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AtomVyse’s View: How Video Games Helped Me Lose Weight
For almost my entire life, I’ve been overweight. It’s something that’s not only affected me physically, but psychologically. Two years ago, I finally decided to do something about my weight. I started to finally be conscious of what, when, and how much I ate. As time went on, I started exercising. I wasn’t always consistent with either, mind you, and I can’t really describe how hard it was to change my lifestyle. I knew I was doing it the right way, though, without trendy diets or weight loss drugs.
Now, you may ask me how video games had anything to do with this experience. I know what you’re thinking, “This is another one of those ‘Gamer Loses Weight by Playing DDR,’ pieces.” To be honest, I hardly played the game at all in the last two years. The way video games helped me was more of a mindset imposed on me by the games I played. Playing adventure and role playing games has trained my brain to look at accomplishments in terms of numbers. In order for your character to improve in these games, they have to gain enough experience to ascent to the next level. Sometimes this ascension is a task that takes fighting many, many battles over and over for long periods of time. This process is known in the gaming world as grinding.
I know this may sound dorky to some people, but I honestly don’t care: loosing my weight was just like grinding to me, both in the short term and the long term. For instance, when I ran, I would do it on a treadmill. Every time I’d pass five minutes, I’d make the speed faster. Every increment felt like a little goal that I’d accomplish, a level gained then another started. I’d look at weight loss the same way. Every five pounds I lost was worthy of epic fanfare. I made little goals for myself so I’d gain that level each time and feel a sense of accomplishment in a shorter amount of time.
When I started, I weighed around 245 pounds. This week is very special to m because I’ve finally hit my all time goal of having an average body mass index (BMI) for my height (5 feet, 7 inches) for the first time I can remember. I now weigh 160 pounds, totaling my weight loss at 85 pounds. I went from a size 38 pants to a size 32 (and to be honest, they’re falling down to my ankles right now). I never set out to lose this much in the beginning, as getting below 200 pounds (I hadn’t been there since middle school) seemed impossible at the time.
The whole process is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but it was well worth the work. I just wanted to share with the readers of Siliconera that video games are a big part of my life and how I live it. I used how they influenced my thinking to my advantage and achieve something great.
Photo credit Vysethebold/Siliconera.
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8 Responses to “Vyse’s View: How Video Games Helped Me Lose Weight”
April 24th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Congrats Vyse! This an awesome achievement and an interesting way to look at the problem through grinding.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
LOSING weight by playing video games is a wonderful thing, but if you’ve got LOOSE weight I’d play a little more.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
that’s great, man. i feel ya. i’m 67 inches above sea level too, and i’m packing on pounds i don’t want and i’m looking at that 160 mark, a mark i remember being 5 pounds under around 3 years ago, as a nigh unattainable goal. whatever your gamerscore is, put an extra 125 points on there for this achievement. 
i think i’m gonna steal your strategies.
oh btw, do heed what Aika said. the word is pretty important to the post.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
funny to read this, because i lost about 50 lbs a few years ago and often thought of it as “grinding” too! it’s interesting to see that i’m not the only one who looked at it like that.
congratulations!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Shooters and fighters helped me adjust my mindset to ‘normal’ life as well… I learned to focus much more from aiming for high scores and 1 credit runs, fighters being able to be persistant and consistant, that I started naturally applying this to studies and other areas of my life with great improvement.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:11 am
Kudos to you Vyse! I’ll even share my story as well…..3 years ago I was working in a kitchen cooking food and I’m 5′7 and was 245lbs. I was miserable but i played a lot of video games, I had a falling out with my best friend at the time, over a girl no less, and went my own direction. I was depressed for 6 months and sleeping on friend’s couch, the only thing I had were my video games, and my two jobs I was working at the time. Over the period I slept on a couch I began to think of a couple things, one - where was the last platinum bolt in Ratchet and Clank : Going Commando, two - damn now I have two friends left, and three - where was my box of Saturn discs? there some shooters and top shelf RPGs. All I did was play games, work, and sleep. Sometimes I owuld go the whole day without eating….But after a year of feeling sorry for myself I realized that I was wasting my time and everyone elses. Next thing I knew people were acting nicer to me and I felt a little better about myself. Call me pansy, but you know what? I have everything going for me right now. Decent job that fits me, a car, a home, and whatever games I play. I’ve reconciled with my friend and we chill a lot now, but after all that I’m 140 lbs and bursting at tthe seams with apathy, I don’t care what happens I’m just chill and happy and so is everyone else, sorry for it being so long
Gaming Map
April 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
A Bacon approaches!
>>Fight >>Eat >>Run