Live data from Hacker News

Please don't let gaming consume your life

buildstarted.com

161–170 of 190 posts

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#161
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned earlier, I am waaaaaaaay overweight. That, of course, means that I'm at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and all that jazz. So when I found myself sitting in my chair with shooting pains and numbness in my left arm, and severe chest pain, my first thought was "well shit, time to call 911 because I'm having a heart attack". To make a long story short, the actual cause of the symptoms I felt was a combina…

PD: Oh, and forget about the stupid "calories in, calories out" non sense. Your body is not a Bunsen burner. Your body could take what it needs(and let the remain on your waste) and calories are not equal(even different sugars have completely different metabolism pathways). Also eat five times a day and never fast. Better: get a mentor that really knows, not a person that just has a title but someone that has result…

Eat five times a day and never fast is very old school. When I was trying to gain weight I would eat 6 times a day. Watched low fat and low sugar.

But it seems things changed Intermittent fasting is actual working and even a 24 hour fast can be beneficial.

Also Calories in and out are a very easy way to lose weight if you calculate correctly. Lot of people overestimate what they burn.

I practice intermittent fasting and now I can maintain low BF % all the time. while using the 5 to 6 meals a day was great for getting more muscle on with a bit of fat gain. But eating 5 to 6 meals a day on low calorie consumption sucks and is not maintainable in the long run.

Some good material with studies to back it up: http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html http://rippedbody.jp/2012/03/02/why-is-leangains-so-effectiv...

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#163
post #87
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 'gym' addiction is less likely to destroy your life. It's rare for people to go on 36 hour gym binges. I'm sure a few people die rock climbing, but it's mostly going to be people who get confident, and put themselves in positions where a mistake (or even bad luck) is fatal.

Over-exercising addiction actually has serious consequences on people's health, as it causes stress fractures that are often exacerbated by them trying to "power through it". That being said, few people actually have this sort of problem, and one shouldn't avoid the gym simply out of fear of becoming addicted.

...and one shouldn't avoid the gym simply out of fear of becoming addicted.

Well said.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil -Knuth

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#164
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infer from the rest of the post that the person in question was unhealthy And we can also infer that he was unhealthy, in larger part, due to spending too much time gaming. > One can argue an unhealthy focus on anything can kill you in the same way And in this case that thing was gaming. It's a cautionary tale, not an indictment on all gaming.

> And we can also infer that he was unhealthy, in larger part, due to spending too much time gaming. Very much, emphatically, not. I know someone into World of Warcraft who spends ~40 hours a week playing, and just ran Bay 2 Breakers. Gaming and being unhealthy are very definitely unrelated, and any attempt to paint them as being related is FUD. If someone is out of shape because they "spend too much time hacking", a…

Games that are designed to be very addictive are an easy target indeed.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#165

There are more subtle ways of gaming ruining your life, as well: slowly losing the drive to do anything more than what's necessary to pay the cable bill, rent, and the gaming subscription. Slowly the only friends you have are people you know from your guild. When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in playing a video game. I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcoh…

A bit related to this: http://www.solvemygirlproblems.com/2012/03/world-of-warcraft...

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#166
post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

> The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be The only reason I can imagine you'd have this idea is if you're operating under the mistaken assumption that "healthy food" and "food that you can enjoy" are mutually-exclusive categories. This ties into a lot of quasi-religious crap surrounding diet in general, which makes every fad diet an orthodoxy com…

I agree with the general idea of your argument, but I wouldn't take the "caloric intake" theory as being the truth, precisely because there's "quasi-religious crap surrounding diet in general", much of it promoted by doctors and nutritionists.

For instance I love meat in general, especially pork stake. My current diet allows me to eat meat and diary products in 1 day out of 4, but when I do, I eat a lot of it, with no restrictions other than not eating after 8 PM. I also get to eat potatoes and even refined carbohydrates, but on different days (so it's a dissociated diet). It's enough to say that my cholesterol levels are really healthy, I have more energy than ever, and I'm losing 11 pounds per month.

And I do satisfy my urges, the only difference being that it's all scheduled and I don't do impulsive eating anymore.

Another thing that I noticed - once you cut out drastically the sugar from your diet and white bread ... food and water taste so much better. I'm now inclined to pick up cooking as a hobby ;)

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#167
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare with what can be considered a 'gym' addiction. Is it ok when it is exercise? What is too much? What about work, startups? I rock climb at least 6 hours a week, it's not bizarre to hear someone dying from rock climbing though.

Someone recently tried to convince me, a frequent climber, that the health effects of getting exercise from climbing were outweighed by the risks involved. I did a bunch of research on the subject, and it is very clear that the benefits of exercise massively outweigh the risks of even a dangerous activity like climbing. It's hard to find statistics for indoor climbing, but for outdoor climbing there is a death for ev…

> So, basically, if your options are either a) be sedentary or b) get adequate exercise by rock climbing, it is better for your health to choose b.

humbledrone, I doubt that's the choice most climbers are making. I'm also a frequent climber (mostly outdoors). If I could not climb, I would not be sedentary - I'd do something(s) else (I already do other activities, too). If I couldn't do anything other than take a stroll every day, I would do that, because I feel better when I move around. Most of the climbers I know are clearly this way - people who can't stand not to be active.

I am pretty convinced, myself, that I'd be better off walking for an hour on safe sidewalks every day instead of rock climbing. I think rock climbing, and other activities in which I partake, put me at higher risk for serious injury or death than a nice healthy walk. How much higher, I'm not sure.

But it's a free society (I live in the USA) and we can do what we want, so I climb, because I'm kind of addicted.

Given the direction that health insurance is taking, I do wonder if people who admit to participating in higher-risk sports will some day be penalized by higher premiums, as smokers are.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#168
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned earlier, I am waaaaaaaay overweight. That, of course, means that I'm at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and all that jazz. So when I found myself sitting in my chair with shooting pains and numbness in my left arm, and severe chest pain, my first thought was "well shit, time to call 911 because I'm having a heart attack". To make a long story short, the actual cause of the symptoms I felt was a combina…

PD: Oh, and forget about the stupid "calories in, calories out" non sense. Your body is not a Bunsen burner. Your body could take what it needs(and let the remain on your waste) and calories are not equal(even different sugars have completely different metabolism pathways). Also eat five times a day and never fast. Better: get a mentor that really knows, not a person that just has a title but someone that has result…

Calories in, calories out is a valid model. It's just not a very useful one. The reason that some foods are better than others even though they have the same number of calories is that some foods give you the feeling of being full, which causes you to eat fewer calories later (e.g. protein). Or some foods might cause you to feel fatigued, causing you to burn fewer calories later (sugar crash). But don't kid yourself, if it's a given that you eat X calories and burn/lose Y calories, then you'll gain weight proportional to X-Y. Choose foods that make it easy to keep that number close to zero.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#169
post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

> The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be The only reason I can imagine you'd have this idea is if you're operating under the mistaken assumption that "healthy food" and "food that you can enjoy" are mutually-exclusive categories. This ties into a lot of quasi-religious crap surrounding diet in general, which makes every fad diet an orthodoxy com…

You might be able to lose weight with a Twinkie diet but that won't cure the diabetes.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone recently tried to convince me, a frequent climber, that the health effects of getting exercise from climbing were outweighed by the risks involved. I did a bunch of research on the subject, and it is very clear that the benefits of exercise massively outweigh the risks of even a dangerous activity like climbing. It's hard to find statistics for indoor climbing, but for outdoor climbing there is a death for ev…

> So, basically, if your options are either a) be sedentary or b) get adequate exercise by rock climbing, it is better for your health to choose b. humbledrone, I doubt that's the choice most climbers are making. I'm also a frequent climber (mostly outdoors). If I could not climb, I would not be sedentary - I'd do something(s) else (I already do other activities, too). If I couldn't do anything other than take a stro…

I had to quit climbing for my life insurance policy.
Post reply on HN