Flight Equals Losing Weight?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Deleted

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Let me repeat: HE FILES AROUND FOR HOURS ON END and he remains fat. Therefore, flying does nothing to relieve his fatness.

It's a mental block on his part- 120MPH flight is like a slow walk to you & me- he can actually go faster, but doesn't know it. When he gets past the mental block to find out just how fast he can REALLY go, he'll burn more energy and lose weight.

Until that time, however, his body hyperefficiently stores away nutrients as fat for the inevitable day he finally cuts loose...

 

[Wednesday Boy]

So, my question is, would you allow flight as a way of exercising to lose weight?

It'd be all up to the player's preferences. If they want to have their character lose the weight, I'd create whatever comic book logic I would need to make it happen, then let it develop over time with a good story running through it. If they don't want their character to lose the weight, I would either not have them lose the weight or have them fight to keep up their weight--whichever tells an enjoyable story for the player.

 

[Diamond Cross]

The thing is though, flight does equal exercise. It means he is getting off the couch and doing something. I personally consider it at least one step up from walking, but it would depend upon the speed of the flight for it to be equal to running.

And the thing is, this is not Superman we're talking about. The reason why it looks effortless with him is because he can move millions of tons of stuff and can shrug off nuclear missiles. So of course he wouldn't be affected by it. But I'm not talking about a Superman level character here. The character is more akin to Spider-Man or even Cyclops.

Also there are other things one can do while flying as well. Such as Nap Of The Earth flying, which basically means you're following the contour of the land.

 

[MarkB]

The thing is though, flight does equal exercise. It means he is getting off the couch and doing something. I personally consider it at least one step up from walking, but it would depend upon the speed of the flight for it to be equal to running.

As mentioned, it depends on the energy source. Someone taking an airliner from London to New York is flying a long way very fast, but they're certainly not getting much exercise during the trip, as the flight is being powered by the jet's engines.

And the thing is, this is not Superman we're talking about. The reason why it looks effortless with him is because he can move millions of tons of stuff and can shrug off nuclear missiles.

The main reason Superman makes it look effortless is that he isn't having to power that flight from his own metabolism - he's just absorbing loads of yellow sunlight as a power source, then expending it as necessary.

Likewise Green Lantern doesn't need to use his own energy to fly - he gets it from his ring, which he recharges from a lantern battery.

It's perfectly easy to create a character who does burn calories from his own body to fuel his powers, and such a character will indeed gain healthy exercise as a result of using those powers, but it's equally easy to create a character whose energy is derived elsewhere - and if he's not expending his own energy, he's not losing weight. So the question is, which option did you use?

 

[Diamond Cross]

For me, it would be his own energy.

 

[Mark CMG]

Why am I picturing the jowls of a dog with its head out a car window?

 

[Umbran]

For me, it would be his own energy.

In the real world, flying takes a whole lot of energy - not counting air resistance or any inefficiency in how he does it, just getting a 400 pound body up above a city (say, 1000 meters up), flying 120 mph, would burn about 500 calories. If he's only using his own energy to fly, those pounds would probably slough off quicker than any diet or exercise plan available to man today could have him lose them.

So, for sake of a nodding consistency with the real world you might want to consider it to be that he has to use some of his own (chemical) energy to enable him to tap into some other energy source that actually moves him around. Maybe his personal energy is used to direct, control, and channel that exterior energy - so the more external energy he uses, the more effective exercise he gets.

 

[Stormonu]

The main reason Superman makes it look effortless is that he isn't having to power that flight from his own metabolism - he's just absorbing loads of yellow sunlight as a power source, then expending it as necessary.

Suddenly, this makes me wonder...how does Superman fly with no apparent means of locomotion? Is he just passing gas from one place to another?

 

[MarkB]

Suddenly, this makes me wonder...how does Superman fly with no apparent means of locomotion? Is he just passing gas from one place to another?

In Superman's case, it's most often portrayed as localised telekinesis.

However, in the Marvel Superheroes game I'm currently playing, one of the other PCs has the superpower of blowing bubbles, having absorbed an unstable detergent formula in a freak carwash accident. He flies by carefully-modulated blowing of bubbles... out of his ass.

Funnily enough, he's always positioned last in our flight formations.