Elly Awesome loses 5kg playing VR video games

Tech reviewer Elly Awesome found a creative way to shift her COVID kilos and her three-month transformation is pretty impressive.

Over the past 12 months, for most of us, it was necessary to find new ways to exercise because gyms were shut or we had to stay inside.

I know that lockdown made it a lot harder for me to keep fit and to be totally honest, I became pretty lazy. Exercise wasn’t exactly at the top of my list for self-care – in fact indulging on tasty treats and Netflix was my primary coping mechanism.

I gained a fair bit of weight – but it’s the first pandemic I’ve ever lived through and food kept me sane, so sue me.

I decided I wanted to drop some kilos, but getting back into working out didn’t come naturally. So, I found a way to gamify workouts.

I bought an Oculus Quest virtual reality headset and after three months of gaming in VR and eating a balanced diet I’ve managed to lose 5kg. Yeah, that’s right. I got fit by playing video games.

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Before and after Elly Awesome lost five kilos by gaming.

Predominantly, I burnt calories by playing Beat Saber, which a lot of people like to loosely compare to Guitar Hero as it’s a rhythm-based game where you have to swing ‘lightsabers’ around and slice boxes that are flying towards you to the beat of a song.

You can burn calories just by playing this casually but I found a way to take the burn to the next level.

Once I got good enough to play on medium and hard mode I narrowed down my favourite upbeat songs that had the perfect BPM and I would incorporate dance moves between slices, such as the two-step. I even added in workout moves such as squats, jumps and high knees.

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This worked perfectly with the game as sometimes you need to step side-to-side or squat anyway, to reach a box. So I just doubled down on the movement and suddenly the game turned into a full blown DIY private Les Mills Body Attack class.

During these gaming sessions I would track my heart rate and the calories I burnt with my smartwatch, trying to burn about 150-200 calories per session. I could usually do this in about 20-30 minutes.

Instead of following along with a personal trainer in real life or even on my TV, I just had to play the game and get really into it.

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Elly Awesome used her smartwatch to track her heart rate and calories.

Overall, the best part is I was achieving gratification in real life (with the calorie burning) and in-game gratification because I was clearing levels and going for high scores, which made working out somewhat addictive.

It was giving me results too, as once I started cutting out excessive sugar in my diet and having less fast food, eating typical lean meat and veg meals I was toning up and showing more muscle.

The best part about this VR set-up that I’ve been using is that the Oculus Quest is completely wireless. Also, even if you don’t own a smartwatch you don’t necessarily need it as ‘Oculus Move’ was recently launched, which helps you keep track of the (approximate) calories you’re burning and how long you’ve been active while you’re using VR.

You can even set daily activity/calorie burning goals for yourself and track your progress over time. The goals help a lot with keeping motivated to move more each day.

Other games for fitness and movement I’d highly recommend for the Oculus Quest are Fit XR, O Shape, Synth Riders, Sports Scramble and Space Pirate Trainer.

I have the original Oculus Quest but I recommend getting the new Oculus Quest 2. It will set you back $479, which feels steep, but after owning one for a year now I can tell you that it’s well worth it for exercising and diving into the incredible experiences that are available in VR.

Elly Awesome is an Aussie tech and lifestyle vlogger | @ellyawwesome | YouTube

Originally published as Elly Awesome loses 5kg playing VR video games