“Get out of my way, fat ass!” I stood there absolutely shocked as the hottest girl in my middle school humiliated me in front of the entire class. Let’s rewind, let’s rewind! I was always a skinny kid. Athletic, active—hell, I recall being the fastest runner in my elementary school (I had to be, because I had a big mouth!). But somewhere along the line, very gradually, I became something I never expected to be: overweight. All those days of building forts, attacking the neighborhood kids with rubber band guns, and hiking in the hills slowly transitioned to building ice cream sandwiches, attacking the candy store, and (you guessed it): playing video games. To think, video games… something I loved so much could be responsible for making my life so challenging outside of the game.
Anyone reading this is probably a nerd (if you are shaking your head, you’re in nerd denial). As a fellow geek, you probably remember that school wasn’t exactly full of the nicest kids you ever met… especially if you gave them something to laugh at. In my case, I had more rolls than a Danish bakery. “Fat ass,” “chunky style,” and “Dances with Donuts” (my Native American name) were just a few of the nicknames I heard every time I walked down the hallways. Life was great! And let me tell ya, the girls loved me. Ok… life was not great at all, and the girls didn’t know I existed. It was not fun getting teased, but at least it wasn’t hell, right? Well, it wasn’t yet.
Hell came on a Tuesday and sounded quite a bit like something you may remember, “Get out of my way, fat ass!” When the girl of my middle school dreams said these words to me, something in me transformed. It’s that feeling you get only once in a great while in your life when something extraordinary happens and you have absolute certainty. There was no way in hell I was going to go on another day being overweight. It was time to make some serious changes. One of them was I had to stop playing video games… Oh hellz no! There was no way I could have given up my Final Fantasy/Earthbound addiction, so I had to find a way to lose my 30 chins and keep the video games.
The result was: the video game workout. It couldn’t have been more simple. I would just run in place while I played my games (RPG’s are perfect for that business). Of course, you look like an absolute moron doing this, but the hell with it, I wasn’t getting any women anyway! I would just do this day after day, and next thing you knew, the pounds were coming off. I was starting to get ripped—Flanders ripped, we’re talking Jesus ripped. And finally, over time (and a few donut withdrawals) I lost the weight. I could feel a huge boost to my health and self-confidence. This was almost more than I could handle, as it was truly life-changing to shed the pounds, and in such an odd way. Basically, Nintendo ruined my life, but then taught me how to reclaim it, along with some added respect. This is pretty much why Miyamoto is a God to me. He’s like a Japanese Zeus without a beard, and devilish good looks!
Thanks to my brilliant video-game-weight-loss entrepreneurship (Or VGWLE, as it’s come to be known), there are all kinds of weight loss games on the market these days! I’m basically the Jared of the video game world. While I’m clearly humble about it, I couldn’t have done it without my trusty friend, the Super Nintendo. In all seriousness, this really did have a big impact on my life, as crazy as it sounds. Yes, I’m going to be lame and give it a happy ending. If you have a few extra pounds you would like to shed, you might want to consider giving this a try! Keep your video games and lose the weight.
-Dr. Mike
