EPT
This is what it looks like:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0448.png)
The Room:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0449.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0450.jpg)
I've been smoking cigarettes for about 6 years now. Im up to about a pack a day, and I feel like I'm heavily addicted to them. Being a SC2 progamer, it's not easy when you are playing a series and you have that strong urge to have a cigarette. Overall it's just a completly useless and bad habit to have, that costs a lot of money and makes a lot of situations more stressfull, rather than relieving stress which is what people originally use it for.
Other than smoking, I also have pretty disgusting health habits. Some of the people in the SC community may know that I used to be a lot bigger - over 300 pounds.
Before:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/ret1stprizedhs09.jpg)
After:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/ret_interview2.jpg)
I have succeeded before living healthy for a long period of time and managed to lose about 120 lbs in the course of 8 months. After picking up SC2 again though, my workout habits slowely started to decline and are no pretty much non existant. Because of the hours theres a ton of garbage (gas station) food. I've been gaining weight and I want to make a change where that's concerned as well. I figured the best way to give these lifestyle ideals a good headstart is by sharing them with the community.
Today will be the last day I will smoke a cigarette, and the last day of junk food and other bad nutricion as well. The next 5 days are probably going to be hell, from smoking a full pack of cigarettes a day to zero. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep well, or what kind of side effects I should expect. I thought a fun way to keep myself distracted from whatever may happen - is just to play a shit ton of starcraft. I have 2 big tournaments coming up in November, MLG Dallas and LoneStarClash, and if I just do nothing but play Starcraft 2 for 8 days while beating a bad habit, I think nothing but good could come out of this for me.
Other than obvious downsides of smoking, such as smell, cost, and addiction, it also makes your heartrate increase and has a bad influence on your brain. I don't think this is good for a starcraft progamer. I want to try and compete and be as healthy and fit as possible from this point on - we are cyber 'atlethes' after all.
Tonight I will clean out my room, make it look super clean and neat! I think that will help make a new start in a good direction. Tomorrow I'll take new pictures of my room (the place I will stream from). And I hope if there is anyone out there that also wants to make some lifestyle changes, will join me now in making changes. It doesn't have to be tomorrow when I start, but think about it, and live a little healthier, nothing bad can come of it!
First thing I'll do tomorrow is go to the gym and then I'll stream for 10 hours - everyday untill I go to MLG Dallas to compete, and you guys can watch me struggle with beating this addiction, support me, make fun of me, whatever!
But I know now that I've told EVERYBODY about this, I won't fail :D
My personal goals:
-Becoming a non smoking person over the course of 1 day...2 days... 1 week.. 1 month..forever.
Living a healthy lifestyle that attributes to becoming a better progamer overall. Fitness, physhical health, mental health are all linked and living a healthy life should contribute to better results in the game.
-Being happier. (Of course!)
Short term Goal:
-During this 8 day heavy stream stint before MLG Dallas, I will Absolutely, Unquestionably, obtain rank 1 EU GM!! :D (This is just for fun, and to motivate myself haha)
-You can expect from me to stream 10 hours for the next 8 days each day, untill I go to MLG Dallas to compete
No matter what happens I will update on twitter - wether it's sleeping problems, headaches or anything else, aside from the hours a day ill be on stream and you might see me squirming away on the floor screaming for a cigarette. Everybody whos tried knows what a bitch it can be to cold turkey quit smoking, but hopefully after a little while I can start tweeting about how much nicer it is to breathe, and all that good stuff.
As a Follow up of all this I will post a VLOG at some point during or right atfter MLG Dallas, recapping the whole experience.
Hope you guys enjoy the show tomorrow, and most of all I want to call on people that enjoy SC2, or even ones that don't, that want to make a change in their life to pick up the axe and start axing away in the following days, and we can start living healthier (This bunch of emo crap should appeal to the American Spirit around here - note ret.)
Tomorrow people will laugh at me for this but in the end I hope to see the benefits and I just wanted to make it fun. And If I can get one other person to quit too then this would be a great succes also
As I post this the whole room is clean and all the traces of ashes or cigarettes are 99% gone - it was too dark to do it 100%. And tomorrow we start this battle with sc2 as the remedy :D Lets GO!
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0451.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0452.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/LiquidRet/DSC_0458.jpg)
I already posted this on reddit, but also wanted to post as a blog here. Team Liquid is my team and I'll of course also be fighting for this community. Thank you all that continue to cheer for our team!
the reddit link is here: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11yp9g/quitting_smoking_with_sc2_stream/
