Since we got our Wii and the Wii Fit Plus about three weeks ago I've been doing the 'Body Test' daily as it recommends. Each day this performs a centre of gravity test (the results of which can be quite interesting) and records your weight. It then tells you your BMI, and tells you the change in your weight since the previous day. If your weight has gone up it then asks you to select from a list of possible explanations as to why it has gone up.
Now - I don't like this. I don't like it for a number of reasons, the main one being that I've always stood by the belief that it's a very, very bad idea to weigh yourself every single day. The average person's weight can vary by an astonishing amount even over the course of a single day. Almost all of us are lighter in the morning than we are in the evening - and in fact, to give the Wii Fit its due it does recognise this. If you weigh in one day early in the morning and the next day in the evening it will warn you about it.
So back to last week - in the days before my weigh in, the Wii Fit recorded a drop of 1lb over two days, and then showed me a gain of 3lb in the subsequent two days. Since the second of these days was immediately before my weigh in, I was understandably very worried.
So, fast forward to Tuesday, which found me worrying at the lovely Gladys about my weigh in the following morning. Gladys has a unique way of finding the right perspective on this kind of thing and pointing it out to me when I can't see it. She warned me that in the past her Wii Fit has, impressively, managed to show a difference of 5 or 6 pounds in her weight in the space of a couple of hours. Not an especially reliable or accurate piece of kit when it comes to measuring one's weight, it seems. Gladys also reminded me very sternly that I should know better than to get sucked into the daily weigh-in torture cycle. Well, quite. Needless to say, I've taken her advice to heart.
So, from here on I'm using the Body Test tool on the Wii Fit differently. I'm going to perform the test only once a week, when I get back home from my Weight Watchers class - that way I get the accurate result first, and I won't spend the days before my weigh in worrying about what I'm seeing on the Wii Fit and whether there's any accuracy to it - and I won't log in to the Wii Fit every day to see a BMI graph that looks like the Himalayas. A victory for common sense!
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