Playing poker is definitely more fun when your belly is full, but you have to pay attention to what it is full of. Poker players can sit at poker tables or their PCs for hours, getting minimum to no exercise. If this is all aided by unhealthy eating habits, that could seriously affect their health and well-being.
Therefore, if you’re passionate about playing poker, you should try to achieve your work-life balance by adding healthy nutrition and regular exercises to your schedule.
You know what the ancient saying “the healthy mind in a healthy body” — well, that might actually be true. Science has proven that people who exercise regularly and have healthy diets are more likely to focus better and be better at what they do.
This time, we will not pay attention to exercise and will cover that in some other article. Instead, let’s take a look at what you need to pay attention to when it comes to your diet. We were inspired by Steven van Zadelhoff’s pieces of advice, so here’s what he has to say.
Fat is Bad in Processed Foods
You shouldn’t be afraid of fat itself, as it is not what causes obesity. It’s fat in combination with processed foods that could cause quite a problem and numerous health-related issues. Stuffing yourself with too many carbs from processed foods and sitting all day long at the poker table could turn out to be dangerous in the long run.
How to Look at Sugar
Sugar is, in fact, the main thing to blame when we eat. Fat was blamed for a very long time, but it is the sugar that makes us overeat, especially the sugar that comes from processed food.
How to Build Muscle
Zadelhoff claims that people who want to lose fat need to change their eating habits, but building muscle is the type of thing you do in the gym. In fact, many people believe that they go to the gym to lose fat, whereas losing fat is mainly determined by what we eat.
Zadelhoff is pretty straightforward when it comes to eating, claiming that changing your diet will cause you to stop overeating 98% of the time. Going to the gym after that will definitely speed up the process of building muscle.
What About Beer?
Poker players love having a can or two every now and then, and Zadelhoff agrees that a glass of wine of a beer from time to time could be a great thing to relax.
According to him, however, we shouldn’t take the phrase “everything in moderation” when it comes to food, as that means we’re going to have a lot of junk food on our plate, and even little junk food can have negative effects.
There are two simple steps that poker players should preferably follow if they want to improve their nutrition and, consequently, improve their health, according to Zadelhoff.
First of all, he advises earing “real food.” It is mostly the stuff that is available in nature rather than processed and canned food. When eating real food, people will feel full and will have all the proper nutrition from it to feel and stay healthy.
Finally, his advice is to focus on protein intake and not carbs, especially if you are active in the gym and want to buy muscle. However, if you just want to make a correction to your diet, you shouldn’t avoid fat at all costs, just make sure that your diet is rich with protein and all the important minerals and vitamins.