Wii Fit is exercise if you want to get anything substantial from it. Meaning, unless your heart rate is elevated and you're sweating, you probably aren't getting much out of it beyond improved sense of balance and maybe additional flexibility, depending upon which exercises you're regularly doing.

That's probably the biggest shortcoming of Wii Fit: there are no specific workout programs (the blank-exercise-goes-with-blank-exercise recommendations don't count). Everything is just thrown out on a grid, to be slowly unlocked the more time you log, until everything is available, much like a video game.

Say you want to work on an aerobic centric program to improve your cardio level; pick and do a bunch of aerobic exercises for at least 20 minutes a day. There are no formal programs or individual recommendations. You want to work on improving muscular strength, pick and do a bunch of MS exercises for 20 minutes a day. There's no direction, and the results gauged are almost purely dependent upon the one way Wii Fit has to measure changes in your level of fitness: BMI/weight. Other than that, it's increase your reps as more reps become available, and try to push your individual exercise scores as close to 100% as possible.

Early on, the exercise choices are extremely limited and sparse. I think you need to put in close to 10 hours before everything is unlocked, assuming you do all the exercises rather than just focus on the ones that interest you.

Make no mistake, with regular use and dedication and a plan of your own device, it is very possible to see results. I personally trimmed off about 6 lbs of fat as measured by changes in body fat percentage with a biometric scale, not Wii Fit, just by using the exercises in Wii Fit as an experiment. That was about 30 hours worth of "Wii Fit credits" over a period of about 60 days. That's for a guy whose exercise for the last 7-8 years was U.S. Army physical fitness training.

So yes, you can see results, even if you're already in decent shape. You'll just have to dial up the intensity and duration of work out sessions, which can become inefficient compared to a gym, or home gym based workout program. It still has its shortcomings and limitations, and may be a poor substitute for a more dedicated exercise program depending upon individual goals.

Actually, for people like me Wii-Fit is pretty darned effective.

See, I'm one of those couch potatoes. Ok, I don't weigh too much (by BMI that is), but I sure as hell didn't exercise. At that stage the muscle training stuff in Wii-Fit suddenly makes sense because, for someone like me, that is already quite hard enough.

Now I know not all of you have that, but for me doing a bunch of correctly-executed push-ups or jacknife repetitions is rather hard. Heck, even the aerobic exercises get me sweating in some five-ten minutes.

Wii-Fit actually helps me tremendously in such areas because it provides me with (mostly) positive feedback during my attempts to get somewhat more fit. My scores are slowly improving and that gives me more motivation to keep going. At this rate I might actually go out and start playing some sport or another.

Before Wii-Fit that idea was laughable to me. Now I'm beginning to feel better about myself and finding (after twelve years of doing, well, nothing) that physical exercise is actually both useful and fun.

In short: people who put down Wii-Fit are either not in the target audience or at the very least have no idea what this game does to people who are not into exercise.

I'd recommend spending more time on the tougher exercises. If you spent most of your time on yoga and balance exercises then it would seem pretty pointless. I spent an hour doing some of the harder stuff and I was exhausted by the end of it, but then you're probably far fitter. Try doing stuff like press ups. I can do them easily on the floor but the balance board seems to make them much harder. Also the jogging is worth a try as you can set your own pace. Running very fast on the spot for 20 mins is going to get most people's hearts going. Not that you need Wii Fit to do that...

No workout????

Have you tried the hoola Hoop game? sure you can do it without a Wii but there it counts your turns and as a gamer that says there is no game to speak of, well the game is to make the score as high as possible.
There is also the bubble course that can be considered a game, This one is more relaxing.
And my favorite, the marbles game, dunno which level you played but level 2 can be quite challenging....and it does make you work your butt a tons more than similar games with analog sticks.

The problem is you have to use the program quite a bit before the longer sets become available. Early on, the offerings are too easy unless you haven't been exercising recently in any capacity.

After unlocking everything, I found that the best MS exercises were the jackknife competition (100 reps for 100%), the push up competition (100 reps for 100%) and the plank competition. 20 rep sets (20 @ leg) for lunges are also good. If you can do multiple sets of all of these, you should be moving on to a tougher exercise regimen involving free weights that will allow you to get more MS training accomplished in less time.

Doing those same exercises does get stale after a few weeks though.

I did the running in place for weeks as well. Half hour sessions started to strain the metatarsals so I had to do it with running shoes. But try doing that for a few weeks watching your Mii run around the SAME island course and you'll be screaming to start running around outside for a change of scenery. I ended up watching TV shows while the remote monitored my progress. Basically, a poor man's treadmill that does little to improve your actual run times (no stride or elevation changes involved). It just burns calories.

I'm grateful to Nintendo for creating Wii Fit, it's the only thing that motivated me to start losing some weight and it's working. I lost 3.5 kilos in the last EDIT: 20 days alone.

So yeah, Wii Fit might suck for you but it's not just Nintendo's way to get money... it IS working for the people who need to lose weight and can't go to the gym.

I haven't hooked up my Xbox for online use since I moved. There's nothing I really want to play online so I haven't bothered.

When I get settled in again, I'll set everything up and get it online. I will definitely be online by the time L4D and Gears 2 release.

Bwahahahah, Montana's allowed to give me shit. I certainly hassle him whenever I'm given the chance.

Let me know how that post count works for scoring with the ladies there, chief.

My comment in that other thread was just par on level with the one thrown at me, yet it was okay for them without them being banned or whatnot. I'm just throwing the challenge flag on your moderating calls, as you refused to respond to me in private messages on that issue. You can't just walk around banning people without consequence to your action. We both know a certain ex-mod who had his power taken away for similar bad mod calls.

You know what? I don't care, and Rocketpig has shown that he doesn't care. You actually think that I'll be de-modded because of a minor double standard that you're horrendously exaggerating? Somehow I don't see that happening. But nice job on the personal attack, it's really a smart thing to do when talking to a moderator.