My Children’s Wii Fit Shames Me
“You are overweight”
“Your BMI is too high.”
“You have the body of a 57 year old”
These are all quotes from the evil genie that lives inside my children’s Nintendo Wii Fit—one of their gifts for Christmas.
The problem is that some of the other things that it says are dead accurate (which isn’t to imply that it is lying about the above). Every time I go to a session with a rolfer they tell me that I am weighted to the right side of my body. I have written in the past about my turned out right foot so I am never surprised, but to see the Wii Fit graph put it on the screen just as they see it is very impressive.
Also, for me to find postural neutral on the Wii Fit balance board I have to get into my very best standing posture in exactly the way that I am teaching people to stand—untucked pelvis, shortened front body etc.
But it is telling me that at 5’10” I should be 153lbs and I honestly don’t know when I was last at that weight (13 years old before I reached my full height?). At the apex of doing ashtanga six days a week and living as a vegan I never got below 160, and I thought that was too skinny.
It is a lot of fun though. While my kids go in for Swordplay and Super Mario Brothers I have been enjoying the Tight Rope (way harder than you might think when you get to the advanced level) and Lotus Stare. In Lotus Stare I have managed to sit in lotus (optional for non-yogis) for the full three minutes without moving a muscle.
But when my eyes closed it yells at me in less than 40 seconds. I usually make it to 37 seconds in the dark before I head footsteps advancing the yell of shame that tell me I have failed.