Jingle Fett said:
This guy lost over 50 pounds just by playing VR (no joke) [https://uploadvr.com/man-loses-50-pounds-playing-soundboxing/]
Sorry, that is a joke, and rather a bad one.
The article states that he played the game for about 20 minutes at first, then up to 90 minutes. Call it one hour per day for five months. Being generous, one hour of light aerobic activity like that might burn 150 kcal. So roughly 150 days times 150 calories is 22,500 kcal total. One pound of adipose tissue is roughly 3,500 kcal, coming out to around 6.4lbs. And that's assuming no compensatory reduction in NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogensis), which there almost certainly would be, no compensatory change in diet, and all the rest of that rot.
I'm a personal trainer by trade, and one of the first things I tell weight loss clients is that if they're in the gym to lose weight they're in the wrong place. The kitchen is where you lose or gain weight. Exercise has a host of benefits, but short of professional athletes or those who basically live at a gym its actual effect on your body's energy equation are fairly minimal. For the average person ~70% of your body's daily caloric burn is BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, just what it takes to keep you alive), ~10% is TEF (Thermic Effect of Food, what it costs to digest the food you eat), most of the rest is NEAT. You can move the equation around a few percentage points if you're really motivated, but in most instances you'll end up compensating (usually overcompensating) by subconsciously reducing NEAT, increasing caloric intake, or, most often, both.The comparative difference studies I've seen have generally shown nothing more (and often quite a lot less) than a 7-10% difference in loss rates between dieters in an exercise program and those not, with the only meaningful difference being that those in a program were more likely to keep it off (though, sadly, neither group was all that likely to).
Anyway, sorry for the tangent, but this is a real pet peeve of mine since I deal with some variation of it darn near every day. I doubt it's even mathematically possible to lose ten pounds a month (a rate well above anything safe or sustainable, by the way, chances are depressingly high he'll put it back on and more ta' boot) by any form of exercise, let alone something as relatively mild as playing a VR game.
Unfortunately people have been sold the idea that obesity is a matter of lack of physical activity. At best that's a gross oversimplification, at worst it's flat out wrong. Fundamentally weight is a thermodynamics equation, calories in versus calories out. You have complete control over calories in, but only
very minimal control over calories out.
