Lose Weight Through SecondLife?

I've heard many things about SecondLife, but I've never heard this before:

...There are people who have lost weight or improved their physical bodies as result of being in Second Life. You would think that would not happen. Second Life is so plastic. The environment of Second Life and the world around you is so easily edited that it creates a subtle expectation in you that you are able to do that in the real world. There are a bunch of anecdotes that support this. The first guy who said I lost 70 lbs because of Second Life, I e-mailed him right away and said, ‘No way!’ He said, ‘For two years I have been a designer in Second Life. I’ve been making buildings, but every day I change my avatar. After a couple years of that, I said it is so easy to change my avatar, it cannot be that hard to do that to myself.’ The world in Second Life is so easy to change. It is so plastic that it is addictive. It is infectious. You come to see the real world that way. Why can’t I paint these walls?...

Oddly, I think that there may be something to this - but those Subway commercials kept popping into my head. There may be a whole new industry right here. Weird. Where did that come from? 'Second Life's Philip Rosedale on the Economic Realities of Virtual Worlds'. And on virtual things that go beep:

...If the product is an intellectual endeavor, and you can actualize that as a product you can sell, then it is no different than reality in how people treat it, value it, and what emotional impact it has. The thing with Second Life is that if something is tangible and modifiable by you, and sharable with other people, it is real. It does not need to be physical. It is real. The appeal of a watch in Second Life is no different than the appeal of a watch in reality. I have been in meetings with VCs who said, ‘I cannot buy into the idea that people will pay for virtual items.’ And they are wearing a Movado watch. I ask them, ‘Why did you pay $900 for something you can pay $9?’ That is why Second Life is so economically compelling. You can go to an Aloft Hotel, which would have cost Starwood $80 million to build in the real world, and the cost of doing it in Second Life is $8,000...

This makes a lot less sense to me than losing weight. Why would I buy a watch in SecondLife? So that I can set it to the computer time on my PC? And why would I rent a hotel room in SecondLife (aside from the poseball madness that sometimes is available)? Why would I log in to a virtual world and stay at a hotel? Novelty, perhaps. I picked up some flaming stuff for my avatars (penguin and human) at Escape for the same reason. So maybe there is something to it.

Phil sums it up quite well:

...You have to allow the economy to become an outlet for personal expression and creativity. That is how Second Life and the Web are different than online videogames. Selling my sword—that is a token, that is not entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is when I make something clever and I can get you to pay for it.

I'll gladly sell you a pet prim. Any shape you want. For a few extra Lindens, I can have it follow you around. Maybe that's how people will lose weight... buying virtual items instead of food.