The first thing I would say is that, since raising my fitness levels from playing it initially, I have taken a lot more from the game. The Yoga and Muscle exercises are certainly the most effective challenges for working out. Yoga moves include things like deep breathing, sun salutation and downward-facing dog – and ones progress at each of them is cleverly assessed by the Wii Fit Balance Board. 20 minutes playing the Wii Fit Yoga games is certainly a great way to warm up or warm down before or after ‘proper’ exercise.

It’s the muscle work-outs which burn genuine calories. Rowing squats, push-ups, and torso-twists are some of the things to expect from the Wii Fit Muscle workouts. Almost all of the muscle workouts do seem effective and will get you to sweat. They’re not as much fun as the Balance games, but are probably the most effective as weight-loss exercise.

It’d be wrong to entirely discount the Aerobic exercises; certainly the three Step games are fun and if you play them for a while, will get the heart pumping. The Rythm Boxing game is poorly executed – the nunchuk / Wii remote combining with the balance board is unreliable and shaky – and it’s possible to get points for poorly executing moves, and no points for perfect interpretations. I also find the Hula Hoop challenges a bit shaky, but that may just be me, as a lot of my friends enjoy this game.

The balance games are loads of fun – and after playing them for a period of weeks you get better and seem to have more defined balance, though this could just be due to practice with the games themselves. I love Table Tilt and Ski Slalom. They’re both totally addictive, but can be very frustrating when things don’t go your way! While the balance games don’t really require much of a workout, they do subtely make a difference but with the added bonus of it being fun. It’s the kind of exercise which doesn’t feel like exercise.

Apart from the games, Wii Fit offers a Body Test which assesses your centre of gravity, weight, BMI, and ‘Wii Fit Age’. It’s quite nice to be able to stamp your progress on a daily basis and check how your doing. One of the problems is that, as it encourages daily usage, the obvious fluctuations in weigh-ins can be a little disconcerting if it doesn’t swing in your favour. The Wii Fit age is based on your centre of gravity and and a couple of other balance / posture challenges. It’s pretty similar to the Wii Sports test, but ultimately less rewarding.

The challenge of Wii Fit is what keeps it playable over a period of time. It is satisfying trying to achieve higher positions in the rankings amongst your friends and family. Though, whether or not playing Wii Fit without other people using the same console is much fun, I don’t know.

To conclude, Wii Fit is a good overall experience. I lost 7lbs in just over a week according to Wii Fit, and that was with little extra exercise other than work and with a low-calorie diet alongside it. I think that Wii Fit should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt, and should only be used as a supplement to your regular weight-loss exercise, but there’s no doubt that it’s a lot better for your body to be playing Wii Fit than most other video games out there. Gears of War doesn’t improve the posture, does it?!

Weight loss, however, isn’t usually something which occurs immediately. It takes work and effort, and is more often than not given up on because of this. While this is the norm, and what is almost always pushed by diet and weight loss sources (and rightly so), it doesn’t necessarily take you years to reach your goals, as long as you’re focused.

While I do not recommend ‘crash dieting’, weight loss pills, surgeries or self-starvation, there is something to be said for the motivational ‘head-start’ given by some of these tactics. What I mean by this, is that if one gets off to a great start to dieting and exercising, and loses a lot of weight quickly, it helps motivate you to keep losing weight. When ones notices tangible changes to the body, this is even more inspiring.

The main problem with this early burst is that it will inevitably slow down. There are lots of people who lose 7 or 8 pounds (or even more) in their first weeks of their new dieting regime, but then in subsequent weeks lose much less. It’s in these subsequent weeks when self-doubt kicks in and a lot of people lose the motivation to continue their weight loss program.

The secret to keeping to your diet plan is to up the pace after the initial weeks weight loss burst depletes, and by all means exercise harder, but please – don’t eat less than you did in your first few weeks! When our weight loss slows down, it’s tempting to drop the calories we’re consuming so as to keep the pounds shooting off. This wont work very well. You probably know by now that you should be eating at least 1,200 calories a day and that must not change if you want to sustain your diet. If you eat less, your body will start converting whatever few calories it gets to fat, and will slow down (but not discontinue) your weight loss, rather than if you eat little but often.

The important thing to remember, even when it becomes hard, is that the weight loss will speed up again, and if you don’t let the dieting take over your life, it will happen sooner than you think. After all, even the strictest diet programs will tell you it is healthy to shed up to 2 pounds a week — that is more than 100 pounds in just a year!

While a year may seem like a long time, it really isn’t, as throughout your weight loss you will notice big changes all the time. You’ll be fitting into clothes you weren’t before, and friends and family will comment on the changes. All of these factors help make the time fly by, and after you reach your goals you’ll realise that fast weight loss truly is achievable!

I thought I’d post her playlist here for you guys to enjoy:

Congratulations to Cindy on her huge success!

One of the first things many people who are about to, or have already, embarked upon their weight loss journey want to do is check how much they weigh so that they can monitor the amount of weight they lose.

While jumping onto the scales is fine for determining your physical weight as a whole, this alone isn’t very useful information. You could, for example, weight 200 pounds and be very tall, in which case you might not be very overweight at all; conversely, weighing 200 pounds and being only 5 feet tall could leave you rather large.

To counter this problem, it is useful to discover your Body Mass Index (BMI). Doing so allows you to work out whether your underweight, obese, or just right given your height. As such, we here at TheFat.net provide a BMI Calculator so your leap onto the scales will garnish you with even more useful information!

To work out your BMI, simply go to the BMI Calculator page and enter your height in centimeters, and then your height in kilograms.

Now you have your BMI, you will have a better of idea how much weight you should be losing in order to reach your goals.

Good luck!