When a person needs to lose a substantial amount of weight, say 50 lbs or more, it is often hard to imagine the benefits of walking around and navigating the world at the lower weight, and the payoff seems so far off that it's hard to motivate oneself to make healthy food choices every day day in and day out for the long time required to reach the weight-loss goal. But what if you could enter a "not-quite-zero gravity" room where you'd see what it felt like to walk around, exercise, etc at a lower body weight? It would be a sort of "try before you buy" paradigm, only instead of buying a product, you'd be trying on for size the resulting body you'd get if you invested the time and effort in weight loss.

I know swimming and pool exercises give some of this already, but it would be quite interetsing to be dry and on land and doing normal activities, only seeing what it felt like to have a lighter body. I know for me, it might make it that much easier to stick to my guns and work on weight loss.
-- mimz, Feb 04 2009

My old idea Realistic_20Superhuman_20Strength
I think this is my thoughts on simulation and equivalancy. [MercuryNotMars, Feb 04 2009]

Halfbakery's best fit idea. Room_20of_20Sulfur_20Hexaflouride
I think there might be 50 lbs of displacement here. [MercuryNotMars, Feb 04 2009]

If you could set up this not-quite-zero land in a storefront I think you could do a lot better than simulated weight loss. Skinny people would pay well to romp around in there. The problem is that your magical powers would need to be very strong to make such a place, short of a vomit-comet type airplane.
-- bungston, Feb 04 2009


no matter what you do you are going to have a ratio of strength to mass that remains constant. If you don't want to submerge then your approximation will suffer. Have you ever had a helium baloon in a car and noticed how it moves in the turns? Check out the links.
-- MercuryNotMars, Feb 04 2009


[+] Not for the details, but for the idea. Having formerly been a quite overweight, couch potato guy, I can understand someone who's having trouble getting started because of the initial exertion and not seeing any immediate benefit.

Perhaps you could just setup some kind of intentionally mis-calibrated exercise room. Weights that are actually lighter than labeled, cardio equipment that shows more progress, higher speed and greater resistance than what's actually taking place? Put up some funhouse mirrors to make everybody look skinny and there you go!
-- Noexit, Feb 05 2009



random, halfbakery