You play how you eat

Posted by: bsl

Article by David «Olander» Olander-Persson


Many people often ask me how much I play and how you can improve your game from just playing death match and public etc and sometimes the answer isn’t just to play. There are a lot of other factors that you have to think of when you go for a professional gaming career.

First of all you must have some kind of talent, not all people have it and some people can get it by play a lot. Think of it like golf, not everyone is a Tiger Woods, he’s got a gift, a gift that not nearly any golfer has. But of course people can still beat him if they practice enough; the same way goes for computer games.

So of course you have to play a lot but if you just play and play you will get bored of it? Correct? Well some people get bored of it and some doesn’t, it’s a mix from players to players. Some players can play all day long and not get tired of it but they will most likely not improve anything since they just ‘outplay’ themselves. The trick here is to combine your playing with doing something else, for example going to the gym and work out. I know Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel was very important to mention this during the first interviews he gave; he combined his gaming with outdoor sports and work out at a gym. This is true, you have to keep healthy or else you will not have enough energy to be able to perform the best you can.

So what does this mean, should everyone that plays computer games and wants to be better at it go to the gym? No, of course not, the most important thing is that you eat right since if you do you shouldn’t be forced to go to the gym. Remember the brain is a machine just like a car engine and if you throw in ‘bad fuel’ to the car engine it will either stall or break, the same thing goes for your brain, not saying your brain will break if you eat a pizza but you get the picture. So what should you eat? Well the most important thing here is to find out what the body needs on a regular day.


Proteins you get from meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products and beans. In a well balanced diet you should get about 10-20% of the energy in your food from protein. The proteins are made up of amino acids and of the 20 existing ones your body can produce 12 of these. That means the rest 8 you have to get from your diet. These are called essential amino acids.

A tip here is that you know when you have gotten enough of one amino acid by just “smelling” your urine when you “take a leak”. I know some of you sometime thought that your urine was very dark or “smelled” in a certain way. This is because when you get too much of one amino acid, your body oxidizes this acid to carboxyl acid and ammoniac, and I think you already knew that ammoniac is one of the key ingredients in your urine.


This is maybe the best and worst thing you can eat and you have to make sure that you eat the right fats and not the wrong. What makes fats so important is that it contains about 2,5 times more energy than proteins and carbon hydrates.
So what fats should we eat? If we go back to the number of percentage in our diet, fat should be about 25-30% of our energy. There are different kinds of fats; there are saturated fats, unsaturated fats and multi-saturated fats. The best fat here is unsaturated fats because this helps the body with to lower the cholesterol value in your blood and this helps to prevent heart diseases.

So what kind of food contains the best fat? Well fat made from the plant kingdom contains unsaturated fat, like oils and such. Fish, nuts and almond also contains unsaturated fats. Once again fish is a winner!


Carbon hydrates is all things from the plant kingdom, like fruits, vegetables, pasta and bread. This is something you should start your day with. Imagine two sandwiches (Not white bread) with cucumber and cheese, a glass of milk and a boiled egg and maybe a glass of milk to drink. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? And to top things you could add an apple as well or maybe a banana.

Vitamins

The body must have vitamins and minerals to work, even if it is just small amounts each day. Vitamins are used to fight off colds and infections, strength your teeth, heighten your ability to see in the dark and to make the blood coagulate. The vitamins A-,D-,E- and K can be stored in the body but B- and C- vitamins cannot. And that’s why vitamins like B- and C- should be eaten every day.

Minerals you need for your bones, teeth, blood and muscle reflexes, some minerals exist in small amount and are called trace minerals or trace elements. Look at that, you need minerals for your muscle reflexes, isn’t that something important when you play computer games? Of course it is!

Water

Water is an amazing substance; the body cannot survive without it for more than one week tops but you can in theory go without food for one month. So my recommendation for you is, when you are at a LAN and playing, don’t drink soda’s or anything like that, drink water and eat proper, this will give you more energy and you will feel much better than any other substance can make you feel.


So now I’ve been talking loads of stuff about what you should eat and why and what every different substance does for your body and all things like that but did you gain anything of it? Well the main reason why I wrote this article is just to give people an insight that sometimes you can help your game by just eating right instead of being tired because you ate that greasy pizza instead.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pizza but not every week. Think of your body as car, when you buy a car you don’t want it to break so you treat it good, you make sure it goes to service regularly and you fill it with gas so it runs. Same goes with your body, eat right and you will play good!

And of course I don’t make my dinners as you should everyday and I’m not living a perfect life when it comes to eating right, but hey I can for 100% say that I’m trying. And trying is a step in the right direction. So skip the pizza and go for a nice salad instead!

But never forget to play, play, play, that is still one of the most important things if you want to be the best! And combine your gaming with something else, don’t sit in front of your computer all day long, grab some friends and go out instead in the fresh air.