Thanks everyone for your feedback & ideas, it's really useful. :)
The four exercise options in town provide different bonuses, although I should probably communicate that better to the player as I'm not sure the differences are large enough to be noticed. The gym action increases fitness by 2, swimming & jogging add 1 fitness and the walk action gives no increase. All four burn calories, but swimming and jogging burn the most.
I've been thinking things over and here's my rough improvement plan, let me know what you think:
- Players order food independently on dates, but persuading the girl to eat larger meals or extra dishes becomes much harder if the player doesn't follow suit.
- Display the calories burned, fitness increase & weight changes achieved from an exercise action. This should make these actions feel more rewarding and show the differences between them.
- Increase calories burned for cardio, decrease for gym.
- Add diminishing returns for fitness gains, such that the higher the stat is, the more exercise is required to increase it further.
- Scale calories burned from exercise with fitness. This adds a positive feedback loop as the more you exercise, the more effective it becomes for weight loss. It also makes fitness more useful.
- Add high intensity exercise actions that are unlocked once your fitness reaches a certain threshold, say 70. A high intensity jog or swim would burn a lot more calories.