A few days ago I noticed the MiiEditor website was no longer available. Luckily I was able to find the MiiEditor standalone application which can be run on my desktop. To run the application it requires Adobe AIR to be installed.
Here are the Mii characters I created of some of my family and friends:
The Wii Fit, just released on May 21st in North America has become very popular, but recently it also had it share of complains indicating that it’s misleading people about their fitness. Two articles that I recently read about are:
To measure a person’s fitness level the Wii Fit uses the Body Mass Index (BMI). Not to go into great detail the BMI is a formula which uses your weight and height, and the result can be categorizes into different classifications.
In summary, the argument is that the Wii Fit misleads people because the BMI does not differentiate fat and muscle. Since muscle is heavier than fat, then a person who is well built will be misinterpret as obese (as claim in articles).
First, it should be mention that the BMI was not something Nintendo created, it’s a system that has been around for quite a while and the categories which Wii Fit uses are data coming from the World Health Organization, thus if there is a flaw people shouldn’t blame the Wii Fit but the BMI system instead.
As an owner of the Wii Fit I thought it would be interesting to test the formula out.
The argument indicates that a muscular person will be misinterpret as being obese because muscle is heavier than fat. LeBron James, is a is NBA player. With his size and power, he virtually can’t be stopped when driving to the basket and is often referenced like a tank. He is listed as 6′8″, 250 lbs and many consider him 30 lbs heavier than his peers in the same small forward position, as well his body fat percent is 6.7%.
Using the formula his BMI result is 27.52, and is classify as overweight. This does seem to give an indication that the BMI system is flawed, but considering all that muscle he has, he is only listed as overweight and not obese. I went on to calculate how much he have to weigh to be considered obese. To be classify as obese the body mass index must be least 30, and using this number I derived that LeBron James needs to weight 273.12 lbs, approximately 23 lbs more than he currently is. With a body fat of 6.7%, it would seem impossible for him to put on this additional amount of muscle. However, lets consider the impossible and assume that he does add 23 lbs more muscle to his body. With this additional muscle would he be more fit?
Knowing that LeBron James won’t be gaining 23 lbs anytime soon, I looked for another person who has experienced a similar situation. Kobe Bryant, listed as 6′6″ and 205 lbs, is currently considered NBA’s best player lost 20 lbs last summer. Kobe’s body fat is known to be under 10%, so the weight lost would mean mostly muscle lost. Doing a search lead me to an article explaining the reason for the weight lost. In summary, the article mentions that too much muscle mass can hurt an athletic abilities, and lugging around the extra weight whether it’s fat or muscle will tire a person more easily because it’s more work. The article also mentions that Kobe lost 20 lbs to improve his quickness, as well as having more energy for the entire game, i.e. making him a more fit player.
Just for the fun of doing more math, I calculated Kobe’s BMI using both his past and current weight. The results were 26 and 23.69 classifying him as overweight before the weight lost and normal respectively. Looking at Kobe’s game this year compare to last year, I would say it has gotten better.
In conclusion the BMI system may slightly misinterpret your fitness level if you are a high level athlete with a body fat of under 10% as in LeBron James’ case. However, the majority of us aren’t high level athletes and won’t be able to use the muscle mass as an excuse if we are classify as being obese. Furthermore, have extra muscle mass doesn’t necessarily make you a more fit person. Is the Wii Fit misleading? In my opinion, no!