Gaming the Scale: make your child lose weight by gaming
With this new technology, it is possible today.
As a former child coach, I know that child obesity is real. I also know how addicted some children are to their screens. Luckily with this revolutionary technology, we can now reduce child obesity … while they have fun!
Child obesity
It is no surprise to anyone that we see more and more overweight children. I see it in my own country, and in many other countries where I have worked in and have visited.
I get it: serving your children junk food is fast and easy. And they love it too!
I have said in many of my previous articles that everything has a price. The price of giving junk food to your children is extremely high though.
It is our responsibility as a parent to make sure that there is a healthy balance between good foods and the occasional bad foods.
You do not need to be a nutritionist either: is your child overweight? You’re doing it wrong.
I already know that the haters will say that obesity can come from clinical disorders. The harsh truth is that, unless clinically proven, your child is most probably just eating wrong and not exercising.
Gaming addiction
I have always played a lot of sports. In parallel, I have always played a LOT of video games.
Most people seem to think this day, that a healthy balance between the two cannot exist. Of course, it can.
What I do see now, is that many children get so used/addicted to video games, that they stop playing sports.
They prefer their ipads, iphones, xboxes and playstations. I get it: some of those games are extremely fun … and addicting.
The result is that they hang around the house every free moment, lying in the couch playing video games.
If you combine that with eating a lot of junk food, you have a recipe for disaster.
Introducing Virtual Reality gaming
As a coach, I was always looking for new ways to make training more interesting and engaging.
Our world is changing rapidly, and we have to adapt as well as coaches.
New technology is popping up so fast now, and I think we can use some of it to our advantage.
Virtual Reality gaming is mostly unknown yet, to us, parents. We consider it the next PlayStation, the next xbox, the next demon device that will only make our children want to move LESS.
I think there is a good use for this technology, however.
Use VR gaming to make your children MOVE
I own a meta quest3 myself and I was very surprised to see that it actually has many VERY active games on it.
You can play virtual tennis, basketball, (mini) golf, you can do boxing, fitness games, and archery. The list is endless.
I am a boxing coach myself: I can tell you that playing Apollo Creed (no sponsorship, but Meta, please feel free to sponsor me) at an expert level completely knocked me off my feet physically.
Do you have a child who does NOT move at all and only plays video games?
Buy him a VR device. The old meta quest cost 200$, which is peanuts if it finally makes your child lose weight and move.
Our brains are NOT yet evolved enough to make the difference between a virtual game of tennis (you have to swing your racket with your controller) and a real game of tennis.
Your child will get a workout, trust me, I have tested it (repeatedly).
Two of my best friends’ children are addicted to video games and never did any sports.
I talked to their parents about VR workouts and one bought an old meta quest (please Meta, sponsor me) to try it out. They were desperate anyway to make their children move.
After one week, their 2 children had reached level 20 in a fitness game and moved to level 30 in a shooter game where you had to move your hands to climb up buildings and duck and cover.
The oldest one had moved to an advanced level of boxing in his game.
They were moving for hours! Without even realizing and while having fun.
Conclusion
Use VR gaming to make your game-addicted children move more.
Yes, i am aware it is still technically ‘gaming’ and ‘screentime’. Yet it is a huge improvement from ‘gaming in the couch’.
From there, if you see that your child is always playing a boxing game, invite him for a real boxing training. Heck, even go together!
VR offers an unseen ability to test so many different sports, that the barrier to try them, becomes extremely small.
From there, move on to the real thing!
Even if you play VR tennis, it can be a great EXTRA training session (or 20) to your real tennis game.
note from the author: please note no amount of training can solely stop obesity, it always needs to be combined by a healthy diet in parallel.
I do not see many coaches adapting VR training yet, so I am extremely curious to hear all of your thoughts about this, please let me know!
