A How-To for Poker Players
This is a how-to guide for poker players looking to lose weight. I’ve rewritten some rules of nutrition into terms and situations that you might be better able to understand. This is only a quick guide, and will certainly be added to eventually, but I thought keeping it concise was a good idea.
Firstly, Poker and Nutrition are intensely similar. If you don’t prepare and study, you will lose money at poker, and you will struggle to lose weight.
Rule # 1 Study
Studying poker can become intense, just as studying nutrition can become intense. What I’m going to write is a basic formula for beating the Micros at weightloss. I’m guessing that not many of you reading this are looking to get into body building form, and are more likely to be looking to tighten up a gut or evade the oul early death.
Studying nutrition isn’t that difficult. Here are some basic ranges for you.
Protein – These are your premiums, QQ+, you play these at almost every available opportunity in poker, so in almost every available opportunity in eating, you should do the same. A good amount of protein in each meal will go a long way to being able to keeping your portion sizing in control, bring your body back into control, and is essential for Growth and Repair. Meats, Nuts, Fish, Eggs and Cheese are all heavily protein laden. (Turkey, Chicken, Pork, Beef – 200g portion sizing for most part). Calories from Protein should make up between 30-45% of your total intake a day.
Fats – 22-JJ, 56s+, ATs+, KJs+. These are also essential to introduce into your play to stop you being exploited and becoming too nitty. They can be also powerfully under-repped when you make a hand. Fats are essential to your diet, you need to be eating plenty of it. But be careful what types of fat you’re eating. Trans Fat is pretty terrible (calling a 5bet with 33 60bbs deep) and should be completely avoided. “Good Fats” are found in Meats, Nuts, Fish, Eggs, Cheese and REAL Butter and should be embraced into your diet. Fat should make up a considerable part of your diet, just as they would make an ideal MP opening range. Calories from Fats should make up between 40-55% of your total intake per day.
Carbohydrates – Suited 3 gappers, Unsuited raggy Kings. Carbs are to be dumped, they are junk. They can be played at only the right conditions, (a 3bet squeeze with K5o can be a very profitable move, but only in the right conditions!), Carbs should exclusively be actively eaten (there are carbs in vegetables, but that is not what I mean) after training. Carbs are in all processed food, bread, cakes, sugary snacks, crisps, pasta, rice, fizzy drinks, and should be avoided completely if possible. Carbs from non-processed foods are the only carbs you should actively eat – Fruit (can be quite high in fructose – Carbs), Vegetables (Try aim for vegetables with a small Carbohydrate percentage) and perhaps rice. Most beginners to poker will know to dump these hands quickly, but most people will find it much harder to do this with their diet.* Calories from Carbs should make up less than 15% of your total intake, and the lower, the better.
Rule # 2 Discipline
Be disciplined. In poker, learning to fold is the easiest way to make money. When a 12/4 nit 3bets you and you have AK, he has AA there every time. FOLD!
In Nutrition, if you are not disciplined, you will leak everywhere. Leaks are obvious
“I didn’t think I’d be away from home so long, and I was starving so I bought a Roll in Spar” – That’s about 700 kcals you’ve just cost yourself, or 1/3 of your stack, it’s also full of carbohydrates, a lethal amount for someone actively trying to eat themselves lighter.
“ I didn’t have time this morning to make breakfast, so I had some toast and a bowl of Cereal” – That’s 200kcals from 2 slices of toast, and about 40g of carbohydrate, which is almost guaranteed to bring you over your daily allowance once you add in the cereal. You did have time, but you spent ten minutes too long in bed, and it cost you. Avoid these leaks! Get up earlier and have a ham and cheese omelette with 3 eggs.
“I did it for two days and I started to get run down, I had bread again and I felt fine” – This is because you genuinely are addicted to carbohydrates. You might not know it, but you are. You are going through withdrawal symptoms, just as if you’d given up smoking, caffeine or sugar. You gotta ride it out, cold turkey. The “Carb Flu” can hit quite hard, but if you retain your discipline, you will come out the other side energetic and finally in control of your energy levels again.
“I was out for dinner and she wanted dessert, I couldn’t say no” – This is important, your body will benefit from having junk (sometimes!!), but only if you keep clean as much as possible. If you have 21 meals a week, you can have 3 “junk meals” and you won’t be in worse off shape. The only way you can earn those meals is by eating clean the remainder of the week. Don’t overdo it, a junk meal isn’t a 1200 kcal pizza followed by a 120g bar of Galaxy and a bag of cinema popcorn. This is akin to grinding 1/2 during the week, and drunkenly blowing your roll at roulette at the weekend. Eat the “junk” but keep your calorie count below the daily allowance.
Rule #3 Meticulous notes
Track Everything – Poker players use HEM to tell you every single statistic under the sun about their game, their winrate, and their leaks. Copy this architecture into your diet, track everything that goes into your mouth. Read what’s in what you’re eating. Figure out things on your own without the help of Leak-Buster, but if needs be check in there anyway. The Dieters HEM is available for Free! www.fitday.com will count every calorie, every portion, and give you an estimated breakdown of the Carbs/Fats/Proteins within your daily diet. Find things that you like that fit into the ratio of calories given above. There are plenty of iPhone and Android apps available for free too that will do this for you on the go. myNetDiary is the best I’ve seen on iPhone.
You will learn something incredibly quickly when you do this, you are eating too much. Your portion sizes are outrageous, and what you thought was 100g of pasta was actually 180g. To track everything, you need to measure everything. You will get better at estimating things quite quickly, and won’t need to have the weighing scales on the kitchen counter top the whole time. That being said, it’s no harm from time to time to go back to the scales for a few days, to ensure that you’re not adding in extra unaccounted calories.
Rule #4 Goals
Set a Target.
What is your target? Only you know this, and the rest obviously changes as it suits you. Use a Calorie calculator like this one here to find out your Maintenance Calorie count. This is the number of Calories your body needs a day to maintain the weight you are at. If you are trying to lose .5kg in one week, 500kcals below maintenance should do this for you well enough.* If you are trying to lose an inordinate amount of weight in a short time, do not use this method. Your body will not be happy if you remove 1000kcals from the maintenance count, and it is counterproductive as you will suffer badly from energy dropouts, and you will fail. Be sensible about your weight loss. Aim for .5kg a week over an extended period to shift big numbers. It took you a long time to put that weight on, give your body enough of a chance to take it off.
In Poker, if a 20nl player tells you that in 60k hands he’ll be rolled for 400nl, he’s mad. This is exactly the same with weight loss, if you think you can lose 25kg in 6 weeks, you simply won’t. That’s not to say that neither hasn’t been done before, but to do so is incredibly risky, more people have failed miserably than have made it to that target* and I’d always always always value my health ahead of my roll.
Rule #5 Move
Exercise
Obviously an entire piece of writing on its own, so I’m going to keep this short and simple. Whatever you enjoy doing that makes you move, do it more often, do it faster, and make it harder. If you like walking, aim for a quicker pace each time, aim for another 500m onto the walk each time, and aim to change the route to incorporate hills. In 6 weeks time you’ll be jogging, and in 6 months time you’ll be beside Jackyback at the Dublin marathon.
If Cycling is your thing, again, harder, faster, more often.
Get your body working, don’t be a couch hog. Sedentary lifestyles are killing you, and they’re not even doing it slowly!
If you currently hate everything to do with exercise, get your fat ass off the couch and find something you like. If you can’t, tough break, you will kill yourself otherwise by sitting around getting heavier.
Rule #6
START NOW – if you were given a 3 page book on how to make a lot of money at poker, would you continue to play your own game that had made/cost you €Y over the past year? Or would you immediately put the knowledge to good use?
This is a no-brainer people. Only you will get yourself healthy. Be your own boss, and boss yourself into a longer life.
This is a how-to guide for poker players looking to lose weight. I’ve rewritten some rules of nutrition into terms and situations that you might be better able to understand. This is only a quick guide, and will certainly be added to eventually, but I thought keeping it concise was a good idea.
Firstly, Poker and Nutrition are intensely similar. If you don’t prepare and study, you will lose money at poker, and you will struggle to lose weight.
Rule # 1 Study
Studying poker can become intense, just as studying nutrition can become intense. What I’m going to write is a basic formula for beating the Micros at weightloss. I’m guessing that not many of you reading this are looking to get into body building form, and are more likely to be looking to tighten up a gut or evade the oul early death.
Studying nutrition isn’t that difficult. Here are some basic ranges for you.
Protein – These are your premiums, QQ+, you play these at almost every available opportunity in poker, so in almost every available opportunity in eating, you should do the same. A good amount of protein in each meal will go a long way to being able to keeping your portion sizing in control, bring your body back into control, and is essential for Growth and Repair. Meats, Nuts, Fish, Eggs and Cheese are all heavily protein laden. (Turkey, Chicken, Pork, Beef – 200g portion sizing for most part). Calories from Protein should make up between 30-45% of your total intake a day.
Fats – 22-JJ, 56s+, ATs+, KJs+. These are also essential to introduce into your play to stop you being exploited and becoming too nitty. They can be also powerfully under-repped when you make a hand. Fats are essential to your diet, you need to be eating plenty of it. But be careful what types of fat you’re eating. Trans Fat is pretty terrible (calling a 5bet with 33 60bbs deep) and should be completely avoided. “Good Fats” are found in Meats, Nuts, Fish, Eggs, Cheese and REAL Butter and should be embraced into your diet. Fat should make up a considerable part of your diet, just as they would make an ideal MP opening range. Calories from Fats should make up between 40-55% of your total intake per day.
Carbohydrates – Suited 3 gappers, Unsuited raggy Kings. Carbs are to be dumped, they are junk. They can be played at only the right conditions, (a 3bet squeeze with K5o can be a very profitable move, but only in the right conditions!), Carbs should exclusively be actively eaten (there are carbs in vegetables, but that is not what I mean) after training. Carbs are in all processed food, bread, cakes, sugary snacks, crisps, pasta, rice, fizzy drinks, and should be avoided completely if possible. Carbs from non-processed foods are the only carbs you should actively eat – Fruit (can be quite high in fructose – Carbs), Vegetables (Try aim for vegetables with a small Carbohydrate percentage) and perhaps rice. Most beginners to poker will know to dump these hands quickly, but most people will find it much harder to do this with their diet.* Calories from Carbs should make up less than 15% of your total intake, and the lower, the better.
Rule # 2 Discipline
Be disciplined. In poker, learning to fold is the easiest way to make money. When a 12/4 nit 3bets you and you have AK, he has AA there every time. FOLD!
In Nutrition, if you are not disciplined, you will leak everywhere. Leaks are obvious
“I didn’t think I’d be away from home so long, and I was starving so I bought a Roll in Spar” – That’s about 700 kcals you’ve just cost yourself, or 1/3 of your stack, it’s also full of carbohydrates, a lethal amount for someone actively trying to eat themselves lighter.
“ I didn’t have time this morning to make breakfast, so I had some toast and a bowl of Cereal” – That’s 200kcals from 2 slices of toast, and about 40g of carbohydrate, which is almost guaranteed to bring you over your daily allowance once you add in the cereal. You did have time, but you spent ten minutes too long in bed, and it cost you. Avoid these leaks! Get up earlier and have a ham and cheese omelette with 3 eggs.
“I did it for two days and I started to get run down, I had bread again and I felt fine” – This is because you genuinely are addicted to carbohydrates. You might not know it, but you are. You are going through withdrawal symptoms, just as if you’d given up smoking, caffeine or sugar. You gotta ride it out, cold turkey. The “Carb Flu” can hit quite hard, but if you retain your discipline, you will come out the other side energetic and finally in control of your energy levels again.
“I was out for dinner and she wanted dessert, I couldn’t say no” – This is important, your body will benefit from having junk (sometimes!!), but only if you keep clean as much as possible. If you have 21 meals a week, you can have 3 “junk meals” and you won’t be in worse off shape. The only way you can earn those meals is by eating clean the remainder of the week. Don’t overdo it, a junk meal isn’t a 1200 kcal pizza followed by a 120g bar of Galaxy and a bag of cinema popcorn. This is akin to grinding 1/2 during the week, and drunkenly blowing your roll at roulette at the weekend. Eat the “junk” but keep your calorie count below the daily allowance.
Rule #3 Meticulous notes
Track Everything – Poker players use HEM to tell you every single statistic under the sun about their game, their winrate, and their leaks. Copy this architecture into your diet, track everything that goes into your mouth. Read what’s in what you’re eating. Figure out things on your own without the help of Leak-Buster, but if needs be check in there anyway. The Dieters HEM is available for Free! www.fitday.com will count every calorie, every portion, and give you an estimated breakdown of the Carbs/Fats/Proteins within your daily diet. Find things that you like that fit into the ratio of calories given above. There are plenty of iPhone and Android apps available for free too that will do this for you on the go. myNetDiary is the best I’ve seen on iPhone.
You will learn something incredibly quickly when you do this, you are eating too much. Your portion sizes are outrageous, and what you thought was 100g of pasta was actually 180g. To track everything, you need to measure everything. You will get better at estimating things quite quickly, and won’t need to have the weighing scales on the kitchen counter top the whole time. That being said, it’s no harm from time to time to go back to the scales for a few days, to ensure that you’re not adding in extra unaccounted calories.
Rule #4 Goals
Set a Target.
What is your target? Only you know this, and the rest obviously changes as it suits you. Use a Calorie calculator like this one here to find out your Maintenance Calorie count. This is the number of Calories your body needs a day to maintain the weight you are at. If you are trying to lose .5kg in one week, 500kcals below maintenance should do this for you well enough.* If you are trying to lose an inordinate amount of weight in a short time, do not use this method. Your body will not be happy if you remove 1000kcals from the maintenance count, and it is counterproductive as you will suffer badly from energy dropouts, and you will fail. Be sensible about your weight loss. Aim for .5kg a week over an extended period to shift big numbers. It took you a long time to put that weight on, give your body enough of a chance to take it off.
In Poker, if a 20nl player tells you that in 60k hands he’ll be rolled for 400nl, he’s mad. This is exactly the same with weight loss, if you think you can lose 25kg in 6 weeks, you simply won’t. That’s not to say that neither hasn’t been done before, but to do so is incredibly risky, more people have failed miserably than have made it to that target* and I’d always always always value my health ahead of my roll.
Rule #5 Move
Exercise
Obviously an entire piece of writing on its own, so I’m going to keep this short and simple. Whatever you enjoy doing that makes you move, do it more often, do it faster, and make it harder. If you like walking, aim for a quicker pace each time, aim for another 500m onto the walk each time, and aim to change the route to incorporate hills. In 6 weeks time you’ll be jogging, and in 6 months time you’ll be beside Jackyback at the Dublin marathon.
If Cycling is your thing, again, harder, faster, more often.
Get your body working, don’t be a couch hog. Sedentary lifestyles are killing you, and they’re not even doing it slowly!
If you currently hate everything to do with exercise, get your fat ass off the couch and find something you like. If you can’t, tough break, you will kill yourself otherwise by sitting around getting heavier.
Rule #6
START NOW – if you were given a 3 page book on how to make a lot of money at poker, would you continue to play your own game that had made/cost you €Y over the past year? Or would you immediately put the knowledge to good use?
This is a no-brainer people. Only you will get yourself healthy. Be your own boss, and boss yourself into a longer life.
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