Those around me will no doubt by now be sick of talk about the diet I’ve been on for the last few months. For the record, I’ve always had a distaste for what I call the “Game Developer Physique” sported by so many of our contemporaries, so any slip towards that abyss I consider a total failure on my part. While I’ve never been shy of the gym, a recent trainer schedule ended with the shocking realisation that my weight and BMI placed me just into the realms of “overweight”, which by some twist of fate coincided with the symbolic humiliation of a button bursting off my jeans.

So in addition to ramping up the gym attendance, it was high time for my first serious stab at a diet – specifically one that would kickstart the old metabolism to make it sustainable when going back to “real life”. Thankfully, I have the support of a similarly enthused exercise nut in MJ who has joined me in this challenge and proven invaluable in terms of forcing good food habits on the both of us.

As such, I can say that after just a couple of weeks of cold-turkey I found it really easy to manage, all the while eating better quality food than ever with the only downsides being the extended time to prepare meals and, hardest of all, facing the social challenge of not drinking around others, (each of the major spikes above being a piss-up). In addition to completely changing my food intake and greater exercise, part of this project involved picking up Wii Fit as a means of exercising at home while playing. However, much like every other Wii enterprise, I quickly found the exercises tedious and low-quality to the point of the balance board being a mere gimmick – how can you possibly get fit by balancing alone anyway? While I used it nearly every day, its scope was dramatically reduced to being nothing more than a fancy set of scales.

What I didn’t count on though, were the reinforcing effects of having your scales directly linked to a self-updating graph, charting progress (and regress) over the following months. These little triumphs are what drives decision making during the day, whereby not only are achievements and mishaps recorded, but calorie intake becomes something of a game to try and go for the “hi-score” in weightloss every day. The latest issue of Wired magazine has its cover and a sizeable section inside dedicated to exactly this – the power of personal data-tracking, with articles on Nike+ and other gadget-related accessories, though for some reason overlooks Wii Fit and its hidden weightloss meta-gaming.

Now with just 9lbs left to achieve the ideal BMI of 22, but with a 2-week holiday and the parents visiting from Scotland in a few days, I’ll once again have to run the gauntlet of alcohol and other temptations – which can be considered something of a boss fight.