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Saturday 3 November 2012

I have decided what I am going to do for my next set of challenges both in game and out.  For those of you that are new to the blog, this blog exists to help people balance their gaming with exercise and fitness.

My next physical goal is to lose weight without losing muscle mass, and to level a Guardian in Guild Wars 2 from 1-80 with the following restrictions:


  • Only do World Vs. World combat
  • No gathering
  • No crafting
  • No attacking mobs; only Player vs. Player
  • No buying of items of the Trading Post
  • No food or potion buffs
  • No transferring items from other characters
I will keep tabs on my Kill vs. Death ratio and see if anyone wants to try the challenge with me.

As for the physical challenge of losing weight, it's going to start off easy and get harder as the time goes on.  Losing weight is not an easy thing to do for most people, and it will take months of work to achieve.


------------- Losing weight --------------

Alright, so let's start with the biggest, most time consuming, and most interesting topic for my return:  How to lose weight.

There are two things that you have to worry about when focusing on the topic of weight loss.  It is a very simple concept that many places will try to over-complicate.  It is a simple ratio of calories in vs. calories out.

Let's look at what a calorie is:

A "food calorie" or "dietary calorie" is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water to one degree Celsius.  This is an abstract concept when thinking about how it affects your body, but basically it is a unit of energy measurement that is fairly consistent when metabolized by the body.

So calories in is as basic as how much food you eat.  Diets that limit what you eat reduces the caloric intake. This sucks.  We will not be doing much of this.

The first thing we will be looking at is the Basal or Resting Metabolic Rate.  This is the amount of energy expended daily by your body just keeping yourself going through the run of the day.  This is usually a normal person's highest calorie consumption.  The best part about this is that this Basal Metabolic Rate is going whenever we are doing anything, including gaming!  As if that wasn't good enough, there are ways we can increase our Basal Metabolic Rate.

There are a number of things that affect your BMR that we cannot control, like age, gender, and heredity, but there are a number of things that we can control.

The three that we will be focusing on in the coming month:

  1. Muscle burns more calories than fat does.  So if we can increase our muscle mass, more calories will be burned by just sitting around playing games for hours at a time.  
  2. Aerobic and Anaerobic exercise.  These burn calories while you are doing them, but also increases your metabolic rate between exercise.  You've probably heard accounts of people claiming they feel like they have more energy when they are exercising a lot.  This is direct feedback from having a higher BMR.
  3. Drink water!  This is probably the most important.  In order to burn calories by just sitting around, your body acts like a giant chemistry experiment.  Most chemical reactions inside your body uses water in some way or another.  If you dehydrate yourself, your body will limit these chemical reactions, and therefor you will burn less calories.
So in conclusion, we are doing 2 things:  We are creating a Guardian at level 1, and leveling him to 80 with the above restrictions, and we are learning about metabolism, and being aware of ways to increase our metabolism.

First physical challenge is easy:  Drink a 500mL of water right now.  Then weigh yourself, and take the following measurements with a tape measure:  Waist (belly button level), chest (nipple level), thighs (at widest), arms around biceps (at widest).  Add the measurements together.

I will post my results.

If you have 10 minutes and are interested in more Mesmer PVP guide videos, check out my latest: