Why?

I don’t know about you, but this lockdown malarky has certainly taken it’s toll on my waistline! Just when I first came to Canada, I was as fit as a fiddle, reaching my goal body fat percentage and soon accomplishing something I’ve always wanted: to get a six pack. Whilst the six pack never came, I definitely got close:

Upon arriving in Canada, I wanted to bulk up first, so I could come back to the UK a changed person, which I achieved just last year, and even achieved another goal set: to reach 200lb body weight come Christmas 2019 (with most coming from muscle):

So imagine my surprise when Covid-19 came to Toronto and proceeded to shut everything down! No more gym and myself having fallen ill lead to 3 months of isolation, with body weight exercises not really packing the same punch as the gym used to provide.

As a consequence, I am now still 200lb’s, but I’ve certainly lost muscle and instead gained fat around the tummy:

It likely looks worse than it is due to the composition of my body changing dramatically – I’ve definitely gained a few percentage points of fat, and, in turn, lost percentage of muscle.

Well enough is enough.

Why Beat Saber?

Recently, I purchased an Oculus quest due to making $500 on the stock market (thanks /r/wallstreetbets), and with no games to play, I decided to download beatsaber, what with it’s wireless vr experience and near limitless song support, I thought what was there to lose?

Fat, hopefully, an awful lot.

Booting it up for the first time I noticed how in half an hours play I was sweating head to toe, with my apple watch constantly pinging me asking if I was doing an indoor run. I ignored it, thinking it was a mistake. Having checked my heart rate after the fact and seeing that it constantly jumped to 170bpm, I knew I was in for a treat in regards to working out.

So I started googling around, to see if there was any evidence to suggest that something as fun as beatsaber could help burn calories, and the evidence found is astonishing:

Beat Saber burns on average 6-8 calories per minute

(source: http://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/)

As you can see from the chart below, the amount of calories you burn depends on how intensive the exercise is:

After sweating more than I have in months, even more than when I run, I decided to make use of my heart rate tracker on my wrist that is the apple watch, and proceeded to play the game again, with apple’s “fitness gaming” exercise pattern. I didn’t necessarily care about the program being chose, it was more about tracking my heart rate than anything else.

Needless to say, the results speak for themselves:

Given how many calories it burns, and how fun it is, that is why I am choosing Beat Saber as my daily exercise to lose weight.

Methodology

Each day will consist of (at minimum) 1 hour of Beat Saber game play. If I should choose to, I can by all means play longer. This will ensure I’m burning around 700 calories a day from playing the game (at minimum), and will be an achievable goal considering we’re all having to stay inside still (at least here in Toronto in June).

I will also (try) to eat more healthily. I’ll admit, when I bulked to 200lbs before, I dirty bulked, meaning I didn’t care what I put into my body. This time I’ll come off sweets and crisps, and only eat main meals.

I’ll also Intermittent Fast – this means I will go 18 hours without food, and only eat in a 6 hour span (12pm to 6pm).

The Challenge

I’m hoping all of these factors will help to make me lose 10-15lbs within the next month (June).

As I publish this, we’re already 3 days into June, so I’m going to set out some baselines:

Baseline stats:

As of the 28th of May (I didn’t weigh myself the 1st of June sorry!) I was:

Weight: 198.8lbs

BMI: 23.1%

Muscle Mass: 145.2lbs

All of the stats above are based on the scales measurements – should I manage to find or buy a tap measure, I’ll also measure myself for more accurate results.

Below is screenshots from the scale app to corroborate the stats given above:

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’m 179cm (in case you’re wondering about BMI or height).

Target:

Based on my schedule and the amount of calories burned from Beat Saver, I hope to achieve the following:

Weight: 180 – 190lbs

BMI: 21-22%

Muscle Mass: +2-4lbs

By June 30th 2020.

Expectations

The weight I think I can easily do – throughout my adult life I have consistently jumped between overweight and perfect every other year, so I’m fairly sure I can do the weight aspect of this challenge.

The muscle gain is going to be a challenge, as I’m sure I’m going to lose muscle along the way, no matter how many pushups or weight body training I do.

But we’ll see! All I can do is try my hardest, and I’ll keep you updated along the way!

Stay Tuned…

I’ll be updating this blog throughout June to let you know of any insights I have whilst doing this challenge, and will also update on the 30th with my weight loss.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this read, and if you have any questions you can by all means reach me on Twitter: @caesoose

‘Til next time!