Already trying to figure out a new method to counteract all the holiday food and cold-weather lethargy that’s headed our way these next few months? You might want to read up on a new study that claims there’s a new, effortless, and 100% turkey-coma safe way to go about keeping off the extra pounds: playing video games.
As reported by The Daily Mail, a recent study conducted by the company behind the competitive mobile gaming app Stakester has revealed that playing video games burns way more calories than you might have expected. According to Stakester’s research, male gamers generally burn up to around 420 calories over an intense two-hour gaming session while women can burn all the way up to 472. While that might not seem like a lot when you look up just how many calories are in that Starbucks drink you love, Stakester noted that it actually makes two hours of gaming roughly equivalent to doing 1,000 sit-ups and I don’t know about you, but I definitely know which of those options I prefer.
To conduct the study, researchers used smart devices to measure the heart rates and calories burned by 50 gamers while they played FIFA and Call of Duty: Warzone for two hours. They then used the same devices to monitor the players while they performed sit-ups. The final results revealed that male gamers burned an average of 210 calories per hour while playing games, whereas female gamers burnt off around 236. According to CEO and founder of Stakester Tom Fairey, the team expected to find that gaming burns more calories than the average person might assume. However, they were shocked by just how much a few rounds of Call of Duty can get the blood pumping:
We all know that competition increases our heart rate and most of us have experienced the “gaming sweat” that happens when you’re searching for a last-minute goal in FIFA or in a tight spot in Warzone. It’s no surprise that this burns calories, but we we’re surprised to see just how many is burned during a 2-hour session, it certainly beats doing 1000 sit ups!
All this being said, it feels irresponsible to not add that of course gaming is no supplement for, you know, actually moving around and doing some of those aforementioned sit ups. But hey, at least this gives us a bit more of an excuse during our next Friday night game session, right?