Why you should eat healthy

Eating healthy is a long-term investment that contributes in many positive ways. You achieve better conditions to perform better and maintain a higher skill level over time. Over the last few years, it has become more and more clear to professional esports players and organizations how important it is to eat healthily, And there are some good reasons for that.

First, your brain will be better to send important signals around the body, so you can react faster and make more accurate decisions. Second, you will be able to think more clearly and have intense focus, that you can hold for a longer period of time. When you stick to eating healthy, you set yourself up to have better mental health with fewer emotional outbursts. Studies have shown that a healthy diet can help with symptoms of depression and anxiety. So there are many reasons why you should eat healthy, which go far beyond how you perform in the game. Let’s look into why the food you eat plays such an important role in how your brain works.

Food, energy and the brain

The brain uses about 20% of your body’s total energy despite that it only weighs about 2% of your total body weight. The large amount of energy your brain uses to operate comes primarily from the foods you eat. If you eat mostly healthy, you create better a condition for your brain than if you only eat processed food. Unfortunately, processed food is often the easy choice, but it doesn’t have to be that way for you.

When you consider how much of your brain’s capacity is used to perform with high focus, react fast and make great decisions, it should be obvious how important it is to treat it well and create the best possible conditions. If your brain is not functioning optimally most of the time, you´ll find it hard to create the long-term progress that is needed to reach the highest level.

Let’s talk about how you can change your habits so you can start eating more healthily.

Change your habits now

Changing habits takes time and can be associated with more or less resistance. Often it will be challenging to change your current situation condition, even though you clearly know that the new habit will be better for you.

When trying to change your habits to eating more healthily, you should treat it as a change in your lifestyle and not a temporary diet. This is not to say that you can never eat fast food or anything unhealthy because there also have be room to enjoy life sometimes.

Your cravings for unhealthy food become less frequent over time. In fact, you will quickly find out that healthy food is satisfying in more than just the good taste. Soon you will notice how your energy levels and mental capacity improves.

If you want help changing your habits and creating a healthier life, you should check out The Healthy Gamer’s Handbook. This is a practical guide that can help you start making healthy changes for the benefit of your in-game performance and life in general.

References

Ljungberg, T., Bondza, E., & Lethin, C. (2020). Evidence of the importance of dietary habits regarding depressive symptoms and depression. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(5), 1616

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