Color me surprised.  According to women’s fitness magazine Oxygen (which I totally do not have a subscription to), playing videogames burns 50% more calories in a hour than “athletic” sex does.  And that’s not including the Wii or Dance Dance Revolution — I’m talking just regular ol’ sitting-on-your-ass-tapping-buttons videogames.

The September issue of Oxygen has a special feature entitled “100 Ways to Burn 100 Calories”.  Number 71 on the list says “Play some vids”.  First, as a slap in a face to girl gamers everywhere, it says “Go over to your boyfriend’s house and get on his PlayStation 3″.  That’s right, girls don’t play videogames.  So stereotypical, Oxygen…

Anyways, Oxygen claims that forty minutes of gaming will cut 100 calories, scientifically backed by the British Medical Journal.  According to number 55, “Wii the people”, Wii gamers burn an additional 40 percent more calories than other gamers.  With some advanced calculus skills, I’ve determined that regular gaming burns 150 calories per hour, and Wii-ing burns 210 calories per hour.

So, how does this compare to sex?  Oxygen’s number 81, “Get your freak on”, states that one full hour of “athletic” sex burns a mere 100 calories.  That just seems inaccurate somehow.  An hour on the Wii burns over twice as many calories per hour as having sex?

Just to put things into perspective, here’s a list of other things they claim burn 100 calories:

• Playing Frisbee for 30 minutes
• Drinking a gallon of water (in a day, not all at once)
• Laughing for 20-30 minutes
• Driving for 45 minutes
• Gardening for 15 minutes
• Walking a mile (which takes about 15 minutes)
• Grocery shopping for 45 minutes
• Playing Monopoly for an hour

Wait, what? What was that last one again? You burn the same number of calories banging for an hour as you do from playing freaking Monopoly!? Something is seriously wrong with these statistics. The only way this would make sense is if, since this is a women’s magazine, all of the test subjects in the sex study were just laying on their backs, holding their legs in the air and moaning “athletically”, and that was it.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but when I think of a woman having “athletic” sex, it seems like it would burn a lot more in a hour than playing Monopoly or Call of Duty 4.  At least now we can claim we spend all day getting in shape, so tell your girlfriend to shut up already.

Don’t get your hopes up just yet.  Turns out, Oxygen doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about.  Playing videogames doesn’t burn any more calories per hour than just sitting, at least according to number 38 “Road rage”, which lists sitting at 100 calories in 40 minutes.  But wait, driving takes 45 minutes to burn 100 calories, so why does it take an extra 5 minutes if you are actually doing slightly more than just sitting?  Also, it takes a full 90 minutes of “movie-watching” to burn 100 calories even though, again, you are just sitting.

As you can clearly see, Oxygen’s “100 Ways to Burn 100 Calories” is really just a bunch of bullshit.  This was even a collaboration by the Oxygen team, so it’s not like it’s just one writer that fucked up.  Thanks for putting out a worthless magazine and making women think that you will help them get fit, and making me think that playing videogames was actually some form of exercise.  Consider my subscription (that is totally not mine) canceled.

Tags: calories, exercise, Oxygen, ridiculousness, sex

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