Wii Check-Up Channel

Cemu writes with news that Nintendo is teaming up with Panasonic, NEC, and Hitachi to work on the Wii Fit Body Check Channel, which will use data from the Wii Fit to provide users with health advice. Quoting: "Since last December, NEC and NEC mobile began a cell phone version of the 'Wii Fit Body Check Channel.' Starting this April, the NEC Group (NEC and NEC Mobile) will launch a hosted Wii Fit Channel aimed at employees and their families. The company hopes to offer this service outside NEC in the future. ... Also this April, Wii Fit and the Wii Fit Body Check Channel will be introduced by Panasonic Medical Solutions to health care workers with its Plissimo Sigusa health care plan. What's more, Panasonic Medical Solutions is offering the program to the country's health insurance union."

Comments

Will recomend most to lose weight???

[DDLKermit007]

I'm sorry but this is for Japan, not America.

Re:Will recomend most to lose weight???

[geekoid]

I'm sorry, but Japan also has a growing obesity problem, one that is more strongly reinforced by their work culture then it is in America.

In fact, many countries do because it is short term advantages to eat quick.

Re:Will recomend most to lose weight???

[DDLKermit007]

Trust me...Japan's obesity problem is nothing next to the US. I've lived there while. Walking usually an hour a day just to get around REALLY makes it hard to be unhealthily overweight. I'm pretty much lean mass, and after my time there I dropped 20lbs. Where the hell I lost it is beyond me! I think I saw maybe two people I'd consider even slightly overweight in that country that weren't sloppy foreigners.

1984? You have got to be kidding?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Out of all the slashdot stories posted in the last fortnight - you choose a story on a game to post your 1984 excerpt?

Jeepers! My guess is that you're Mum is trying to get your pudgy ass to do some exercise and you feel oppressed. Tell me I'm right.

Re:1984? You have got to be kidding?

[kabocox]

Out of all the slashdot stories posted in the last fortnight - you choose a story on a game to post your 1984 excerpt?
Jeepers! My guess is that you're Mum is trying to get your pudgy ass to do some exercise and you feel oppressed. Tell me I'm right.

Just wait for them to release the great real world GPS FF. You play it on your GPS enabled phone and walk around to certain locations battling the random moster every now and then or being guided to meet up with any other players to form real world quest parties. It's all to get you out of the house and walk about 5-10 miles and meet other local gamers that are actually into your game.

Combine it with some glove and shoe monitors, and shortly your super duper cell phone gaming platform could accurately animate you and show your moves. I could see many side quests where basically to get the power up or what ever, you've got to do x number of exercises with at least one additional player and/or certain character classes. (It would all be about meeting strangers and giving them all a known task to do. Basically, they are all in it for the quest items, but to get said item, they've got to get out and exercise and meet various people.

I could see people doing bad things with it, but generally more people would use something like that as intended rather than for bad.

Re:1984? You have got to be kidding?

[spazdor]

I want to play Wumpus IRL.

Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[RogueyWon]

I own Wii-Fit. I like it. With its help, I've been able to lose 8 pounds since Christmas day, on the basis of a 40 minute daily routine with it. However...

It's important to be aware of what Wii-Fit can and can't do. It's a good programme, but using it safely and effectively involves a lot of working around its limitations and doing a bit of your own research. IGN carried a good article a few months back in which a qualified fitness trainer assessed it, which is a good starting point. In short, the positives came out as:

+ The way it makes exercise more interesting and makes it easier for gamers to stick with it without getting bored.

+ The aerobics exercises in general, which are a good way to burn calories.

+ The balance games, and the general focus on balance, which won't burn many calories, but will underpin the rest of your exercise regime well.

+ Some of the muscle exercises, particularly the balance-focussed ones.

The negatives were:

- The yoga.

- Some of the muscle exercises, which are overly advanced for beginners and could well cause injury if not done properly (which the game does not adequately warn about).

- The failure to warn the player of the need for appropriate footwear, especially for the jogging exercise.

- The body tests in general - the focus on BMI is not great, as BMI is a blunt instrument which is now treated with a lot of caution, while the Wii-fit age concept is largely laughable.

- The overall lack of guidance given in the package as a whole, which gives beginners to exercise very few tips on what constitutes an effective regime.

Work around those negatives and this is still a fantastically good accessory and software package. However...

In short, I would be very cautious about any application which claimed to be able to give detailed fitness advice on the basis of your Wii-Fit body test results. Professional advice from a doctor or fitness professional will be far safer and more useful.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[vrmlguy]

I got a Wii Fit back in September and lost twenty pounds by New Year's Day. I was earning 30 Wii Fit points per day for most of that period, plus I was walking with my kids two miles every Saturday on a local nature trail.

Unfortunately, between the New Year's Eve party and a bunch of unhealthy left overs, I managed to put about a third of that back. Plus, bad weather has kept me off the nature trail, which certainly doesn't help. And all of that has hurt my motivation, so where before I'd done over 100 consecutive days of exercise, now I'm skipping more days than I'm doing. I've apparently fallen into the trap described in this article. Overall, though, I'm still doing better than most years, where I would put on ten pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and never take it off. Damn you, homemade English Toffee!

BTW, Nintendo has created a pedometer that talks to your DS. The cartridge allows you to download your Mii for an experience similar to Wii Fit. What's missing is apparently any way to upload data into Wii Fit, but that may show up in a future channel.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[Gulthek]

Jogging in place? You shouldn't need any footwear at all, our feet are kind of designed for that.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[RogueyWon]

Yeah? Try it on any reasonably hard surface for any amount of time with no footwear or unsuitable footware and, believe me, you will *feel* the error in your statement. Push it too hard and you could end up feeling it for days or even weeks. Repeated unabsorbed impacts are bad, mkay?

Running shoes do exist for reasons other than a) keeping sharp bits from poking into your feet and b) allowing chavs to flaunt their ill-gotten spoils.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[Zebedeu]

My experience is that running in place without footwear is possible, but you have to learn how to do it properly.

I once had an exercise regime which included a relatively long time running in place, and at the beginning I was doing it just as if I was really running: banging my heel on the ground, and then pulling up with the foot.

That hurts. A lot. And it keeps on hurting later.

Basically, pain taught me to absorb the impact with the front of the foot when hitting the ground. It's not a very natural movement because you can't do it when moving forward, but for standing in place it works perfectly.

Another benefit is that this movement works your calves much harder, which contributes to the calorie burning and those nice legs that make the ladies go wild :-)

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you drastically over or under pronate, sure, you need running shoes for more than just keeping sharp bits out of your feet. In general you don't. You do need to work up to any sort of real distance even if you're in good aerobic shape because it uses all sorts of balance muscles that you don't typically use. They sell shoes specifically designed to keep your feet from bleeding while mimicking the muscle use of barefoot running.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[kabocox]

In short, I would be very cautious about any application which claimed to be able to give detailed fitness advice on the basis of your Wii-Fit body test results. Professional advice from a doctor or fitness professional will be far safer and more useful.

Nah, I bet half of us could write a small app taking data from the average college health/PE class as a guideline. I hate to say you don't need any data points on the subject, but that's why you pick good general source material. (Those that wrote the health/PE class book did do most of the research that you need.) Now, you can just take all the general crap found in there throw it into a game, and be fairly sure that it'd be safe for 80% of the population to get on and stick with. What about that other 20%? Well, they either have some pre-existing medical condition that'll kill them if they do any exercises, or have allowed themselves to get so out of shape that it would be "difficult" to start a basic fitness routine and calling a "doctor or fitness expert" would be "embarrassing." Trust me things like DDR and WII Fit are targeted just right. The only way to really drastically increase gamers exercise is to integrate WII Fit/DDR into other games.

Think a fighting game where you had to put your body into certain positions to set off special moves. Think if there was a good way to integrate the DDR pad into FF or Mario that would force folks to get up and bounce around to pull of "those special moves" that are just near impossible otherwise. Heck, there are tons of games that are quite repeative, if you could get your gamers to do any basic movement as part of the play style or leveling process, you'd have the make'em do a 100 of these exercise things licked. We are only beginning to really explore that world of fitness/games. Most of the ones that I've seen have been tied directly to an exercise device and all you do is peddle or such and then watch your marker go out in front of the others. We should be able to do much, much better than that.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[tixxit]

There is no excuse for not wearing proper footwear; whether running in place or not. Your feet, legs, and back are incredibly important (and all these are adversely affected from high impact exercises). Don't mess around with them to save a few bucks.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[Zebedeu]

I used to run in place either barefoot, or with my normal shoes (can't remember) and I did it for around one month without any pain or discomfort, but I do agree that for longer times, or for people with less health/luck than me, getting running shoes would probably be a better idea.

I know I once tried running 10Km with normal shoes and it was a bad idea. Your back and articulations are worth much more than the 100$ you save on decent footwear (I got mine the next day).

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[mesterha]

Basically, pain taught me to absorb the impact with the front of the foot when hitting the ground. It's not a very natural movement because you can't do it when moving forward, but for standing in place it works perfectly.

You're only supposed to hit heel first when jogging. The best way when running/sprinting is to only use the front of your feet; your heel should never touch the ground. Still, your advice for jogging in place is good and is another place where staying off the heel is wise.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[Zebedeu]

You're right. I was thinking about walking and jogging because that's what I do.

My sprinting speed sucks too much for competing.

Well, my jogging speed/resistance also sucks for competition, but at least I can manage not finishing mini-marathons in last :-)

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[geekoid]

The number 1 thing you can do to maintain a new diet is to keep a daily diary.

Trust me, I love food..all kinds of food. I had to go on a min fat diet(20G a day spread out over 6 small meals) and getting ne through that was reviewing what I ate, and the encouragement of my family.
I just got a Wii fit, and it is going to replace my diary becasue I can use it to check my progress.
I list about 24 pounds in 6 weeks. Granted, the first few weeks is when you will see that fastest improvement with any diet.

Anyways, good luck and I hope you find a new diet that works for you.

Re:Not a bad idea, but treat with caution.

[geekoid]

Well it didn't say not to use ice skates for that.

Update please!

[gravos]

How about an update that allows you to create an actual workout routine? Seems to me it currently takes longer to cycle through the menus than it does to actually do most of the workout activities...

Re:Update please!

[RogueyWon]

Indeed. This is such a basic problem that I honestly can't believe it made it past testing. It's compounded by the fact that with a few exceptions (basically free jogging and the longest version of the boxing exercise) most of the exercises are very short. Having to navigate the menus at the end of each exercise really does break my pace.

Re:Update please!

[Trillian_1138]

I hate to add a 'me too' post but...I agree! I don't know that I wouldn't have purchased Wii Fit if I'd realized there weren't built-in workout 'routines,' but it's the first thing that occurred to me when I started using it. It actually took me a few days to realize that it was a missing feature, and not just something that was going to be unlocked...

-Trillian

Re:Update please!

[triso]

How about an update that allows you to create an actual workout routine? Seems to me it currently takes longer to cycle through the menus than it does to actually do most of the workout activities...

There is an easy fix for the lack of routines: exercise in the nude with a partner to navigate the menus when it is your turn and vv. Guaranteed fun for all.

Re:Update please!

[drsquare]

Yeah, the interface is slow as fuck. It's especially terrible when there's more than one of you playing and you want to take turns doing the skiing or whatever. It needs at least a party mode or something, changing users is interminable.

Overgadgetting

[Schiphol]

I love Wii; actually, I'm currently giving my life away to Super Mario Galaxy. But, having said that, I think this initiative is a clear case of overgadgetting. When playing Wii Fit, one already feels stupid when "jogging around Wii island" - that is, running on the spot with the Wii Controller in your pocket- but, making it part of a corporate health package? Come on. There must be some better use for that money. Better dental coverage, for instance, or whatever.

BMI

[DrYak]

the focus on BMI is not great, as BMI is a blunt instrument which is now treated with a lot of caution

Nonetheless BMI, as crude as it might be, is still a very useful tool - specially between really defined categories (like 18-25 vs 30-35) - to have an approximate idea of health risk for the average person (i.e.: not some corner case like someone featuring Conan-style over-massive musculature...)

As the software is targeted to get gaming nerds and otakus to exercise a little bit, BMI is a good-enough indicator.

BMI is treated with caution because :
- lots of people abuse it and treat it as some kind of magic silver bullet.
- lots of people try to draw extensive conclusion based on non clear cut value (25-30, for example, is an intermediate risk and might require refining measurement (body fat %, waist-hip ratio, etc...)
- lots of people try applying wrong scales (to 18-25 "optimal range" is for adults. for kids, teens, the scale varies depending on age and other factors such as stage of puberty - something less easy to quickly assess at home)

Nonetheless BMI is still useful in the medical world.

while the Wii-fit age concept is largely laughable.

This isn't a serious score as much as it is a concept carried over other popular "score your performance" softwares like brain age, etc.
Probably some typical japaneese cultural phenomenon going underneath explaining this fixation on putting an age on everything ?

Re:BMI

[RogueyWon]

Oh yeah, I don't deny that BMI can be useful - but it needs to be put in context. Exactly the kind of context you've just put it in. Because without that, it can either lull people into a false sense of security, or tell people that they need to change a perfectly healthy body.

I know two people who have serious issues with Wii-Fit's BMI measurements. I'm not one of them; I'm your average slightly-overweight gamer (probably still 8-10 pounds North of where I should be), who has never exercised much before this. However, one of my friends has been working out fairly seriously for years and is in what must be considered to be spectacularly good shape. When Wii-fit told him he was obese, he just laughed (muscle being heavier than fat, for those who didn't already know). The other was a female friend who has a very, very slender build. She eats normally, isn't even vaguely anorexic or anything, but she's very, narrow across the shoulders, while also being not far short of 6 feet tall. Wii-fit basically told her she was dangerously underweight.

Now, my worry about this (and remember, I really like Wii-fit in general) is that while both of my friends are clever people who know how to interpret this information, the same can't be said to be generally true. Yes, somebody who works out a lot probably knows that they will register as overweight or obese on the BMI scale, because they pay a lot of attention to their body. But they're not the main audience for Wii-fit. I suspect I'm fairly close to the average - never exercised much before, largely because exercise is so damned boring, but turning to Wii-fit in the hope that it will help me over that hurdle. Handing out crudely calculated BMIs (there's no option to tell it your build) with no detailed advice just strikes me as a fairly foolish thing for the software to be doing.

It's the consistent theme that runs throughout Wii-fit. A small amount of time spent on putting in some basic information on fitness and safety, along with a little tool to allow you to create (or even to recommend for you) programmes of exercises would have boosted the value of the package to the average user massively.

Re:BMI

[Kokuyo]

I believe BMI is the work of a few very irresponsible people who lack morals. It has thus far spawned some very ridiculous beliefs when it comes to health.

Seriously, there was this one woman who would drink five litres of water per day and made damn sure she only ate salt that was already in what little meat she consumed. This fear of salt and fat will someday kill a good number of people prematurely.

This whole angst about food is making people sick. As a little anecdote: I am overweight. I'd say I could easily do with 40 pounds less. Interestingly enough, I don't even eat all that much. And it gets better:
My three week vacation in Canada last year, where my aunt demanded I do not stop eating her food unless I am in danger of exploding, had me actually lose weight. What did I do? I ate three very rich (meaning fatty) meals a day and would spend the day leisurely walking through Toronto.

Last Christmas I actually lost weight, too, even though I was eating like crazy once more. The day I had to get back to work I lost my appetite and since then I have trouble even finishing a normal serving of food. A small salad makes me half full, lately. Logically, if all those nutritionist quacks actually knew what they were yapping about, I would have to have lost even more weight. After all, I was not lazying about all week anymore stuffing my face with food, right?

Wrong. I immediately gained back all the weight I had previously lost.

I can't speak for anyone else out there, but hard FACTS show that my body stores much more energy, even from little food, when I'm under stress than it does from heaps of food when I'm relaxed.

What is making me fat is my fucking job and nothing else and everyone who ignores this is simply not interested in my health, only in the expensive diets that will help move my money into their pockets.

Re:BMI

[tixxit]

BMI basically provides a bit of context to your weight, not to your fitness level. Instead of just a singular weight measurement, it gives you a measurement that puts your weight in context with your age and height. Frankly, I'd rather someone say "my goal is to have a BMI of 25", rather than "I want to be 125lbs". Saying BMI is bad, is like saying weighing yourself is bad. Both measure the same thing, BMI just normalizes the weight among different heights/ages, which makes it a bit easier for a system like the Wii to use. Once you start really getting into fitness, then you stop measure your goals in terms of pounds or BMI, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Re:BMI

[tixxit]

(Just posted above): Also, I work full-time and am in grad school, so I understand the stress issue. But to be fair to the nutritionist, I have heard many times that your psychological health (stress, depression, etc) plays an incredibly important role in your physical well being (and certainly your metabolism). It's also common knowledge for anyone who ever joined a weight-loss program (the kind that encourage proper eating, not fad diets) that eating too little will make your metabolism drop, causing you to actually gain weight. That's why they set your diet up so your caloric intake is just a little under what you need to maintain your weight. Anyways, stress aside, working full-time (programmer) and being in grad school, I still find time to work out 6-10h a week (which is also a great stress reducer by the way).

Re:BMI

[Skreems]

There was a story on /. yesterday about some new research that indicated that stress hormones could shift the balance of intestinal tract flora and result in extracting more calories from simple carbohydrates. However, before blaming everything on stress, there's a couple things you'd want to check out first.

Because you're stressed, I assume you have not much time to spend on making food. If you're consuming already prepared food, do you count calories? When I started doing that last year I was amazed at the calorie density of some things I would commonly eat. Things you wouldn't expect to be that bad from how "healthy" it tastes can be more than you should eat all day. Conversely, some relatively rich things, prepared at home, can be a lot less calorie dense than you'd think. Unless you're counting calories, you really can't make a reliable comparison between those two periods.

There's also a possibility that things have swung the other way without you noticing. If stress kills your appetite for a bit, you may drop into a low enough calorie range to trigger starvation mode, causing your metabolism to tank. I've found that letting my average intake drop too much or for too long makes it hard to lose weight as my metabolism adjusts, and that a week or two of eating more will kick start it again.

Finally, with any holiday and temporary change in habits, there's a good chance that your hydration levels are going out of whack. If you started skipping out on liquid intake over Christmas, that can contribute to as much as a 6 or 8 pound drop which will come back pretty quickly once you resume your normal habits.

I agree, fad diets are scams, but the basics of nutrition (calories in - calories out) is still sound. And while stress is a factor, I tend to think that it's more because of the behaviors it causes than just a biological change.

Re:BMI

[pokerdad]

However, one of my friends has been working out fairly seriously for years and is in what must be considered to be spectacularly good shape. When Wii-fit told him he was obese, he just laughed (muscle being heavier than fat, for those who didn't already know).

Though clearly it is not what BMI is designed to detect, but if your friend has so much muscle mass he is rated obese there is a good chance he is opening himself up to a whole slew of other health problems; losing some of that weight might actually be good advice.

Wii wii wii all the way home

[Quiet_Desperation]

Eat less crap, exercise more and read a book once in a while.

There. Code that up.

Re:Wii wii wii all the way home

[Skreems]

Already done:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
http://www.physicsdiet.com/

Weight channel

[Xenolith]

How about a channel where I just weigh myself. With Wii Fit, you have to go through menu-hell just to perform this simple task.

BMI is bad

[dank zappingly]

This thing keeps telling me I'm overweight, but really it is just because I have gigantic muscles. Then it asks me why I gained weight, and there is no option for, "My biceps are really huge right now." Luckily, it hasn't hurt my self-esteem.