Is Wii Really Going to Help You Get Fit?

The rate of health diseases have been escalating these past few years, from cancer, to cardiovascular diseases to diabetes. The reason for these trends is the rather poor lifestyle of people, which is mainly a lack of exercise, poor diet and urbanized and overworked society. People toil through the day, working to make a living. In a dog-eats-dog world, this competitive atmosphere creates rich, wealthy and successful societies. However, it is now taking a toll on people's most valuable commodity - health.

To deal with their problems, people turn to destructive behaviors and modes of coping, such as eating too much food, getting back loss sleep, or taking alcohol or prescription drugs. Most of the fun activities they engage in does not require sweating a lot - sitting back and relaxing at the movies, have a day at the spa, sitting in front of the television or playing videogames. There is almost no time for exercise, an important activity that is supposed to keep the body fit and healthy. To address the problem, some engineers and scientists have invented a new video game which gives both fun and excitement, but add another component - exercise workouts.

The Wii Fit is a videogame design by Nintendo which incorporates both games and exercise workouts in its program. Users are forced to literally get off the couch and perform the tasks to score numerous points against the opponent. This game is not solely for children, but it can also be played by adults. Without them realizing it, they are already having fun doing boxing exercises or the hula hoops which are incorporated in the game. It also makes exercising a fun and entertaining activity to engage in. Unlike some exercise machines, the Wii Fit has the ability to catch user's attention, focus and motivation for relatively longer periods of time. This increases the users' likelihood to engage in physical activity to burn all those calories. Because of this, the Wii Fit became a hit among its consumers, with almost everybody getting one for themselves for the Christmas season.

Despite this, a new trouble is brewing for the Wii Fit videogame. A recent research study has been published, which questions the capability of Wii Fit to be an effective cardio workout. According to the study, the Wii Fit does not satisfy all the guidelines by the American Council on Exercise, especially when it comes to motivating children to use the videogame as an exercise regimen. However, creators of the Wii Fit pointed out that the research study is seriously flawed because it is asking the wrong questions about the videogame. Creators emphasize that the Wii Fit is mainly for purposes of entertainment, and that they do not advocate that it is a substitute for exercise. Because of this, it is thus important for consumers to get the correct exercise information or beauty information from manufacturers of new products.