Wii Woe

My sister has a Wii, and for Christmas (well, a little late) we got her a Wii Fit. Those things are very, very popular and hard to find. (They love the Wii, btw -- she says the boxing game, played with Peter, is extremely cathartic.)

Apparently, when you stand on the little board thing for the Wii Fit the first time and start it up, there are all sorts of measurements and it asks you questions and determines your BMI, "real" age, and all sorts of things.

So Nin calls up and is quite upset at the stupid machine. It pegs her "real" age much older than she is, and the chirpy little happy voice announces, "Oh! You're Obese!" when it completes its analysis. The worst part is the happy chirpy voice. It's supposed to be motivating, I guess, but stating the obvious and being happy about it is not very nice! Believe me, anyone getting on this thing and getting their ass kicked by the hula hoop activity knows they aren't in shape. No one needs reminding. And Nin is far from obese, if you ask me!

Then again, the "rules" say that the Adorable Husband is overweight, too -- for his height, he's supposed to weigh less than 200 pounds, they say. No way -- he'd be a stick-skinny little beanpole person if he was that skinny. Even at his "best" weight, in the Army when he was really, really in shape, he was between 220 and 230. I think the BMI rules are not very realistic in many cases.

I'm not making any claims that I'm "big boned", of course. I just don't need constant reminders that I'm fat if I'm really trying to do something to change that. Maybe the Wii Fit should have a "positive-only" switch, so it says, "You're doing so much better than last week! Yeah, you! You've lost a pound! Wooot!" instead of reminding you that you have so far to go.

We don't have a Wii, although with the huge screen downstairs, we really should consider it. I'll let you know if we get a Wii Fit and then throw it out in the front yard when it starts to insult us.