It’s Jan. 11, 2009 as I write this. And the big question is: Have you kept your New Year’s resolution to start getting in shape again? No? Well, then start again, and make another resolution to get a Wii Fit; it will be fun way to get back on your weight-losing, body-shaping course.

Wii, for those you living among the aborigines of Borneo, is a game system from Nintendo that competes most directly with Sony’s Playstation and Xbox from Microsoft. It is the least exciting from a graphical point of view (in fact, they’re almost laughably primitive), but they make up for the lack of eye candy with extremely fun playability, including the use of the controllers to manipulate the characters on the screen.

In other words, you can turn the controller like a wheel if you’re playing a driving game and the car will turn in that direction — unlike Playstation or Xbox, in which you’d manipulate the car via buttons. It’s much more intuitive, and for many people that’s what makes the Wii the superior gaming system (although, of course, their counterparts would disagree, probably strenuously.)

Recently, Wii extended the usability of the system by adding the Fit device. It’s a plastic controller, about the size of a couple of pizza boxes, that sits on the floor and which you stand on. You can then do all kinds of exercises while following the action on the screen, video-game style. It includes running games, other aerobic workouts, strength workouts, balance exercises and more.

My son Patrick recently did the “Hula Hoop” aerobic workout on the Fit at a Christmas party we attended. He wiggled his hips as though he had a hula hoop around them, watching his on-screen avatar mimic his actions. To make it more fun, the characters started tossing hoops at his virtual double, and Patrick had to twist his body so that the hoop would encircle him, as if he were a  stake in a game of horseshoes. It was an eye-opener for me, to see the merging of video games and fitness, and I came away impressed.

Another colleague who has a Fit likes doing the running program. During these frigid January days, I can see a definite advantage to running indoors, without eight layers of clothing. So get a Wii Fit and stop feeling guilty about blowing your New Year’s resolution so soon.