Research suggests Wii Fit is no flab fighter

Wii Fit in barely working up a sweat and not losing weight shocker

"The families used Wii Fit for an average of 22 minutes each day during the first six weeks of it entering their homes, but for less than four minutes per day by the end of the three-month period."

Anyone who has ever done any sort of exercise will tell you 22 minutes of exercise is pretty much a waste of time. 4 minutes? you'd lose more weight sneezing.

Was a useless bit of research "We got together 8 very lazy and fat families and saw what happened when they didn't use a piece of equipment correctly over a period of 6 weeks"

So it doesn't work - only it does work?!

This says a couple of things that you don't need a scientist to understand.

1: Kids like consoles.

2: If you use something it has more of an effect than if you don't.

As kids got significantly fitter (doubtless cos they used it) and adults didn't (cos they didn't, maybe cos the kids were on it), how can a -ve headline be appropriate? Esp one that mentions 'flab' = fat as opposed to aerobic fitness which was found to improve in those that used it.

The Wii-Fit will definitely take market from several segments of massive fitness industry. They're bound to want to portray it as uselss. Something to watch out for down the line.

But it IS a fitness booster.

Indeed you could just as well have written this from an entirely more +ve standpoint concentrating on the evidence that it DOES boost fitness, esp in kids. And had the family thing as the footnote.

You did the opposite. And this is a 1st gen. In future, when people have grown up with this stuff, more adults will use it. And it'll be better. Trashing it now is just weird. Iphone 1 was bullshit and everyone that bought it got ripped off, but that doesn't mean future iterations can't achieve more...

Imagine if crappy writing like this had sunk everything that has ultimately improved our lives but wasn't perfect at launch. Washing machines... Vaccum cleaners... Dish washers... Computers...

My rubber-keyed speccy was SHITE, yet oh so good and look what crap like that begat. Journalism like this on the interwebs. Rubber-keyed speccys are rolling in their graves.

Gym membership doesn't improve health

A new study released has proven that owning a gym membership card doesn't improve your health nor makes you more fit. Scientists have looked at two sets of people, one who has a gym membership card and one who doesn't. Initially, the sample portion who had the card made all one trip to the gym which improved their fitness by a small amount. However, over the year long study, it was found that 99% of the people who had been given these cards for the sake of the study did not attend the gyms anymore and so their fitness didn't improve.

...

Seriously, it's like making a study of people who own running shoes and who never run.

Wow, they haven't missed the point at ALL, have they?

Well done those chaps for completely misunderstanding the point of the Wii Fit.

Abridged version:

You lose weight by adjusting your calorific intake:calorific usage ratio such that you burn more than you ingest. You can do this by eating less, working out to burn more, or preferably a combination of both.

Eating 5 times your daily carb requirement then doing ten minutes of Wii Fit will achieve fuck-all. As would the same behaviour with 10 minutes spent in the gym, or anywhere else.

The problem with this is that the researchers have tried to pretend that the Wii Fit either is, or is marketed as, the ONE SINGLE THING THAT WILL SOLVE YOUR WEIGHT PROBLEM. It's not, and Nintendo have never said otherwise. Stop giving morons publicity for moronic statements, for Christ's sake, it'll only encourage them.

Full Disclosure: The GF & I have had a Wii & Wii Fit for about 7 months, and in that time have found it very useful to help change habits. I've lost 2 and a half stone along the way and have gained a very useful morning wakeup routine. The majority of the change was to how often we eat and how much we eat. We could have achieved the same result with a scales, a notebook, some graph paper and a fitness DVD. The Wii Fit succeeds in simplifying the task of being aware of your overall food intake and physical condition, but it still requires people to be able to put the fork down in order to work.

What a crock of Americanised junk.

I do martial arts and use the wii. If you put the time into the work outs I get the same feeling of muscle and aerobic workout despite actually just being a muppet in time with a tune or a silly game. It isn't a replacement for exercise but certainly helps improve it.

Patients at my health clinic are shedding stone with using them. When asking some how they lose weight, the reply "I got this Wii..." Is the usual response. All adults, none of them kids.

It's time taken on it and effort put into it. And any amount of time moving round is better than an amount of time infront of a TV or twiddling your thumbs on an XBOX.

Try the bike ride on advanced, or the rhythm kung fu and then the boxing exercise on advanced for half an hour and tell me you ain't sweating.

From Memory, 4 minutes is EITHER 1 calorie or 4 calories on most of the games. (20 on some) hardly going to equal the VAT of Coke you have after.

In other news

Earth is round, grass is green, pain hurts triple shocker exclusive!

The only people who ever truly believed Wii Fit would help them lose weight are people who are already such absolute pros at kidding themselves (and being kidded by the likes of Slimfast, Weight Watchers etc.) that buying a product would somehow magically make them thin with the absolute minimum of effort.

You cannot spend yourself thin.

But never fear... For all these people there's a guaranteed no-fail, 100% success rate, tried and tested time and time again diet. It's called "The Exercise Diet". And by 'exercise' they don't mean moving 2 feet off the sofa for 20 minutes of stretching and balance training before picking up the fork again.

Argh.

No complaints

Our wii fit hasn't made us into NFL material, but we've gotten benefit out of it. For one thing, using a wii fit means you aren't eating tater chips and sitting on your duff watching bad tv. Second, our sons' balance has improved. Third, I've used some of the exercises to help out my bad knee. I won't proclaim it cured, but it feels less stiff and seems to bother me less now. And some of the games are fun enough (such as snowboarding, soccer goalie, ski jump, etc) that it keeps the boys from whining about not having Halo on an X-Box.

erm

'8 north american families' - theres your reason (yay stereotypes)

Study is alright, you misunderstood its goal

The study has a good point, only you all seem to miss it.

The researchers didn't try to find out if using a console 4 minutes a day will make you slim. They wanted to find out if buying a WiiFit makes you slim. Out there we have lots of people who hate any kind of sport, but hate being overweight too. Such people often think "If there was any easy and interesting sport, I'd do it, and then I'd loose weight". So when they hear "video game that requires you to move a lot", they buy it in the hope that this is THE product which will get them to exercise and consequently their lose fat. So the contribution of this study to human knowledge isn't that "a little exercise isn't enough to make you lose weight", it is "the WiiFit isn't exciting enough to motivate a couch potato to exercise regularly". Which is quite an interesting result, e.g. if you happen to be a health insurance company and some obese insuree wants you to pay for his new toy.

Same crap - different day

This is from the SAME UNIVERSITY that said its A-OK to sleep around , oh i'm sorry, "casual encounters", and you NOT feel any effects from it. They got the results of this "study" from a MAIL-IN questionnaire. Since this study is coming from the same University, i'm starting to think they either have very LOW standards for how a serious social or societal experiment should be carried out. Or they are squirting out studies so it seems like the University of Minnesota is ACTUALLY doing something beneficial for mankind and can obtain more grants. Wait, you know what... I think its both.

Associate Professor of Health and Exercise Science?

What is "Associate Professor of Health and Exercise Science" supposed to be? What's next, "Professor of Dactylography"?