VR vs Fitness and Fat – Two Weeks of Progress
In the immortal words of the great poet Bon Jovi, Oh we’re halfway there. Well almost anyway. Two weeks down and it is time to check in with Hope and Matt to see how they are doing in the VR vs Fitness and Fat challenge.
Matt’s Thoughts
| Day 1 | Day 7 | Day 14 | Day 21 | Day 28 | Day 30 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight (KG) | 148.4 | 145.9 | 144.2 | 143.4 | 141.9 | 140 |
| Waist (cm) | 142 | 139 | 137 | 133 | 131.5 | 129 |
| Upper Thigh (cm) | 75 | 72 | 70 | 66 | 66.5 | 65.5 |
| Chest (cm) | 132 | 130 | 129 | 127 | 128 | 127 |
| Bicep (cm) | 39.5 | 38 | 39 | 40.5 | 40.5 | 40 |
| Resting Heart Rate (BPM) | 69 | 68 | 71 | 66 | 67 | 67 |
Week two was a pretty tough week for me. My wife was indisposed with an injury for much of the week and one of my boys went down with a stomach bug. To top it all off I spent much of the week fighting off a head cold and doing my best to not transform into a living ball of snot. Finding motivation to train was tough under these conditions and on more than one occasion I sat, looking at the TV, wondering if it was worth it. But thankfully I pulled myself together long enough to do my workouts because despite all the setbacks for the week, (as you can see from the table above) the results were worth it.
There were a couple of interesting things to note however, The first is my resting heart rate was higher this week. I am just putting that down to being crook and my body working a bit harder to fight off the grossness. The other interesting result is my bicep actually got bigger. This could be down to one of two things. The first is all the boxing is paying off and I am developing Arnie-like guns or human error in the measurements. I am going for the first option obviously.
I guess the biggest change I have noticed in the first couple of weeks is a change in my attitude. A week like I just had traditionally would have sent me straight to some comfort fried chicken and laying on the couch as much as possible. This week however I didn’t even consider that as an option. Even though it was bloody hard to get my body moving at some points, I knew I had to regardless. Another instance of this change of attitude occurred yesterday when I woke at 5 am and was unable to get back to sleep. So instead of tossing and turning for an hour or so I got up and did 30 minutes on BoxVR. Something I never would have even contemplated 2 weeks ago.
As for the games themselves, I find myself doing 30-40 minutes of BoxVR a day along with a session of Beat Saber to cool down. A few times a week I throw on Creed for some high-intensity arm waving, but I find it a little inconsistent in giving that “work out” feeling so that is more for a bit of fun. I have unfortunately had my save game in BoxVR corrupted twice which has erased my scores and stats (luckily I have kept screens). This is a problem the developers are aware of and they swear there is a patch coming soon, it is just waiting for Sony approval at the moment. Fingers crossed because, while the stats themselves are quite meaningless it does hurt to lose progress markers of any kind.
But with all that said, I have to say I am excited about how this is going. I feel a little fitter, I am down a belt notch and some of my shirts are a bit baggier. It is a good feeling and one I hope will stay with me for the 30 days.
Hope’s Thoughts
| Day 1 | Day 7 | Day 14 | Day 21 | Day 28 | Day 30 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight (kg) | 83.6 | 81.9 | 82.4 | 82.5 | 82.3 | 82 |
| Waist (cm) | 82 | 82 | 82 | 81 | 79.5 | 79 |
| Upper Thigh (cm) | 68 | 69 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 |
| Chest (cm) | 104 | 100 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 102 |
| Bicep (cm) | 33 | 33 | 33 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Resting Heart Rate (BPM) | 74 | 74 | 73 | 68 | 70 | 70 |
If you’ve been following our little experiment you might have seen me say something like ‘you can’t outrun a bad diet’. It seems to be this weird little mission I’ve got going on to prove that.
While I didn’t eat as badly as the week prior I’ve still had a pretty poor track record with eating clean. There might have been pizza, fried chicken, chips, chocolate, and soju. I am, after all, only trash goblin.
It’s understandable that my weight has gone up. It’s very likely it’s just natural fluctuation and I haven’t really made any proper change to my own physique. All my measurements are pretty similar so I am just doing a really good job of balancing out my ability to consume, with VR.
And honestly, that’s still kind of impressive.
I will TRY to do better this week. I can tell you that if you want to eat like a monster, VR is a pretty good way of mitigating the effects. I’ve got two weeks of data to attest to this and I really don’t want to make it three.
On the other side of things, I’ve noticed that I am getting fitter. My heart rate doesn’t tend to get as high doing the same songs on Beat Saber and I can do Box VR without collapsing.
Unfortunately, I’ve experienced a similar thing to Hewso in that Box VR has corrupted my save. I don’t mind that too much because I wasn’t really using it to keep track and I don’t have any impressive high scores. I can see this being very frustrating if it was your main exercise tracker and goal setter, though. Hopefully, the fix will be approved soon.
Mental healthwise I’d still say the same. Often I feel really good for immediately having tried it but nothing long term and that’s really a shame.
I know that if I could stick to any form of somewhat healthy eating I’d see results. It’s just convincing myself that results are worth not eating that tasty thing is worth it that feels impossible. I was hoping the mental boost of regular exercise was going to help with that but it’s not strong enough yet.
If you see me on the street eating a delicious treat, feel free to come up and slap it out of my hand. If you see anyone who looks vaguely similar to me and you’re not 100% sure, do it anyway. They’ll understand. I promise.
So that is another week down for Hope and Matt. We just want to send a huge shoutout to those that have contacted us on Twitter to tell us that you are joining in on the challenge and that we have inspired you to maybe get a bit healthier. If you want to join in, make sure you let us know by using the #VRvsFat hashtag and yelling at us on the tweets!
