My wife and I both hit post children all-time low in weight from VR gaming and light dieting

We both lost about 8% body weight. I went from slight overweight at 25.4 BMI to 23.9 BMI.

We have two Oculus Quest 2's, she plays Beat Saber on expert half-a-hour a day, which burns about 175-200 calories. This is a lot of arm motion and quite a few crouches. She breaks a heavy sweat at end of the session.

I play Skyrim VR which is more like 275-325 calories per hour. I run/walk in place when I move my joystick to move (tried add-ons like Natural Locomotion and VRocker, but ended up just doing this myself), I use a two hand weapon and do full two arm swings when I attack and block, I physically crouch to pull and shoot arrows from sneaking, and swim by swinging my arms in air (my daughters laughed so hard when they saw this). This is more like a low impact cardio, I break a light sweat at end of the session.

Now this does not sound like much compared to say, jugging or HIIT, but the truth is it is very hard for us to do jugging and HIIT every single day. Gaming as an exercise is just much much easier to do every day, I can't wait for each session! Especially modded Skyrim VR which for me is the single most immersive game I have ever played by a massive margin. Gaming when standing up is already a lot more calories burned than sitting on a couch or chair. The physical activities from VR just adds a lot more to it.

Now no amount of exercises will lose weight if you don't pay attention to your diet as it is 70% of the game. But instead of drastic diet changes we just made a few simple rules:

1. No eating after 8PM, we didn't do a full intermittent fasting, but not eating snacks or even fruits at night easily helps with weight loss.

2. No more diet cokes or sugary drinks in general, we both love diet cokes like Bill Clinton did, but we learned the hard way this prevents weight loss even if it says zero calories. Once a week maybe we share a single can of diet coke together. Water with ice and fresh lemon is now my favorite drink, and it also helps with immunity too.

3. Reduced rice/bread/pasta intake, once slice of toast instead of two, quarter plate of rice/pasta instead of full plate, that sort of thing.

4. Ice cream, cake and desert once a week in very very small quantities. If I am really really starving and crave for a snack, I just eat a yogurt instead. We simply stopped buying snacks so that option is not available.

5. Be logical and conscious when eating unhealthy foods. Order salad with light vinaigrette dressings. If I eat a burger, steal just a couple of fries from kids and don't order fries for myself. Also some burgers are hundreds of calories lower at the same restaurant. If I go to a BBQ, be very conscious of the number of ribs and wings I eat, give myself a hard limit and never eat to the point I can't eat anymore. If I eat Chipotle I don't get cheese or sour cream.

No food is off limit if you are disciplined about the quantity you eat. A salad can easily have 1000 calories and a Big Mac is only 563 calories.

The thing is, that couple of hundred calories from VR gaming easily adds up to 1500-2000 over an entire week because you can easily do it every day without getting bored. And when you start to lose weight, even if it is just half a pound every few days, it becomes easier to follow your diet rules and it just snowballs from there.

It becomes a positive momentum and I even started to do 5 mile runs on weekends every now and then because I feel good about my body. This past Saturday I did 5 miles for 500 calories, 2 hours of Skyrim VR for 600 calories, that is 1100 calories in one day!

You can replace VR gaming with any other exercise for 200-300 calories a day, IF you can do it 7 days a week but in the past I always get bored and stopped. VR gaming is the first time in my life I ever "worked out" 7 days a week, and the result really shows! Even if you are already doing exercises every other day, a $299 Quest 2 is easily the best exercise equipment you can buy as it is a great filler for your off days and these calories really add up when you don't notice time.

submitted by /u/hitmantb
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