News

• Reviewed on: Nintendo DS
• Also available for: NA
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• The Good: Comes with a pedometer to encourage walking; Helpful tips and tricks for the novice; Attractive package with some fun interactive elements.
• The Bad: Not entertaining enough to be a game, and not in-depth enough to be a serious weight loss application. Adds game-like properties to functions that don't need it.
• The Verdict: A good introduction to weight loss, but go elsewhere for in-depth guidance.
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The first thing My Weight Loss Coach ordered me to do was a little odd. No, I was not instructed to jog for 20 minutes, do 30 push-ups and throw away all the junk food in my fridge, but to go and drink a big glass of water. The latest in Ubisoft's line of self-improvement applications for the Nintendo DS, My Weight Loss Coach works on the philosophy that little steps like drinking more water, talking frequent walks, and buying different groceries, are the key to sustainable weight loss.

Gently does it

Like Nintendo's Wii Fit, My Weight Loss Coach is a gentle and encouraging introduction to healthy living. The stress here really is on "introduction," because anyone who's already halfway serious about adopting a fitness regimen will have headed straight for the gym membership, personal trainer and sophisticated performance-measuring gadgets — essentially leapfrogging this application's comparatively simplistic goals.

But every little bit helps, right? Sure, the kinds of activities you're told to do in Daily Sessions mode -- which includes dancing to four tunes in a row from a favourite CD, stretching, eating fruit for dessert, running errands using a bicycle instead of a car, and not eating potato chips for an entire day -- can only have a positive impact on your health and lifestyle. But it could take years to see any significant impact at that pace. One of the challenges, for example, is to do one set of five push-ups. If you're 95 years of age this might be an accomplishment, but it's an otherwise pathetic goal.

Aside from the daily challenges, the application offers coaching sessions on various topics including how to fight hunger and choose healthy groceries. There's also a daily log for recording what types of exercise you did each day and how much energy you used by telling it what foods you consumed.

Boots made for walking

My Weight Loss Coach also comes with a pedometer. The idea is to clip the plastic ticker to yourself so that every step you take — whether it's part of a trek to the grocery store or simply a few steps to the fridge and back (to grab another glass of water, naturally) — gets recorded.

It's amazing how these steps can add up. At the end of each day, you plug the pedometer into the DS's large cartridge slot and it uploads and records the number of steps you took. I found myself making a game out of it by trying to beat my score, which of course involved taking more steps the next day, and so on. And I'm sure that's exactly what My Weight Loss Coach had in mind.

Work, play, both or neither?

In fact, the idea of making a game out of simple tasks is a hallmark of many of these brain training and coaching applications; it has the simultaneous effect of making the task at hand (be it learning another language, giving your brain a workout or losing weight) more accessible to a wider audience, but at the same time diluting the depth and effectiveness of the training itself.

Which circles back to the point about My Weight Loss Coach offering an "introduction" to the world of weight loss, and nothing more. There's the fact, for example, that you can't rapidly switch between modes and menus without having to click through the often inane chatter of the squeaking stick figure that passes for your virtual trainer. Or the fact that everything you do earns you extra "Distance" (the equivalent of brain size or age if you've played any of Nintendo's brain training games) that gradually unlocks new features instead of them being available straight away -- imagine your Nike + iPod not letting you do a hill training workout until you had first run a 5K...

Even the straightforward task of telling you how many reps to do has been turned into a mini-game of having to scratch off a lottery-style ticket with the DS stylus to reveal the "magic number," and recording your daily energy intake is achieved by visually scrolling through categories of food and dragging the correct product onto a person's mouth. This is actually kind of cute, but not terribly extensive or accurate — when I did it for the first time there was no zucchini so I had to use eggplant instead, and no plum so I substituted a peach.

More seriously, My Weight Loss Coach also measures your fitness level using Body Mass Index (BMI), a simplistic system that has been acknowledged to have significant limitations.

No pain, no gain

Like most of the game/application hybrids that have migrated onto the DS and Wii, My Weight Loss Coach is like the wellness articles in women's lifestyle magazines that dole out helpful and attractively packaged, though general, information. You can absolutely use My Weight Loss Coach as an introduction into the world of fitness and healthy living, but if you want to take it to the next level, join a gym and make an appointment with a nutritionist.