It can be difficult to lose weight. If you aren’t athletic, and you don’t have good eating habits, you might feel like you’ll never be able to improve your lifestyle. After all, obesity is one of the largest health problems in America for a reason. Motivating yourself to work out costs too much energy. Energy that you feel like you don’t have. It’s easier to retire to playing video games or watching TV, on the couch, at the end of a long day at school or work. And the longer you wait to start getting into shape, the harder it is to find the motivation and energy required to begin.
What if I told you that there’s a magic pill that helps you lose weight? Well, nothing’s ever that simple, but VR comes pretty close. In this article, you will learn why investing in a home VR set-up (or looking into Black Box VR) could be the right choice for you.
Using Regular Exercise To Lose Weight Is Boring
That’s why you avoid it. What you think of as regular exercise is not nearly as colorful or interesting as the video games or fun things you could be doing at home on the Internet. It takes willpower, and stamina, and some amount of commitment. Then, of course, there’s the rigorous meal prepping you’d need to do. And on top of that, you have to be willing to endure the embarrassment of being out of shape.
These all lead back into that vicious cycle I was talking about earlier. There are so many reasons that you’ll fall off the wagon, or never start, that a regular exercise regimen can feel inaccessible. But there’s hope.
VR Puts You Into The Action
Have you ever been playing a video game or watching an action show, wondering what it’d be like to be that protagonist on the screen? The protagonist who’s usually super athletic, who gets to execute all the crazy fun things that are happening in the context of the gameplay or the story? Well, that’s VR. Let that sit for a moment: That’s exactly what VR is.
You’re used to watching some protagonist who exists on a screen, but when you step into VR, there is no protagonist. Instead of looking into a screen, VR is more like being inside of a screen- looking out. It’s that simple.
In VR, You Are The Protagonist
If there’s a fight- you’re the one who’s punching, and slashing, and shooting, and dodging. And when you look around, you start to realize what it’s like to exist in the digital world. VR is better than any regular video game. Because unlike in a regular video game, you’re there. And in VR, you’re still motivated by winning the game, or scoring the most points, or getting the most combos, or smearing the wall with some noob you meet online.
But what you might not understand is how real a workout you can get from spending time in VR.
There’s a very real sense of progression when you clear game levels faster and move up in difficulty levels because you’re getting fitter. And the prospect of being more healthy and looking better outside of VR is a potent motivator to take your fitness beyond VR. No more struggling with your own lackluster internal motivator. You won’t simply lose weight; you’ll watch it melt off of you while you’re too busy playing to notice.
Example: You want to beat that top fighter in The Thrill of the Fight!, so you might choose to do more pushups and build better form- possibly with another VR game such as BOXVR. Or maybe you want to slam your multiplayer matches in Sparc, so you might choose to start doing curls to get your arm strength up.
When you spend time in VR, your video game progression and your real life progression intertwine in a meaningful way. The motivation is all external, which makes you forget that it’s real exercise and that you’re the one who’s doing it. Which is pretty much what you wanted from a magic pill anyway, right? This leads me to my next point:
VR Makes You Want To Eat Healthier
Because of the regular workout that you’re getting, you will feel less inclined to eat unhealthy foods in favor of eating what you need to have more energy. Subconsciously, you’ll want to maximize your energy to win the game. When fitness and healthy eating combine, you will lose weight faster than you previously thought imaginable. And you’ll see the reverse of the sedentary feedback loop I mentioned before.
Instead of digging yourself deeper into a fitness hole, you’ll be looking for all the ways to never fall back into that hole again. You won’t simply lose weight- you’ll come to accept VR fitness gaming as a sustainable lifestyle activity. When you’re feeling ready, you might even take your new body out to places that you’ve never been, or haven’t been for a while. Perhaps to the beach, shirtless. The beauty of VR is that you can choose to only do VR, and you’ll still lose weight and get into decent shape. You might not bulk up without additional resistance, but there’s no guilt involved in it.
It sucks to lose weight by conventional means. VR comes in hot with a solution by giving you the option to play video games to lose weight. Instead of going to a gym or building a fancy exercise regimen that feels boring or hostile, you can get equivalent workouts by slaying life-sized dragons. Or by swinging lightsabers to the beat of your favorite music.
You’ll become the protagonist in your favorite story, and you won’t spend time and energy trying to motivate yourself. This is because VR games motivate you externally, and reward you for putting in the hard work. The important takeaway is that, as long as you enjoy the games you’re playing, none of it will feel like work. This is because, in VR, you are the protagonist.
Have you used VR to lose weight? Let us know in the comments!