Musician diet and exercise discussion

General Music Discussion
#1

A good diet and exercise is important to anything athletic, and playing music is part of that.

Does anyone have any good suggestions that are properly studied about a good diet and proper exercise, and resting for musicians in general.

I see of a lot of stuff about going vegan and non-scientific nonsense from naturopathic “medicine” which I have no faith in. I have some experience with proper nutritionists and doctors but they don’t seem to have a real handle on it either and just want to push vitamins and pills that have been proven not to get absorbed by the body unless you need them.

I myself have food allergies, so I can’t just “go vegan” as that kind of diet would be detrimental to my health. However I have cut out red meat almost entirely, eat fish in moderation (don’t want too much mercury in my system) and I try to eat plenty of fiber in the form of beans to keep my cholesterol under control while getting a good amount of protein.

I try to get some aerobic exercise as well which keep the blood flowing but doesn’t build muscle which I’m not interested in, just staying in shape.

I’d be interested to hear about any studies anyone knows, or what your routine and diets are. What are your experiences with supplements and changes in diet and exercise. How much do you rest, do you not play for a few day to let things rest, and any other discussion about general health and maintenance.

Lost of musicians have burned the candle at both ends through the years (myself included) because that’s just how it was in the 80s and 90s. I think it would be a valuable thing to discuss here, to help others recover and get in better health and live longer, so we don’t end up like some of our heroes and leaving this earth before our time.

2 Likes
#2

I’m not sure that I accept the premise that musicianship has a significant athletic component. There have been many legendary musicians who no reasonable person would describe as “athletic” or having a healthy lifestyle.

However, since heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and stroke cause so many deaths, I think it’s sensible to take lifestyle advice from mainstream medical organizations who aim to prevent those ailments. There’s a lot of non-controversial advice about healthy lifestyle: don’t smoke, get moderate cardiovascular exercise, eat a variety of healthy foods in moderation (including plenty of vegetables and whole grains and legumes), limit intake of alcohol and saturated fat and simple sugars.

There are people who profit from promoting fad diets and/or pushing the false narrative that mainstream nutritional advice is more complicated than it really is, or that there’s a supposed lack of consensus among genuine experts. The fundamentals of nutritional advice haven’t changed much since the 1940s, the main thing that has changed is the accumulation of evidence about the risks associated with saturated fat.

And even before the whistleblowing in the tobacco industry, most people intuitively understood that smoking was probably bad for you. That’s why Camel cigarette ads in the 1940s boasted that “more doctors smoke Camels than any other brand of cigarette”. They knew consumers needed to rationalize the assumed harmfulness of cigarettes (“Oh, but these ones aren’t as bad”).

2 Likes
#3

I don’t have journal links or anything, but my understanding is that mercury risk from fish is mainly associated with large, long-lived species, particularly bluefin tuna, and to some degree albacore tuna.

Again, major themes in nutritional advice are: variety and moderation. Some groups (e.g. pregnant women) need to be a little more vigilant than others.

1 Like
#4

I don’t smoke, drink, do drugs or any of that crap anymore. Sure did in the past though. Ate wrong, slept bad, had bad posture, and a host of other things… such is the life of a musician in those days, and I doubt it’s changed much.

When I was a gigging musician, it was very much athletic when performing. Not only playing, but putting on a show. Playing for hours, 3 sets a night. Even practicing takes a lot of exercise, stamina and work. As I age, mid forties now, my muscles don’t act like they did when I was in my 20s and 30s. My joints, lungs, and body have taken a beating. I do treat myself much better now and yes general health knowledge is much better than in the past.

I still think proper posture, habits, and avoiding injury and maintaining a proper exercise regime and diet is very important and something that’s valuable. I am interested in that rather than being shut down. I live in the US, politics aside it’s hard to avoid that everything is about making money, and proper advice is often hard to come by, and the quality of health care varies from area to area too. There’s loads of misinformation, and outright wrong and misleading things about. So I thought some polite discussion might be valuable.

#5

Yes, I eat tuna in particular, albacore. It’s relatively cheap and easy to prepare. So I eat it in moderation. In the midwest, fish is rarely available fresh (at least not as fresh as it was when I lived on the coast) and I do not like deep fried foods which is what is generally available here. So it’s not something I buy from the markets, and I stopped eating out long ago.

#6

My intent wasn’t to quash discussion, just to beat the drum that the fundamentals are actually pretty straightforward.

1 Like
#7

If you’re concerned about mercury, “flaked light tuna” is typically skipjack tuna, which is thought to have lower mercury risk than albacore. But the texture and flavor are different from albacore.

#8

One “life pro tip” type thing I’ll throw out there, even though I don’t do it religiously, is preparing healthy food in large batches and freezing individual portions for later use. This helps mitigate the urge to buy fast food when you don’t feel like cooking or “don’t know what to eat”.

And in my Philip J. Fry days, I found a dedicated fuzzy-logic rice cooker was more convenient for preparing rice/lentils/beans than stovetop. The model I used had a built in timer that let me add ingredients in the morning, and set it to start cooking an hour before I expected to arrive home (it would hold at a safe temperature after cooking was done).

1 Like
#9

Yeah I eat a lot of fat free refried beans and mexican style rice with very little salt. It’s a great meal and lasts a long time. Simple good food is the best for sure. Starving musician food is often good, recipe swaps is great too. :smiley:

#10

Great thread idea.

Practice: I usually try to take one day off guitar every week but usually fail. Practice time in general is around 2-4 hours - less frequently 6-8 all-day events - every day for 3 years now.

Diet: 1-2 meals a day, usually intermittent fasting. Never eat more than twice a day. No dairy. Occasional 24-60 hour fasts for health. I generally eat when my body wants to, but keep it within the scope of calories in, calories out to hit my goals.

Workout: 7 days a week, with the 7th day being cardio only, so it’s kind of a rest day. Before COVID-19: Barbell exercises at gym 4x/week. Now that NYC is fucked up for the foreseeable future, I workout in the parks and exclusively perform bodyweight stuff.

Substances: Straightedge. No drugs, alcohol, etc. I’m a teetotaler, never drank in my life except for church service when I was a kid; never interested me. Even cut out caffeine which was brutal.

Used to be vegan 4 years ago for the better part of a year and I never felt worse. Did Paleo which was way too obsessive even for me. Keto was miserable. I control for calorie intake and eat sensibly and that’s really it in a nutshell.

I did find this, which is interesting:

#11

I don’t dogmatically follow a particular diet, but I’d say my eating habits most closely resemble the “Mediterranean diet”, but with some major deviations. Lots of the vegetables I eat are frozen rather than fresh (nutritionally, I think frozen veggies are unfairly maligned in the public eye), and I consume more meat and dairy than the “Mediterranean diet pyramid” would recommend.

There was a time when I used to set daily quotas for things I wanted to add to my diet (e.g. daily ration of walnut halves and pumpkin seeds), but now I just keep healthy stuff visible around the house and try to “make healthy choices more often.” Nothing is out of bounds for me, I’m just mindful not to pig out on the “not-so-healthy” stuff I include (e.g. cookies, pastries, potato chips, bacon, chicken wings, booze).

1 Like
#12

Yeah, I think we are the on the same page, my diet also most closely resembles that style of eating. A lot of those fad diets are very easy to get sucked into, and I found when I started taking health more seriously years back it ended up doing more damage than I realized.

#13

Diet fads probably do more harm than good.

I avoid any kind of sugar or corn syrup as much as possible, there’s entirely too much in everything, especially USA. They even put it in stuff that shouldn’t have any. Same with salt. It’s really difficult to find any pre packaged food that’s good. All fast food is awful and I avoid it. Sugary drinks and energy drinks are poison, I don’t know why this crap is even allowed on the market. Alcohol also turns to sugar in your system, so I avoid it too.

I’m diabetic so I have to watch these things more carefully. I can’t eat veggies due to food allergies, so it’s difficult to find stuff that I can which doesn’t have too much gluten in it or too much meat. Have to rotate what you eat too, or your body will start to get weird, so I rotate through different things.

I prefer aerobic workout myself, I don’t want to bulk up anymore, it just turns to fat when you stop. Hard to keep the weight off when you’re older too for some folks, including me. I think part of it is just lazyness though, I wanna play guitar and not exercise haha.

#14

Avoiding alcohol is a good thing, but it doesn’t “turn into sugar”. Ethanol is metabolized in the liver through a different process than protein, carbohydrate or fat. Ethanol metabolism neither culminates with the production of sugar, nor includes sugar as an intermediate step.

Muscle doesn’t transform into fat. Muscular people gain fat when they have a caloric surplus, just like anyone else.

2 Likes
#15

My doctor told me not to drink because the pancreas metabolizes it the same way, so I just assumed it turned to sugar. I’m not a doctor so I’d have to ask for clarification on it.

Dunno, all my muscle turned to flab when I became more sedentary hah, and I didn’t keep that kind of caloric intake up.

#16

I don’t think being a musician really has any particular dietary needs or constraints beyond general good diet and exercise stuff - try to exercise portion control, eat a balanced and complete diet with good representation from all of the food groups, avoid processed foods when possible, try to get at least 30 minutes of light to moderate cardio a day, and at least 6 hours of sleep a night. The typical USDA guidance, really.

Guitar is more about dexterity than athleticism, so dietary changes that are driven by seeking to improve athletic performance really aren’t going to be all that much help here.

And, really, eating a reasonably healthy diet and getting enough exercise in the day and sleep at night are worth doing anyway, musician or not.

2 Likes
#17

Yeah I agree with this in whole. I think everyone should strive to eat healthy and get exercise. I don’t think adopting this lifestyle change, if you don’t already adhere to it will give you better results on the instrument. Sure it may improve your focus over time, which could translate into better playing over the long haul.

TLDR

If I eat way better than MAB and exercise enough to look to like Thor, I bet MAB will still wipe the floor with me when it comes to guitar playing :slight_smile: That said, everyone should try to eat healthy and exercise. It’s good for you!!!

#18

Lifting weights gave me more awareness over my body and better technique on the instrument due to this awareness.

2 Likes
#19

I don’t think diet and exercise has much to do with how well one could play the guitar, but looking after yourself may prevent an early death, which will make it difficult to play guitar! :grin:

On a serious note, keeping hydrated is probably the most important factor for me. I experience far less muscle fatigue/ache/soreness in long practice sessions if I have been paying attention to my water intake…

1 Like
#20

I had hard times trying to get at better speeds. It only worked when i looked my excercises just as musculation ones. And tried to eat more proteins too. That works for me.