I grew up playing video games, there were days I would spend hours and hours in front of the TV playing video games. Turns out when my parents would say that video games won't do anything for you, they were wrong! Nowadays, you can make great money playing video games, and now you can get in shape too!
A gaming app called Stakester commissioned the study, so keep that in mind. According to Daily Mail, researchers used smart devices like Fitbits to track heart rates and calories burned while people played games or did sit-ups. Guys burned an average of 210 calories an hour while gaming, while women burned 236. And it took around 500 sit-ups to burn the same amount.
Of course, just sitting and doing nothing can burn 100 calories an hour. So it's not like gaming burns a ton more. But a separate study last year found gamers are 21% more likely to have a healthy body weight. So who knows? Burning calories isn't the only thing you have to worry about if you want to get in shape though. And gaming probably won't strengthen your core much. If we're just looking at calories, it would take more than two hours of gaming to burn off a Big Mac.