Seriously, Otaku's Bad Habits that May Kill You - Part II

Otaku's Bad Habits that May Kill You (Serious) By Ron Fair Ron Fair is a very passionate writer and scholar whose strong and sometimes unconventional opinions have stirred controversy - though his arguments and logic are often stronger than one might suspect. He is very active on MMOsite as an Associate Writer for the blogs (LordYanLiang) and moderator on the forums.

Read Otaku's Bad Habits that May Kill You (Funny) here.

It's fun being an otaku sometimes. Really, being a hardcore fan of anything casual has its perks. Whether or thing is anime, video games, movies, etc., nothing beats the relatively simple pleasure of being able to sit down and melt away at a simple DVD or television show, while others pursue far more dangerous and more expensive thrills. It's not a bad existence if that's your thing.

Full Size

Except that if you're anything like the stereotypical otaku (and let's be honest, there's a good chance that you fit the stereotype), then you're probably leading a horrible lifestyle that makes you akin to the wildly popular stereotype of the obese, sedentary American that has cropped up over the past several years. Simple sensory pleasures come with a horrible price that will take years off of a person's life if they're not careful. Whether it's a matter of eating too much, eating too little, not sleeping enough, or getting too much sleep, reaching the excess of "otaku" standards is very healthy for a number of reasons - and no, this isn't going to be a social grace quip. There are plenty of otakus - or super fans of similar tastes - that live the life that ensures that they won't have long to live, and this article might be a good wake-up call (or at least a warning) to those that do, to show just how bad things are.

Being an otaku is pretty unhealthy. Here are the bad habits that just might kill an otaku (or average otaku habits that just might kill you).

1. Being a Couch Potato/Leading a Sedentary Lifestyle

This one's a no-brainer, and this is something that everybody has heard at least once in their lives. It starts at number one because most of the bad habits that follow can be offset by getting at least a little exercise. Leading a sedentary lifestyle (being in favor of a couch or a comfy seat to waste hours away on anime or manga) will complicate all of the bad habits to follow and will further the process of heart disease and Type 2 Diabetes that tends to inevitably follow. And even if you do everything right, it's suggested that you get up and move anyway.

Human beings are supposed to take 12,000 steps a day to be healthy. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do, but 12,000 steps a day is the recommended. That sounds like a lot, but keeping a regular schedule of just doing things will usually clear that number pretty quickly (though a little additional exercise never hurts). You can even compromise: if you can get your hands on a treadmill or bike machine, just put it in front of a TV. There's some instant exercise, and the otaku won't have to tear away from their precious anime. If you don't cover that amount, that won't necessarily kill you. It will, however, help to kill you. And everything that follows will kill you.

Full Size

2. Eating Those Instant Meals

Especially in a world of increased busy-ness and limited patience to get from Point A to Point B, the temptation to get a quick meal on the fly, fried and ready to go in minutes, is very enticing. It doesn't help that those with a tongue for processed foods find such meals absolutely delicious and the healthy stuff disgusting. The problem is that no matter what anybody tells you, any meal that doesn't require any preparation by your hand - or any meal that only consists of freezing, heating up, and/or frying only - is insanely bad for you. Fast foods are really a no-brainer because all you're getting is frozen meat or potatoes dropped in boiling oil and deep fried to a greasy heap, so they almost don't bear mentioning. Famous deep-fry mogul Chicken Charlie once appeared on The Jay Leno Show and made the wild claim that deep-fried foods are healthy - but when that statement comes from somebody rounder and plumper than a basketball, nobody believes that "that dog will hunt". Pizza, too, as delicious and universal as it may be, is also very unhealthy from that dripping oil and the cheese (otherwise pizza might not be so bad, except that it's super starchy, being mostly bread).

Full Size

So what about the old otaku standby, the instant noodles? For both otakus and the poor, instant noodles are a dietary staple, something that people will spend years eating (and nothing else). It's true that instant noodles have no cholesterol, but the famous Cup Noodles, Ramen Noodle is loaded with fat and saturated fat and has an obscenely high sodium count. And that's no good.

It may suck to have to get up and spend an over an hour in both food preparation and consumption, but the only healthy habit here is to do it. There is absolutely nothing good that can come from an instantaneous meal, even those precious instant noodles. Even for the people that will actually cook proper foods, the trick is to balance the meal to get all the vitamins and nutrients. If you can manage to get a TV by the kitchen, maybe you can pull off a healthy meal without losing that sweet Japanese goodness.