In addition to how many calories different kinds of food contain, you should also consider how much they will sate your appetite. Sugared soft drinks and most sweets are really bad because they hardly fill you at all while containing lots of calories. You can do yourself a big favour by drinking water with your meal instead of a coke or other soft drink. Choosing sugar-free soft drinks also helps, but I for one don't like their taste and texture, so I prefer water.
Dark chocolate is better than most sweets, as it fills you up more.
Other food that fill you well include whole-grain products, but beware of sugar content as many whole-grain products have lots of sugar added. If you don't believe me, look at the sugar content of popular whole-grain or bran cornflakes.
Low-fat yoghurt is also reasonably filling, but beware, again, of added sugar.
Some food will also affect how fast you burn calories. Chili heats you up and makes you burn more calories, even if you don't move. It is a limited effect, but adding a bit of chili to, say, your chocolate will help. The inner heat you get from chili or other hot foods can also allow you to wear less heavy clothing, so you use more calories to heat loss. Obviously, this will only work if the ambient temperature is low enough. And don't use it as an excuse to eat lots of chili con carne -- it is not the most healthy of foods around, even if it has chili. Fenugreek and garlic have similar effects.
On the flip side, caffeine and some spices can stimulate your appetite, so you eat more. Cloves, for example, increase the acid production in your stomach, which causes hunger symptoms. On a similar note, avoid overly sour food and drink for a similar reason.
So you can see that one of the worst things you can do is drink soft drinks with sugar, caffeine and acid (and little else besides water).
When I run games at cons, I bring a box of cereal bars and raisins. The people at the table are told to help themselves, and they do. It's not that hard to get gamers to switch to healthier habits.
Though I wrote the article in a tongue-in-cheek style, I definitely take the subject seriously. So thanks for the tips!
Awesome stuff, Rafael! This is good info for any adult, much less adult gamers.
__________________ If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game.
... A player cannot learn of a game's ending without experiencing it, because a game is not a linear object.
—Mike Mearls
Great column, Rafael! I've been trying to do this for a while now, bringing apples and raisins, instead of chips and candy, to the games, but the caloric side of the Foorce is strong. Most of my friends are overweight and food lovers, so changing their habits is difficult.
Tchau!
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"As long as you can laugh, you are not defeated."
-- Jack Vance
Wow. Excellent PSA (public service article)
I don't usually read the columns here on RPG.net but that one was very timely and caught my eye. Good job.
Many times have I seen gamers scarfing unholy unhealthy items I sometimes I just want to scream that the stuff is nutritional garbage. Especially the younger ones.
I am not that skinny as of now but it didn't take me long to switch over to fizzy water and plain pretzels on game night. I don't want dorito fingers greasing up my PHB either.
I'm mulling over the idea of a follow-up of some kind -- perhaps even more than one. Do you think I should pursue it?
-- Rafael
Definitely. If it's as informative and well-intentioned as this article, I think you'll help a lot of people. I know I got a lot out of it, and my own job requires a fair amount of physical activity. And that's just on a slow night. If it didn't, I know I'd be a lot heavier than I am.
But if I may suggest one subject: gamer personal hygiene. A friend of mine, Manga Boogie Man, once commented on the subject as it related to a local game event on the forums here, and despite one dissenting voice (stated only via a name that has never made any more posts here) he was applauded for making a good point. And frankly, it IS a good point. Most of us gamers could really stand to take better care of ourselves, in more than one way. And I include myself in this statement.
Healthy eating became an issue for my gaming group a long time back. Our big change that helped was preparing actual meals for game day, replacing the endless pizzas, cheesesteaks, hoagies, and fast food garbage that had plagued us for years.
Get everybody to the game site 20 minutes early and working together, preparing a big pot of something to eat is easy... until your group decides its favorite game day snack is a 5 gallon pot of your custom beef stew recipe that takes half a day to prepare.
I even went so far as to publish a little cookbook on the matter.
As a person who looks at the future and sees diabetes glaring back (gestation diabetes in the past) I think this is a great thought.
People tend to think if it's healthy it's bad tasting. A serving of dried cherries is sweet as well as packed with fiber. I think most people would be shocked if they actually measured out servings per the package. When I was pregnant and measuring everything, I found that most people eat way too much.
Also, a treat for those watching the carbs... diet A&W (a serving folks!) and a serving of Bryers low-carb icecream (they have 2 types that are lower in sugars). Very tastey and none of that diet soda funky taste and only like 10carbs, meaning I could have it for a snack no problems. One caveat though. The sugar that it does have is in an alcohol form and can cause stomach cramps so enjoy in moderation.
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We can't make the cows heavier by weighing them move often.
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley on the pointlessness of testing children more often without also helping them learn more.
"Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." G. B. Shaw
Most of my friends are overweight and food lovers, so changing their habits is difficult.
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