Exercise and VR Gaming for Weight Loss...Is This a Thing?

If you would have told me 5 years ago that I could put on a video game headset, pick up a couple controllers and 'game' my way to fitness and overall good health, I would have died laughing. Or thought you were insane. Maybe a little of both? Good thing no one ever really said that to me ...because I'd literally be eating my words with a you-know-what eating grin on my face at this point in time.

VR, or 'virtual reality' for those who don't know the acronym, has burst onto the gaming scene and held steady for the past few years. There are several different headsets you can purchase for your home, the Playstation VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2 and the HTC Vive just to name a few. Some of these require a PC or Console to play but the one I ultimately chose due to the fact that you could play it independent of a gaming console or computer is the Oculus Quest 2.

See, I am a former restaurant server/bartender who was forced out of work due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our industry completely dried up, was shut down or was forced down to a skeleton crew to handle takeout/delivery orders only. Along with my job and my sole source of income, I also lost my daily source of exercise: all the steps I took at work on a daily basis.

20-30K steps per day at work counts as exercise...at least in my book.

At this time, the gyms were all shut down as well. We were coming into the hot months of the year (Texas summers, anyone?) and I just did not want to put on my old running shoes and hit the pavement in the horrid, humid Texas heat.

So I didn't.

Eventually, the weight creeped up on me. The lack of being able to go to the gym and the lack of the thousands of steps I took at work on a weekly basis coupled with going back to school full time in order to change careers made for a 30 pound weight gain by the end of 2020. That just was not acceptable.

At this point, here enters my desire to lose weight in a fun, non workouty (can that be a word?) way. How am I going to accomplish this? How am I going to turn exercise into something fun while being able to stay indoors since it is now winter? Enter Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset, stage right.

I saw advertisements online for fun, dancey games like Beat Saber, Synth Riders and Audio Trip and I thought to myself...could I really utilize these video games as a way of working out and losing weight? I didn't think they would be challenging enough. I didn't think I'd even break a sweat.

Oh boy...I was wrong. I was so, so, so incredibly wrong.

I was so excited the day my very own Oculus was delivered. I tore open that box like a kid on Christmas to get my hands on my very own new toy. I charged that bad boy up as soon as I ripped it out of the box, strapped mand dived head first (literally) into this new world of virtual reality. First on the list was Beat Saber, a game in which your controllers become two virtual lightsabers used to slice and dice colored blocks that come flying at you in correspondence to the beat of the song you choose from the playlist. After I got the hang of it, I progressed pretty quickly through the first couple difficulty levels. There are 5 levels of difficulty on Beat Saber: Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert and Expert+.

I thought I was so cool slicing the beats on 'Hard', dancing my way around my bedroom like a block slicing, lightsaber toting, Star Wars wanna be ninja. I didn't want to put the controllers down. I thought to myself, this is so much fun...but is this really gonna help me lose weight or is this just a great boredom buster?

After my first week playing this game exclusively for at minimum an hour a day, I was down 7 pounds.

7 POUNDS!

SEVEN POUNDS!

...And it was FUN!

After one month, I was down 12 pounds. I was proud of myself but it was time to add another game into the mix...to spice up my workouts, so to speak. Enter AudioTrip. This is a very dancey game, reminiscent of my days of hardcore devotion to Dance Dance Revolution (anyone remember this game?). This game involves lots of full body movement from squatting, dodging barriers, reaching to hit the notes with the giant glowing orbs that your hands turn into through use of the handheld controllers. I was hooked.

AudioTrip also features a CARDIO mode. That's right, friends. You can create a playlist of your favorite songs offered in game and create your own workout for however long you want without having to stop and choose a new song every few minutes. This game can be intense at times; sometimes I felt like the in game notes that you hit with the glowing orbs were flying at my face at warp speed. I work up quite a sweat everytime I play this game and I can feel my heart pumping in tune with the music.

All it took was 3 months of game play to lose the Covid-19 quarantine weight and then some. Who says you can't play video games and lose weight? Not this girl because as I am writing this, I am down 42 pounds and counting! Weight loss was not my only gain from playing either, I also gained hand/eye coordination, speed of movement and some unconventional dance skills!

Video gaming with the use of VR technology, paired with a healthier lifestyle can turn game time into a healthy routine. You don't have to beat the pavement or spend endless hours in the gym just to lose weight. You have other options and this one is a fun, stress relieving way to get fit.