The fat reality of gaming is that we spend a lot of time sitting on our asses. With the exception of burning calories while rocking out on Rock Band, serving people on DDR, and gesticulating wildly for certain Wii games, there’s a lot of sitting and staring. Trash talking and frustrated controller throwing are probably the best workouts we get while playing the traditional stationary games.

To make matters worse, junk food is as much a part of the ‘typical gamer’ stereotype as is pasty, sun-deprived skin. It’s safe to assume that potato chip grease is one of the top 3 reasons why Nintendo put wrist-straps on the Wiimote. I’ve known fellow gamers to live on nothing but Skittles, Pringles, Red Bull, and Hot Pockets, and I’m not sure if this is purely because they don’t want to take time away from their games to spend more than 2 minutes preparing food, if they’re on a tight budget, or if they just don’t know any better.

I’m a bit of a health nut for some of the normal health nut reasons (ie. I like being relatively fit and I don’t want to get cancer and die early just so I could fill my body with artificial flavors and preservatives). But the #1 reason why I advocate eating well and getting some exercise is because when you exercise a little and put GOOD things in your body, you feel GOOD. It’s an amazingly simple, beautiful, symmetrical equation. Eat well = feel well. Eat crap = feel crap. Same goes for exercise. If you act like a blob, you’ll feel lethargic and heavy like a blob. If you make yourself active and energetic a little bit each day, you will start to feel active and energetic.

Of course, it’s easier to say than to do, but I have some personal tips that help make the doing almost as easy as the saying.

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Little eating habits that make a big difference:

1) AVOID PROCESSED SUGAR! Soda is definitely the biggest culprit. I’ve known some people to do nothing more than cut out the sugary sodas and they lose 10 lbs of couch potato flab in just a few weeks. Candy is another naughty source of empty sugar calories, so avoid it when you can.

Note about sugar: I have a major sweet-tooth so I know how hard this can be, but I’ve found ways to still get some sweet and not suffer as much for it. Good alternatives include fruit and natural fruit juice (with no sugar added), and baked goods without regular white sugar. For example, Trader Joe’s has these amazing granola and dried cherry cookies sweetened with molasses, evaporated cane juice, and brown rice syrup, all of which are better for you than white sugar. And these cookies are seriously delicious. I would have eaten them as a kid and that’s saying something.

2) AVOID PROCESSED CARBOHYDRATES! White flour is bad, whole wheat flour and whole grains are really good. Don’t eat things like white bread and frosted flakes. Instead, eat whole grain bread, granola and whole grain Cheerios. Not only does it help you drop pounds, you get a lot more energy and nutrients from the whole grains.

3) AVOID DEEP-FRIED FOODS! This is a bit of a no-brainer. Deep-fried foods are full of fat and usually empty carbohydrates. Icky.

4) EAT SMALLER PORTIONS, but EAT MORE OFTEN! These are two habits that should go together. When you eat a meal, try to make it small enough that it satisfies your hunger but doesn’t make you feel full. Then in 3-4 hours when you feel hungry again, eat some more. Having 5 smallish meals and snacks each day instead of having 3 (or, more typically, 2) big meals a day helps speed up your metabolism to process and burn calories more quickly. Think about it this way: Sumo wrestlers fatten themselves up by eating only one HUGE meal a day and then going to sleep right afterwards.

In order to not look like a sumo wrestler, I advise doing the exact opposite: eat lots of small meals and…

5) DON’T EAT RIGHT BEFORE BED! Give yourself at least 2 hours to digest and let your body channel the food to muscles and organs. If you eat and sleep soon after, your body will store the energy as fat.

Easy ways to exercise:

1) DON’T TAKE SHORTCUTS FOR STUFF THAT’S ALREADY EASY! Best example: take the stairs instead of the elevator. 4 floors it might take you an extra 30 seconds and you’ll get a nice little workout from it. If you have to go up more than 5 floors, it might make the most sense to take an elevator most of the way, but you can still climb a few of them and then hop on the elevator.

2) TAKE THE 5 MINUTE WALK! If something is only a 5 minute walk away, walk it, don’t resort to something lazy like a cab or bus or subway.

3) DO RANDOM, EASY EXERCISES THROUGHOUT THE DAY! It can look kind of silly, but I like to walk around on my toes and do calf-raises when walking around an office or while at home. I also like to periodically flex my abs hard and hold it for 30 seconds while I’m sitting at my desk, on the couch, or in a car. These are small things that can make a difference.

4) STRETCH! Stretching actually burns some calories and helps make you feel good. Don’t underestimate it as a way to make your body happier and healthier.

5) LOADING… DROP AND GIVE ME 10! Example: before Blizzard fixed the queue times for Battlegrounds in WoW, those 7 minute downtimes were the perfect for getting in a set of sit-ups or push-ups. Over the course of several hours of gaming I could do a few hundred crunches, some lunges, a bunch of push-ups, some stretching, etc. Many games these days still have downtime of some sort, whether they be loading screens or waiting for everyone on the server to stop chatting like it’s grandma’s teatime and finally start the stinking game. Use this time!

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I’m all for breaking stereotypes about gamers, especially when the stereotypical traits lower our quality of life. Luckily, being unhealthy and out-of-shape is one of those things that we have the power to actively change. Be conscious about what you eat, use your downtime wisely, and enjoy not feeling like a blob.