I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcohol, gambling, day trading, and I'm sure other things I can't think of now. Pot. I think any of those things can have their place, but please maintain connection to people who can and will say something if you start going overboard.

For instance, I'm in a pretty good place right now and still gave parental control to a friend for the D3 release, just in case. Six hours a week is arguably still too much, but seems reasonable to me, and they won't budge because A) I asked them not to; B) they care. That I've hit that limit is a good sign that I may not be as well off as I thought I was ;)

Take care of each other, and yourself.

other things being startups?

My guess is that the hidden psychological motivation is the same: to avoid addressing personal problems.

Exercise can help but even there, it depends. If you keep moving your body around forcefully for extended periods you risk heart disease and stroke, e.g. dancing plague of 1518.

Working on my startup could easily drag me into a 8-10 hours race with only a few tea breaks.

I suspect those of us electing to work upwards of 60 hrs/week at startups have other issues to work out beyond the allure of money.

It's hard to find statistics for indoor climbing, but for outdoor climbing there is a death for every 320,000 outings. If you go on two outings a week, your chance of dying is around 0.03% per year [1].

Getting the proper amount of exercise (compared to being sedentary), though, can decrease the total risk of year-over-year mortality by a factor of up to 4.5 times [2]. The overall risk of death for e.g. a middle-aged man is something like 0.2% [3], so any significant reduction to this factor compares very favorably with the risk of death from climbing.

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. This comparison looks even better if you're doing only gym climbing (which is much safer than outdoor climbing).

[1] http://www.allclimbing.com/archive/2009/01/data-on-climbing-...

[2] http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/107/1/e2.full

[3] http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

> the benefits of exercise massively outweigh the risks of even a dangerous activity like climbing.

In other words, the risks of heart attack, diabetes and other diseases are worse than rock climbing, even if you go climbing twice a week.

Compared to how much you can benefit from the exercise, the risk of falling and dying is really insignificant, to the point that I don't think it's worth debating between climbing and any other common form of exercise.

[EDIT]: Fix an incorrectly worded statement about expected value.

My uncle played football in high-school, broke his knee and it's bothered him ever since. He didn't die.

Everything we do has risk, and we shouldn't let it consume us. But I'd also not focus on death in isolation.

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.

Things like that could easily make you more sedentary for the rest of your life.

I'm not sure about climbing, I just don't think the math is as easy as that :)

(a related issue that really annoys me is when they compare the dangers of ectasy and heroin using the death rate, when the quality of life destruction caused by ectasy is 1% compared to the horror that happens to a junkie)

Anyway, 6 hours a week at the climbing wall is hardly an addiction. That's more like a hobby.

Making a distinction between time spent playing video games and time spent doing other leisure activities is fairly pointless. Managed properly, there's no real physical difference between playing a video game for 20 hours a week and reading a novel, watching TV, commenting on HN, programming or any other fairly motionless activity. I know that I (as a relatively fit 21 year old) spend quite a lot of time sat in front of a computer. Physically the activity is fairly irrelevant.

Perhaps the only thing that video games have that the other activities I mentioned don't is that they have a fairly high potential to be addictive. I'd imagine most people who've played video games at any point know what it's like to play for 10 hours straight for an entire weekend. You don't have to do that, but people do.

Regardless, a sedentary lifestyle with no regular exercise will lead to health problems which increase the likelihood of death. That's something we've known for decades. Don't count "time spent playing video games", count "time spent sitting down".

Depends on the activity level and all that, but in general, even a few hours a few days a week is the most a person's likely to do.

And I know some ... reasonably well balanced people who do markedly more than that.

One thing about dying during exercise: you're going out doing something you enjoy. And which I suspect puts you in a good place.

You could probably make the first argument in favor of, say, gaming binges, drugs, etc., but not the second.

That being said, spending an exorbitant amount of time devoted to exercise is generally better than spending an exorbitant amount of time devoted to passivity.

I for one am an avid gamer and I would rather game than quite a large number of other activities that people find rewarding or fulfilling, but I don't go write on some blog saying that they're wasting their life away jogging down the street or writing Dragonlance novels.

Everyone should keep their negative opinions about gaming to themselves, much less people die playing video games than pretty much every other activity on the planet.

So, obviously, we have no choice but for some people contribute to society. Is there a fair way to decide who has to contribute, and who is allowed to opt out and play video games all day?

On an entirely different note, gaming probably causes a very significant number of deaths, due to its sedentary nature. Being sedentary is perhaps more dangerous than smoking: http://www.naturalnews.com/001547.html .

Not really, but we have a way anyway, and it's called money. It's the same way we use to determine who is allowed to opt out and read all day, who is allowed to opt out and go on lots of vacations, and who is allowed to opt out and study something abstruse in college for four years.

College is one of the last bastions of learning for the sake of learning. As programmers who often exalt creation for the sake of curation -- and discovery for the sake of discovery -- I think its better we commend that, rather than condemn it.

It was clear from the article that spawned this discussion that he was employed and simply took some time off like I did to play D3.

Secondly, I don't have negative opinions about gaming -- I play a lot of video games myself, in addition to other hobbies. I have negative opinions about obsessions, whether its an obsession with gaming or an obsession with work. (By negative opinion, I don't mean that I judge those with such obsessions poorly; merely that I consider them unhealthy.)

Well said.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil -Knuth

One day I imagine we'll be able to map real world problems to video games, in a way that doesn't require knowledge of the solution to create the mapping.

Programming itself is very similar to a game. If someone could make it into a virtual world, where I "write" code simply by putting together various machines in 3D space...well, that would be fun :)

Now then, that doesn't apply well to a real world problem, but there are definitely parallels.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/09/minecraft-users-go-wild-b...

Well, if you're a successful day trader I'd say rather that the normal rules for not letting work consume you, rather than play. If you are unsuccessful, then it probably does fall more in line with a gambling problem.

Most of my friends consisted of people whom I gamed with -- I barely made any friends in college. And of course, most of those gaming friendships never developed into any sort of deeper connection. Having made friends "IRL" with whom I have deeper connections than playing video games, I can't tell you how much more enriching that is.

Also, I now have all sorts of interests that require lots of something that I once had but now don't: time. In college, I now understand, I had so much time with which to learn and create. Instead I squandered it all away. I did graduate cum laude, so it's not like I was a total slacker, but I could have spent my time in ways that would have been far more interesting and rewarding than clicking, clicking...

Furthermore, I now have problems with my left hand as a result of holding down WASD so much. That's not something that can necessarily ever be fixed, which is frustrating to me as someone who once played musical instruments. I gave up being able to play guitar and violin for what? For video games?

Yes, I have Diablo 3 and I see that many of my friends are on Hell difficulty now and level 55 or whatever. They did that in 2 or 3 days while I still haven't beaten normal mode. And even though I'm having a bit of fun playing Diablo 3, it can never compare to the enjoyment that I once had playing instruments. And what's sad is that _I knew this_ at the time, but it was so much _easier_ to play games than to do any of these other more rewarding but more challenging activities.

Was I addicted to video games? I don't think I've suffered from any of the more classical addictions like alcoholism, so I can't fully compare. But in retrospect, I think that I was. I was always interested in games as a kid (playing NES), but I think that I really turned to games after a particularly traumatic event in my life. From that point on, gaming became an outlet for psychological stress and personal insecurities. And as time went on with me using gaming as a bad coping mechanism, additional negative effects accrued: for instance, I lost that drive in life which boredguy8 mentioned.

Well, I'm rambling a bit now... but what I wanted to convey was that if you find that what I said about my relationship with gaming resonates with you, please take some time to reflect upon yourself and the way in which you are using the gift that is your unrepeatable life. Examine yourself and see if there are perhaps deeper problems with which you need to get help, problems which are being masked by gaming. And if you can't figure this out through self-examination, please find someone who can help you. There's more to life than playing games.

That is, is the difference between "good" and "bad" obsessions purely subjective and cultural? (Example of a good obsession: recently I read the book "Mastery", where the author describes his years of practicing Aikido almost nightly. Aikido is probably close to useless in real life but the author was greatly enriched by his training. And the enrichment wasn't despite the fact his training was often repetitive, it was because it was so repetitive and "dull").

Or is there an objective criteria for distinguishing between good an bad obsessions? Here's my criteria, good obsessions are good for at least one of:

- your health - your wealth - your social circle - etc

And bad obsessions are bad for at least one of those. So if you're an avid gamer, but you don't let it go so far as to effect your health, and you actively go to LAN parties or gaming expos and make real friends through that, then that's a healthy obsession.

Or if you're an online poker player or day trader that loses significant money, that's an unhealthy obsession (because it would be rational to stop). If you make money, then it's a healthy obsession. If you only lose insignificant amounts of money, then it's just a hobby and isn't really good or bad.

I actually only admitted to myself this year that I'm actually obsessed with startups. I realised that most close friends I made over the last few years had ever a strong interest or active involvement in entrepreneurship and instead of trying to fight it (eg, like thinking it was kind of lame that I've been to more tech conferences than music concerts), I should just double down on that and build a social circle out of my startup obsession.

My wife was a national champion in college soccer. She ended up switching schools, but for the time that she was playing college soccer she got nearly full tuition. She certainly was in top physical shape. These all seem like good accomplishments, but she always tells people that she wishes she hadn't done soccer. There are small reasons like the wear and tear on her body, and her feeling that she would have more greatly enjoyed piano (which she's since taken up again).

But ultimately, the thing that she says bothered her the most was the kind of person that competitive soccer turned her into. The effect upon her personality and the way she treated other people was very negative. I won't relate the adjectives that she uses to describe herself at the time, but what's important is that the dividing line for her as to whether all her effort in soccer was worth it or not was _the kind of person it made her become_.

I'm not a psychologist so I can't really go much further with this. It probably isn't the most objective criteria, as it depends on one's value system. Certainly there are exceptions, like an alcoholic who thinks that he is really enjoying life. But if we were to talk about what seems to be more subtle obsessions, as opposed to chemical addictions, the one thing I can see that is common to both my wife and I -- her having done something that most people would have valued and I having done something that didn't result in much positive benefit -- is that neither of us liked the type of person that our activities turned us into.

What's critical is that neither of us were able to understand this until we were able to step back from our passion/obsession and look at it from the outside, as if we were a third party. We had to be able to step apart from our activity, look at ourselves dispassionately, and ask, "Is this who I want to be?"

Now, the situation you describe is a little different. To succeed as an entrepreneur requires constant education, which necessarily includes making many connections with other entrepreneurs for learning and support. Certainly someone who spends all their time consuming music might not be making the most out of their lives, but someone who spends all their time away from their family at tech conferences will also be missing out on very important things. I don't know your personal situation, but I think it does come down to your psychological well-being.

Your wealth, your social circle, even your health and your life can vanish in an instant. Whether a recession destroys your 401k, your friends leave you for other interests, you are diagnosed with a disease, or you die in an accident, there is no guarantee that any of these things will continue to persist. That's not to say that they aren't worth laboring for, but recognizing the ephemerality of these things can help give us a new perspective. What I try and ask myself is, "If I died in the next moment, would I feel that I have lived?"* That question can help me choose between another hour of Diablo 3 and spending some time with my wife, for instance. :)

Edit: For the sake of being perfectly honest, my question is a little bit different as it is based on my value system, which I'm not certain the HN community appreciates. I tried to put forth a question that most people could interpret and apply to themselves. But for me, the question is, "Do I love my God, and do I love my neighbor as Christ demonstrates His love for us, even unto death?" There are all sorts of ways -- even in soccer and video games! -- that can help me answer this question with a yes. And that's why I think the question of passion vs obsession is a difficult line to draw. To not disclose this would make me feel dishonest, but I admit that I'm reluctant to fully explain this because of the way the tech/scientist community generally feels about religion.

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 nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be;

2. American cities with their car addictions make it incredibly easy to lead a sedentary existence. Biking is a somewhat hazardous option that's not always realistic. The ideal exercise (in times of reward-for-effort) is probably walking. I live 7 minutes from work and the absolute minimum steps I could take in a day is probably 5000, maybe 6000 (I have a pedometer). 8000 is more common, which is still a bit low (10,000 is recommended). Live 10-15 minutes from work and walk to and from work every day and you massively better off;

3. People treat diets and, to a lesser extent, exercise regimes as a transitory effort to get back to some goal weight or fitness level, at which point they seek to return to the previous behaviour. This is a mistake. You're getting older. Your metabolism is, all other things being equal, slowing down (it requires more effort to keep it up at any rate). You should view a dietary change (in particular) as a lifestyle change, not a temporary adjustment;

4. Psychological addiction may not be as "obvious" as physiological addiction but its effects can be very real.

I'm sorry for your loss. It may sound callous but ultimately we are each responsible for our own well-being. If someone chose to die that way, it's sad but there's not much you could do. You have to choose to be helped.

Better off how? Eating for enjoyment is one of the best pleasures in life. To quote someone else, if you spend your life eating no butter, no lard, no salt; you're gonna feel like a damn fool lying on your hospital bed, dying from nothing.

So while I've not lain on my death bed while dying from 'nothing', I can tell you that thinking you're about to die from something in your control (at least partially) is a terrible, terrible feeling. I really can't emphasize how bad a feeling that is. I love butter, but I'd trade it in a heart beat to never feel that again. Who knows, maybe it's the same whether it's in your control or not.

40 years ago Americans used to eat lots of butter and fats(way more than today) and they were fit.

My advice is:

Forget about eating sugar, not fat. Fat is natural, we had eaten it since man is man, fat is in animals with the meat and all tribes everywere(From Papua New Guinea to the Amazon) have horrible histories about those that did not eat fat(because those that do not become ill as fat is essential for the immune system and heart, among others) .

Refined sugar is not natural, you should buy fruit as it has antioxidants and lots of fiber so you don't become addicted to sugar(fiber reduces your sugar blood concentration orders of magnitude).

Never mix sugar with fat, if you do add lots of fiber, like lettuce or broccoli or fruit(if you don't like them, make an habit and you will like it over time).

Replace refined rice or wheat or corn (flours) with entire grains(integral cereals). They are ugly but way more healthy.

Learn to cook yourself. It took years for you to get where you are and you need to understand that you need years to get out. Don't try miracles but learn how to get healthy step by step.

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 under her belt.

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...

It's sort of like smoking. Nobody enjoys smoking when they first start. It's disgusting! But they think: "If it's this bad then I can stop at any time" - then they can't. A similar thing happens with coffee and sugar. If you have 3 sugars in your coffee and slowly start to reduce it, then eventually cut it out then for the first few cups when you cut it out you won't like it, but then you'll actually be OK with it. Then you won't be able to drink it with sugar at all!

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I really think this is a sad statement and I truly hope one day you will understand why I think so.

It might cost a tiny little bit more to get the fresh ingredients instead of the usual stacks of shitty ready meals and frozen foods, but the variety and the balance (if you shop well) is hard to beat.

I love being able to cook good food, and as a result, the food is enjoyable, and I'm encouraged to learn more recipes so I can enjoy more.

(while I agree with you that eating can be a great pleasure, one can simultaneously enjoy great food every single day and not look like Jabba the Hutt).

Actually, one of the restaurants I truly enjoy is Au Pied De Cochon in Montreal, where it gets way "worse" than butter, lard and salt. Maybe it's a good thing I live across the continent from it :)

Not true. This is a mechanistic approach to life, we are not machine copies. Machines are copies from us, witch is different.

A machine can not repair itself or reproduce or protect itself against the aggressions of the environment.

What you eat is not just fuel, but way way more complex. You eat proteins so you get aminoacids, vitamins, minerals, oils and water. If you don't eat some specific materials in specific proportions you die, no matter how many calories you give it(energy or "fuel").

E.g you could give your body too much omega 6 fat (cheap to industrial manufacture) over omega 3 fat and your body will start working very bad.

In my experience traveling around the world, the anglo speaking world has no idea what eating well means. Eating for enjoyment does not mean eating pizza, hamburgers or hot dogs, there is tons of healthy food around the world that is simply delicious(look for ancient cultures).

In China I had some of the best meals I ever had for about $2 - boiled rice and a variety of vegetable/meat dishes with assorted flavours. Of course you have to go as a group to make that style of eating worthwhile, but that was hardly a bad thing. If I wanted a late-night lazy meal, I'd get a plate of fried rice or noodles from one of the little diners -- not super healthy, but way better than Big Macs. In Malaysia I eventually stopped grabbing junk food from the 7-11s (which I did for the first few days) and started buying fresh fruit from the street vendors whenever I wanted a snack. I think Anglo culture in particular has a bad relationship to food (which is a shame, as despite the stereotype, we actually had some innovative cuisine in the past).

http://joshuaspodek.com/food-joy-values

The fuel metaphor is perfectly valid.

And it's perfectly understandable. Eating only rabbit food and spending your free time getting sore and sweaty is unappealing for many people. Tell them that they have to do that for the rest of their lives or they won't get any benefit, and plenty will arguably rationally decide not to bother at all.

I'd like to see more focus on improvements at the margin. No, I'm not going to cut out all sugar and bread, but if you tell me which of the foods I like to eat are the most and least unhealthy, I can probably make significant improvements while still enjoying my meals. Same thing with exercise; 10,000 steps per day is unrealistic for almost everyone, while taking stairs when feasible and grabbing the first available parking spot instead of wasting time trying to find a closer one is a much easier sell.

Completely agreed that walking to work is great if you can arrange it. Not only is it good exercise, it avoids the car commutes that studies consistently find are terrible for your general happiness.

I still drink beer. I make occasional exceptions (been eating some chocolate every couple of days recently since someone gifted me a whole damn box). I eat lots of veg (salads, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) and huge amounts of meat (anything from fresh steak and home-made burgers - no bun - to chorizo, Parma ham, and other fatty meats). I still eat lots of dairy products too - cheese in particular, nice mozzarella, Camembert, gruyere, emental, etc.

Result for me? I eat whenever I'm hungry, however much I feel like, and always nice food that tastes good, and my weight hasn't budged. I also don't get the 1-3pm carb coma anymore. And I feel great.

YMMV, but this works for me for maintaining weight. For cutting down weight, just combine this with a calorie restriction method and daily weight measurements/charting, as per : http://danieltenner.com/posts/0018-how-to-lose-weight.html

Being rid of the afternoon slump is a HUGE boost for me - I used to flag every day at about 3pm (after a sandwich for lunch) and would always have a chocolate bar and a coke to wake myself up - only then then crash again a couple of hours later.

Now eating too much sugar gives me a headache, and I am happy to steer clear of it. I still have the occasional bar of something, but I don't feel like it's something I need any more, and I am much much happier this way!

So if anyone is considering similar - give it a shot, I follow the 'slow carb' diet from the 4 Hour Body - but basically it's just the post above, except with no dairy and loads of beans.

People don't get how much just a TINY bit of daily exercise gives them.

1) Interference with sleep. Will continue to see video game images when I close my eyes to sleep and won't sleep well.

2) Changes in how my eyes track things.

3) A general, physical malaise. I will feel a bit of nausea....

I don;t think the deaths are caused by exhaustion. I think they are caused by brain or hormone imbalances caused by the gaming itself.

I don't think it is as simple as eyestrain. Also no nutritional changes can be shown during these times, and being sedentary doesn't cause these for me.

The point is you start with observations, you form hypotheses, and hope that someone will test them.

Regarding the antivax movement though, there really are two submovements. The first ("vaccines cause autism") is pretty silly given that the hypotheses that float dont even match the demographic data they claim it does.

The second movement though which I am relatively sympathetic to is a relatively generalized hostility towards vaccine proliferation. This isn't anti-vaccine really. It is rather hostility towards ever-growing lists of mandated vaccines. I know a lot of people who say "I don't care what the CDC says. I am not giving my kid a yearly flu shot!" And many of them also question many of the newer additions to state vaccine mandates as well while often supporting requirements for the older and more major vaccines (polio, MMR, DTaP for kids, not for adults). I don't think you can just lump these together.

This effect actually has a name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

Neural plasticity is an amazing thing. For example in blind people the visual parts of the brain can get rewired to process sound or other senses instead. The flipside of that is that if I spend a significant portion of my life focusing on video game scores, (or how much karma my posts get on reddit), it feels like my brain rewires itself to play those games better - potentially at the cost of other types of performance.

In effect, I think that "garbage in, garbage out" applies to humans too.

Extended destructive binges are usually a symptom of some other emotional stress, and I presume that regular eating habits aren't going to be followed, anyway.

I usually go running or hit the gym after work, but a lot of the new research is indicating that sitting all day and then working out for an hour is quite a bit worse for you then staying mobile all day, even if the net amount of exercise is equivalent. Thinking about how much time I spend sitting at a desk is pretty depressing for me.

I still work out most days after work. But the push-ups get me out of my chair during the day, don't take more than a minute to do a set, and give brain and body a little charge.

I recommend something like the Perfect Pushup -- besides all the reasons in their commercials -- because they help overcome the psychological ickiness of putting your hands on the floor (even if it is no dirtier than your keyboard.) With all the effort corporations are giving to getting their employees to walk 15 minutes a day to bring down health insurance costs, I think the Perfect Pushup makers are fools not to promote this sort of office usage for their product.

I also had a period where I bought a new car and started driving to work. I put on about 15 pounds over two months. I realized this and went back to biking to and from work. For me, bicycle commuting is the best way to get exercise because it doesn't feel like wasted time when I would just be sitting in traffic anyway. It can be a bit of a hassle, but I get to comfort myself with monetary savings and benefiting the environment.

P.S. besides, with kids you'll have no time for video games, so that's a solution from another angle ;-)

You don't wanna be that guy.

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 complete with demonic outsiders (foods absolutely prohibited and made to seem inherently unhealthy), canonized sacraments (foods that are held up as perfect and beyond reproach), and the sin-guilt-redemption cycle.

Nonsense.

You can lose weight eating Twinkies if you mind your caloric intake and burn more than you consume. (You'll have to watch your nutrient intake as well, but that's a given. You always need to do that to some extent.) Therefore, you can eat good foods in the right amounts and it'll work. You'll also be more inclined to stay on the diet and make it a true lifestyle change.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/06/health/la-he-fitness...

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 ;)

I had a friend with diabetes, he was way over weight. One day we talked about his new apartment, WOW and girls. He mentioned he had a good view of the joggers from his window. I mentioned I am frequently one of those joggers, and you see a lot more of the cute girls that way.

The topic of conversation moved to WOW, and I mentioned how I hate to touch a computer after spending all day at work sitting in front of one.

Despite subtle and not so subtle hints he did not start to exercise and died alone in his mid 30s.

And you know what, a lot of people die exactly the same way, with no gaming what so ever involved.

This whole heart attacks are a top killer, so eat well and exercise deal pre-dates computers by decades.

The funny thing I have discovered is that while I don't like it on a high level of thinking, it actually can be relaxing. As a consequence, I am trying to slowly add physical activities instead of going cold-turkey- it isn't a leap I can make in one day, and finding myself with no stress relief is murderous.

Over this past weekend a good friend and coworker passed away. He always had a good heart and would do anything he could to help you out. It was certainly a shock.

Monday morning he didn't show up to work. He always calls or sends an email if he won't be in but nobody could get a hold of him. I got a bit worried since I knew he was playing Diablo 3 since it came out on Tuesday and I've heard of people dying from exhaustion and what not from playing video games so much. I didn't want to think that but it had occurred to me. Especially since nobody has heard from him since late Saturday. I had called his landlord and asked about him. (The landlord, Russ and I are all good friends and we've known each other for a while) I was heading over and she was going to let me in but apparently she got too worried and went in anyway. She found him at his computer. He apparently had a heart attack. Poor gal shouldn't have had to do that. I kick myself for not going there immediately. I had gone in anyway at the request of the Fire Department to find his identification and cellphone. Not a minute goes by that I wish my memory of him had not been sullied in that manner.

I sincerely hope that he went quickly and didn't suffer, unable to contact anyone for help.

He was only 32 years old.

Please, if only for yourselves, take time out of your day to get some exercise. Go outside and enjoy the sun. Ride a bike. Do something active. Video games are great fun when played in moderation. This may be an extreme example but take it as advice to not go overboard. Or at least don't do it alone. He took 3 days off and played Diablo 3 pretty much the whole time. He called in and asked to take Friday off as well. We are placing the blame on ourselves at work wondering if we made him come in on Friday would he still be with us today?

It saddens me that we tried to get him to be healthy. Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and eat better. He took us up on our offers, if only for a short while.

We should have tried harder.

He will be missed greatly by all who knew him.

Frankly, this entire thread is about as bad as mass media blaming video games when a kid shoots up his school.

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.

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", are you going to blame hacker culture next? Gaming is an easy target. Admit it.

> Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and eat better.

Instead he was gaming.

> If someone is out of shape because they "spend too much time hacking", are you going to blame hacker culture next?

Yes, in part. BTW, I'm not "blaming" gaming.

That's why I don't play them anymore.

You are right though, pretty much when I played WoW and raided I had little time for a social life, when I stopped being a regular raider the game lost a lot of it's appeal to me.

But please, don't blame yourself. Asking him to come in or not might well have not changed anything. While gaming certainly can be addictive, he had a heart attack. That has nothing to do with gaming. You can get a heart attack at any moment. Heck, you can have one while sleeping. (You can even have one without any recognizable symptoms)

So, instead I suggest people learn what the symptoms of a heart attack are - so if you or somebody close to you has one, you can actually recognize it and get help in time. Here's one link giving more detail: http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart_disease_heart...

This hit so close to home that it's scary. I'm 24, and my weight hovers between 350 and 385lbs. I've always been fat and otherwise unhealthy. While I don't eat a lot (I definitely eat more than I should, but I don't think that I eat to excess by any means), what I do eat is terrible; that's gotten worse since I moved to NYC and had money to get delivery effectively every night, meaning I eat at my computer and pay no attention to what I'm eating. In my case, it's not gaming but programming that's killing me; I don't get away from the computer and exercise effectively at all, and even if I ate perfectly I'd still be screwed for that reason.

But with that said, blaming programming/gaming/whatever for my health problems is like blaming the manufacturer of my chair for making it so damn comfortable. At the end of the day, it's an excuse to take the attention away from the real issue: sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy and will kill you.

I don't want to get too far off-topic here because this is about your friend, not me or anyone else here, but the focus really needs to be put on a healthy lifestyle, not on isolating one specific component as the failure point. A serious change in my life (and I imagine Russell's) wouldn't involve removing the object of obsession, but changing a million factors, and it's definitely easier said than done; that said, it's something I'm working hard on myself if only because... I want to live.

Edit: Something that I missed while writing this initially, as I got caught up in it.

> We should have tried harder.

I know you say that with the best of intentions, and I know that you're beating yourself up over this, but you shouldn't be. Speaking as someone who's been on the receiving end of that many times, I can't describe how deeply embarrassing it is to be in this position and how much shame is involved. I know you can't exactly hide being this fat, but you damn sure try to put it out of mind and keep it from being a topic of conversation. That absolutely makes it harder to get help. Think of it like someone being a closet alcoholic, but they always reek of beer regardless.

I would argue that you do excessively eat. Contrary to popular ignorance, the reason people get fat is simply due to a caloric excess. The idea is that if your maintenance intake is 2500kcal/day, and you eat exactly that much, you will not gain (store) or lose (use) any fat (energy). So even if you eat three meals a day consisting solely of chow mein and orange chicken from delivery, and all meals add up to be 2500kcal, you will not fluctuate in body fat percentage. Of course, you will otherwise have terrible health due to the high consumption of saturated fats and sodium, but that's another story.

In this vein, I think everyone should tally caloric intake for a week and compare it to their daily caloric needs which can be calculated using all sorts of tools (e.g. http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html).

Hopefully this discussion is not completely irrelevant, but I thought it was all worth noting. I'm certainly not trying to pick on you either, just thought this was a good outlet.

Small step to health: Instead of ordering delivery, order from a place at least a half mile away, and walk to pick it up yourself.

That said, I think there's a pretty big leap you're taking from "playing a lot of games" and "had a heart attack at 32." Obviously, I don't know this person; but I do know a lot of folks who have gone on binge gaming sessions who have never had heart attacks.

I'm not saying there isn't any connection or that it didn't contribute in any way; however, let's be honest with ourselves and admit that a binge gaming session, while not in any way healthy and certainly a likely contributor to this person's poor health, most likely did not cause a heart attack.

It's not so bad at small companies where socialising with freinds is not frowned upon. However at many large companies, spending 30 mins socialising would be frowned upon.

I honestly don't know very much about this but I think those minor distinctions are very important.

Diablo 3 came out last week, and I literally had stretches where I didn't even go to the bathroom for 12+ hours. I got severely dehydrated when Mass Effect 3 came out to the point that the effects lingered for a couple of days.

That sort of complete absorption has never come to me while hacking. I might forego sleep, but I've never forgone basic bodily functions while programming, whereas I find it dangerously easy to get into that mode with games.

Do you play board games with a similar intensity? What about marathon TV shows, do you wait until the end of an episode (or story arc) before ablutions?

To elaborate: I've been gambling many times, but have never felt the same compulsion as I get when I drawn into a good video game. Heck, I have trouble sitting at a blackjack table for more than half an hour.

Ditto board games. I've done some all-night Risk games with friends in the past, but those were out of sheer machismo, and no food/bathroom breaks were missed.

On the other hand, for really strongly arced TV shows I do find it hard to tear away. When I discovered the West Wing last week (how did it take me this long to find this show?!) I ended up marathoning the first season over two days, entirely unintentionally.

I might have an addictive personality...

I wonder if it's because games and TV have something in common that the other activities don't: A storyline. I personally get a little engrossed in media, but only for a few hours then I'm bored. Games, however, I can play all day. Other activities just don't have the same pull for me.

Tobacco companies are evil for doing this. But when it comes to things like fast food, gambling and games, I hear things like "everyone knows those are bad for you" so you should "be responsible"

Like all things, not everyone submits to urges. But I bet most gamers don't know there are sophisticated teams fine-tuning the gaming experience to maximize time played (or whichever metric). Some people are outmatched by those teams.

I had been thinking about this earlier today when I saw this quote from Bing Gordon: "World of Warcraft has 0% churn from levels 35-40" [1]. Those guys at Blizzard are good.

[1] https://twitter.com/ericries/statuses/204601761560932352 - I put faith in Eric Ries for the accuracy of this statement

Tobacco companies expect you to lose years of your life, tens of thousands of dollars and return you yellowing teeth and nails, smelling bad and lessened taste and smell. Evil.

WoW expects your monthly subscription fee and you'll probably put some time into it as well. They don't actually care how MUCH time you put into it, just that you're engaged enough to keep playing. In return they give you fun, a sense of achievement, a vibrant community and new content. Not Evil

Zynga games are boring. In fact they're worse, they're work. They guilt you into playing, they try to manipulate you into harassing your friends, they're designed to nickle-and-dime and get you playing as much as possible. In return you might get a sense of achievement, but you irritate your friends and waste a bunch of time on a game that isn't any fun. Evil.

I think it's always evil to engineer a product to be addictive. Compelling yes, addictive no. If you don't return a positive benefit to the user then even compelling is evil.

There are people who have real, legitimate behavioral addictions to things. There are sex addicts, video game addicts, gambling addicts, even fitness addicts. However, the great majority of people are unhealthy for a large number of subtle and difficult to address reasons. If you've ever known someone who's struggled with their weight, or their general health, you shouldn't be as ignorantly reductionist as the person who posted this.

Video games (almost certainly) didn't kill, or even harm, your friend. His poor health killed him, and playing video games gave him a way to enjoy his free time. I understand the idea that endemic boredom would have saved him, but I think that is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding about motivation.

Also - if he didn't play video games, but was a voracious reader, would you have posted, "Please don't let reading consume your life?" "Writing?" "Programming?" Etc.

I understand that he was marathoning this game but that shouldn't cause a heart attack.

WordPress (going by your URL structure) is bad at coping with traffic without help.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4005275

The challenge of course is that it is so damn easy. And by that I mean that one of the things video games have over programming (what I had previously spent 12 hrs on a Saturday doing for fun) was that in the game everything is set up so that you can get right toward making progress against your goal, and you can stop, and then come back later and get right back into it. From power up to 'engaged' was like 3 minutes, vs programming which seemed to have an hour just to get to the point where everything was in shape to work on it.

Since that time, I've been trying to make programming as easy as gaming in that regard. Things like 'screen' can help since you can pop right back into a session, everything is setup your cd path is current, as is your history etc) and stuff like picking one editor and using it everywhere helps too. A USB keyboard is essential because switching between Macbook keyboard to desktop keyboard can generate a lot of mistyped keys. Finally there is the 'questing' system, where in the game you log in and the quests you have to complete are sitting there in a list with a short note about what needs to be done. I use a notebook for that but it has the same effect. Open up the notebook to the book mark and the things that need doing are highlighted and circled, stuff that is done is lined out.

I'm still not there yet, work to do. But I am long past being 'hardcore' in WoW.

(But I always end up realizing that conscious effort/thinking about the damn task gives better results).

s/hardcore gaming/competitive Go playing/d

s/hardcore gaming/dedicated Iron Man competition training/d

s/hardcore gaming/frequent weekend get-away-ing/d

s/hardcore gaming/dedicated volunteering/d

Perhaps I'm not familiar with the hardcore gaming you've seen, with exception, perhaps, of WoW addiction, but you need to be careful of looking at a particular use of a person's pass-time, or even an entire culture's use of their pass time

But I think the more relevant issue is far fewer people seem to be prone to obsession in any of those other spheres. It's not that hardcore gaming is any worse than an obsession with chess, it's that far fewer are obsessed with chess.

I found this article (which came off of hacker news in the first place) to be super relevant. http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

It's not like he was a physically healthy guy who sat down for a 30 hour Diablo 3 bender and died, right?

Regardless, I'm sad for anyone who dies so young.

As someone who spent the majority of their teenage years "gaming" (6 hours per day average in an MMO), and despite benefiting socially and financially (you read that right) from it all, I have since quit and become a bitter ex-gamer. I speak with that hat on when I say that this is not an article about gaming and its personal costs. I could write such an article, but it's been done before, and you just end up preaching to the choir. Instead, this is an article about the loss of a friend. We always wish we could have spent more time with friends who have passed, regardless of what their hobbies were.

To close, I will share the reason behind my own transition. It boils down to one simple notion:

Do you want to spend your days living in a world someone else created? Or do you want to build your own?

But...you shouldn't die at 32 because you're eating burgers and playing games too much. That's a terrible way to go, and it ultimately means you get far less time gaming!

Fencing is a sport that appeals to many aspects of a gamer personality: it requires the use of the mind as much as the body; it is competitive; it has clear feedback as to whether you are improving or not. It will get your blood pumping and also stretch you out -- something that most of us need since we probably are sitting at computers all day!

When I first thought about trying fencing I watched some videos online and had no clue what was going on. Things happened so quickly that it seemed like people were just moving at random to get a touch. But now that I've fenced, I see why fencing isn't so popular as a spectator sport: in order to appreciate what is going on, you have to understand the techniques. It is only then that you can appreciate the brilliance and athleticism of a high level fencing match. It's much like watching chess or go: largely indecipherable to a layman.

I know that I don't have the patience or discipline to run on a treadmill, but fencing is a different story... and it's even motivating me to the point where I might hop on a treadmill or jump rope to improve my fencing. Give it a try!

I was out of shape until I did P90X last summer and now I'm a different person altogether. You would be surprised how much can be done in three months of proper hard work. But it does not have to be a full blown fitness program. People aren't always aware of the options. When thinking of weight loss, jogging is the first thing that pops to mind. I have always found it extremely challenging mentally and I was never even overweight. Commit yourself to a few basketball games a week, or a cycle, a climb, a hike, skiing, whatever you enjoy. If you push that little bit harder every time and get some sweat going, get your heart racing, you will be surprised what it will do to your body.

Also a tip for motivation is to focus on performance. If you can run faster and farther, jump higher or feel better, just keep progressing and the weight will come down naturally.

It's better to game your life than spending your life gaming. I Enjoy gaming in certain amounts,prefer gaming over TV, but prefer creating, socializing and learning over gaming.

I actually had to kick the video game habit I have to get my electronics cert by August (or I am jobless, will be the first time in 30 years) and I haven't played any game at all since early December last year. Console (an apt word) or PC games certainly are addicting, some people say it can't be since it isn't an opioid drug (some say the same thing about weed) but it's your world when you're alone.

It will be nice if, maybe, someday technology will be so seamless that you won't sit and browse the web or play video games maybe it will be a part of our lives all the time but more subtle. Like the telephone was so futuristic when it came out people had no idea it would become so ubiquitous and easy to use. Maybe information won't have to be sifted through on Google or Duckduckgo it will just be there when desired.

I remember reading about stimulus response reward training given to US Army soldiers so they would instinctively fire at the enemy it pretty much removed the thinking part of the procedure. That's what it seems like for me anyway when I played, really I had trained myself to play without thinking and kills in the game were my reward.

Gaming certainly didn't help him, but it certainly didn't kill him.

Also Buildstarted's account was just created to post this entry, which it is not helping me to sorting this out in my mind. I don't want to be skeptical but I take very serious these kind of news and it would be really sad that somebody would be joking with these matters.

You'd need a "break" button that you can recharge every so often so you can coast or grab a drink, but otherwise it'd be the ultimate "hard core" mode for gamers.

Exercise (really just walking and getting up on a daily basis) is vitally important, and for those of us OCD enough to program or game 12 to 18 hours straight, it is important to remember such facts.

I'm sorry for your loss. It is not your fault. Please don't beat yourself up over it.

I know how this feels, I've experienced survivors guilt over my direct family before.

I don't think it is gaming alone, it is bad life styles in general. The worst part is most people HAVE to adopt that lifestyle for a desk job.