E-warrior diet
For many years, putting excessive hours playing video games has been associated with the increased prevalence of obesity. Well, of course, that word “excessive” is incorrect to begin with because anything of too much can always compromise the opportunity to stay physically active just like I wrote here:
Outrunning a bad diet.
But of course, not everyone has the opportunity to log many hours to stay physically active due to lifestyle demands or personal preferences. Does it mean that playing video games can automatically hurt weight/ fat loss? Well, not necessarily. Charles Darwin once said that the “survival of any species depends on it’s adaptability to it’s environment.” Now, in the context of weight management, to rephrase his statement, it will be translated into something like this: “the leanness of a person depends on his ability to adjust himself accordingly to his environment.” This is the whole point of context dieting solution.
Aside from fitness stuff and collecting action figures, my other hobby is playing as an e-warrior. In fact, I just beat the game dead island last night. I injured my lower back last week when I was doing some stiff-leg deadlifts that’s why it allowed me to spend more time playing e-warrior. Basically, I’m planning to do an active recovery but instead of doing lower intensity workouts, I’ll just simply increase my NEAT activities for a week or two until my back has fully recovered.
I know that somewhere out there, there are other e-warriors who likes playing video games as much I do but at the same time, they want to stay lean and fit that’s why I’m writing this blog for. I explained here the bright side of playing video games by diverting our attention away from thinking about foods. At my body weight 132 lbs., my Bodybugg SP predicted that I can burn about 67 calories per hour as an e-warrior. It may not be that many calories burned because if I play let’s say for 8 hours, that would only be 67 x 8 = 536 calories but it’s all about lifestyle modifications. If you spend most of your time being sedentary then you don’t need that many calories so all you have to do is to adjust your diet according to your lifestyle.
Not thinking about food can be a good thing but an e-warrior still needs to eat of course to provide energy on long online game match so I designed a diet that would cater to e-warriors. I would suggests calorie counting strategy in this context. If you own a smart phone, calorie tracking is now much easier, heck I even write my blog posts using my iPhone. 🙂 As far as the template goes, in determining the amount of calories needed according to your fitness goal, we use that formula. As far as macronutrient proportion ratios, my suggestion is always to eat an adequate protein diet which can range anywhere between 0.8-1.5 grams of protein per target body weight/ amount of lean body mass(muscles). Eating a high protein diet is always a double whammy because aside from it’s highly satiating effect, protein also happened to be the macronutrient with the highest TEF value among the 3 macronutrients.
As far as dietary fat needs, I like using the target body weight divided by 2.0-2.5 then the dividend will be the amount of allotted fats that can be eaten in grams. Depending on the amount of hours you are planning to spend playing video games, obviously, you don’t need that many carbohydrates in your diet because carbohydrates is not an essential macronutrient. However, being not essential nutrient doesn’t mean that it’s not needed to promote optimal health therefore, as far as the amount of carbohydrates is concerned, there are two approaches that can be followed. One is the targeted ketogenic type diet wherein you eat 50 grams of carbohydrates about an hour before and after strength training. I suggests incorporating a regular strength training routine on the e-warrior diet to maintain strength and lean muscle mass 3-4x a week. Doing so will ensure that you maintain your muscle mass and strength giving you that “toned” look even if you’re an e-warrior. Ketogenic diet has an appetite-suppressing effect effect to some people but not on everyone.
The other approach is the non-ketogenic diet which is by eating about 120-130 grams of carbohydrates during non-training days while eating 150 grams of carbs on training days. I suggests that you limit your starchy carbs intake into 0-1 serving during your rest days while on training days, consume about 2 servings of starchy carbs for fat loss. If your goal is to gain weight, you can incorporate more servings. The rest of your carbohydrates should come from varied fruits and vegetables. Note that some vegetables can be high on starch also. If you’re not sure if how many time you should eat in a day, check this blog.
Effective weight management is all about wise lifestyle adjustments. If there’s a will, there’s always a way. There’s always a room for everything. We just need to become aware and learn how to adapt.
Context Dieting Solution 
I cant read so I skipped this post(I think Ive read it before). My biggest issue nowadays when dieting(doing something like an EOD-approach). In past diets Ive done it pretty easily, I just dont have that obsession/passion in me any longer.
Any tips on how to spice up fun in life without splurging into thousands of calories? Games are fun but rarely get me really lost into them. I think Im just too lonely probably.
Thanks for stopping by, dude. I’ve been on EOD dieting approach for a while also and I think that if it’s done right, it can be highly beneficial on both maintaining sanity while on a diet while optimizing nutrient partitioning as well.
As far as having fun is concerned, I think we should simply follow our gut feeling if which specific activities captures our interest.