Niantic, the developers of Pokemon Go, shared a story about Tommy Monkhouse, a Pokemon Go player who lost 63.5kg a year after playing the augmented-reality game.

From 20-minute walks to hours of raid battles with game community

Monkhouse, who is a university student currently residing in London, United Kingdom, was 158kg when he first started playing Pokemon Go.

In order to lose weight, he started playing the game to motivate himself, as he was always a fan of Pokemon, he said in a video interview with Niantic.

What started off as 20 to 30-minute walks a day turned into hours, after Monkhouse joined a local Pokemon Go community.

Within a year, Monkhouse lost 63.5kg, thanks to the game and the community which he spent time with.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5_lBF2BG9-/

The Pokemon Go group would go on raid battles together, walking for up to 20km in a day.

Game changed his life

"At the end of the year, I had lost 10 stone (63.5kg). I was confident, I was smiling. I was talking to people that I'd never would," Monkhouse shared.

The university student agreed that the game had changed his life, not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well.

Before playing Pokemon Go, Monkhouse called himself an "isolated child", often keeping to himself and didn't have many friends.

After meeting his local Pokemon Go community, he began to open up to those who had similar interests as him, developing close friendships and making friends that he felt were as close as his family.

His newfound friend from the group, Tally, said that Monkhouse was initially pretty quiet in the group, but gradually came out of his shell, becoming more confident and outgoing as time went by.

Watch Niantic's video on Tommy's life-changing experience here:

&feature=emb_title

Top image via Niantic/YouTube, Serebii