At this point, assuming you’re under the age of 70, you’ve heard of Pokémon Go, the augmented reality mobile game sweeping the world by storm. The game is fascinating for a number of reasons, not least of which is its ability to turn grown men into nostalgic 10 year old boys. But by far one of the most interesting effects so far is that it has managed to accomplish what not even Michelle Obama could: it’s getting Americans off their fat butts to walk around outside.

But what does that actually mean for our society? Surely folks walking around for a few extra minutes over the course of the day doesn’t really make a difference, right?

Well, they (I) did the math.

As of yesterday (July 12), Pokémon Go had reached 21 million daily active users in the US, making it the most popular mobile game ever (did I mention it came out like 5 days ago?).

More impressive? Those 21 million Americans are playing the game for an average of 43 minutes per day.

If you assume that the average American is 180 lbs, burns about 100 calories per mile walked, and is walking about half the time they’re playing, then you come up with a total of about 2,000,000,000 calories burned. Yesterday.

That’s 571,000 pounds walked off. Yesterday. 3,174 average Americans. Walked off. Because of a game.

Extrapolate based on Pokémon Go’s continued astronomical user growth rate and spread to the rest of the world, and you’re looking at tens of thousands of human equivalents of fat lost per day. Millions lost per year.

Hordes of players taking a break in the shade after having lost several human equivalents in weight loss — Source: Kotaku

I’ll leave it to the reader to think about other things society is losing among those numbers (did I mention 21 million Americans played a videogame for 43 minutes yesterday?).