories.  Inspiring.  So inspiring in fact that we have taken up that challenge.

Using Biggest Looser as our other inspiration, we also added in riding five miles on the bike, doing three reps of ten exercises with a five pound weight, 25 sit ups and five push ups per day.  I am always so pumped at the beginning of the Biggest Looser season and by the end when the contestants all look fabulous and I don't, I end up eating during the show.  Hopefully that will not be the case this season.

We have found that it takes a huge effort to get this all done.  To make it easier, I have decided that the kids physical health is just as important as their mental health so we have been taking the time to get the bulk of it done before we start school.

How successful have we been?  Well, Dancer got everything done yesterday and Spark did today.  I have yet to get it all in.  The important thing is that we are trying.  We are not going to have our spirits dampened if we don't reach perfection. 

The road block that we keep hitting is that it takes a huge amount of time for all of us to use the bike and Wii Fit.  The bike is pretty easy, it takes us about 20 to 25 minutes to ride five miles.  The hard part comes in when we can only do it one at a time so it really takes us an hour and half.  I have found I can get the five miles in if I start the kids on some school work, jump on the bike for a mile or two, run back to help them with the next thing, jump on again and so on.  It may take all afternoon but I have gotten the bike part in every day.   It takes about an hour to reach 200 calorie burn on the Wii Fit.  Choosing Island Run, cycling and hula hoop racks the calories up faster but it still takes about 45 minutes.  We did find today though that two people can do the Island Run at the same time and then the second person can add the calories on to their fit credits so that should shorten our time needed to get this done.  Shows how much we have used the Wii Fit before this that we just figured this feature out.  We got it last Christmas and Dancer and I have logged on ten hours so far after three days of our new challenge.  You don't see any results with seven hours a play time a year.  Funny how that works!

Next week I see a new challenge for us, one of our other activities starts up again.  At least it is phy. ed. at the YMCA so the kids will get a little movement in but I don't think it is anything too major.  And, of course, I sit in the lobby the whole time gabbing with the other parents so that does my back side no good.  This week the kids only had AWANA which is in the evening so we had five full days at home.  Next week will be four and the week after that will be three when we start bowling. 

We are not going to let time be our excuse though and we will keep at this.  Once it is spring we can do more outside at the same time and getting exercise in will be much easier.  I know by then we will all be ready to be riding bike outside and not in the basement.

Wii will be fit!!!