The Real-Life Diet of Gamer TimTheTatman, Who's Giving Intermittent Fasting a Shot

In 2015, it all came together. Tim Betar, aka TimTheTatman, was able quit his day job and transition to playing video games for a living.

To be fair, he wasn’t just playing the games—he was streaming them, usually for tens of thousands of fans, providing a running commentary of his exploits. His streams began in earnest in 2012, but those first years weren’t as lucrative, and they required some expert-level time management. (He estimates he was working 70-plus hour weeks between his “normal” job and his streaming.) After making the switch to gaming full-time, TimTheTatman amassed more and more and more followers across platforms; his meteoric rise timed out perfectly with the meteoric rise of Twitch, the go-to streaming service for gamers and, really, anyone doing anything. He now has millions of followers across platforms.

There’s no guide on how to stream video games for a living, nor is it easy to work from home every day, as many are learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Over the last handful of years, Tim has experienced his own ups and downs as he’s established—and then attempted to maintain—a healthy lifestyle while also staring at a screen all day. Mostly, he makes sure to always leave the house in the morning for a Starbucks coffee run.

GQ called up TimTheTatman, who’s currently streaming lots of Call of Duty: Warzone, to talk about working from home without losing your mind (relatable!), and how he feels healthier than ever after an on-again, off-again weight-loss journey.

For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in-between about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

GQ: How did you figure out a healthy structure as you progressed to streaming for hours and hours every day?

TimTheTatman: When I was working a full-time job and doing this on the side, I was basically working like 70 hours a week. I was younger and didn’t have a ton of obligations, so it was doable. Once I started streaming full-time, I had to change that. I’ve always been a big advocate of streamers taking a couple days off. I always make sure I can take like, two days a week to relax and reset. Not many streamers do that, surprisingly. A lot of them are younger, and play and play and play—I get it to an extent, because I used to do that too.

Do you have any sort of working-at-home rituals based around your streaming schedule? I think lots of people are trying to figure out their working-at-home rituals right now.

I have a daily regimen, especially for when I wake up. Before the pandemic happened, I would go to Starbucks and grab my coffee, almost like my own little work commute, even though I’m just going to get coffee and then going back home [laughs]. It is pretty easy to sit in your bed all day, but I’m a new father, so that’s basically impossible for me, since my son wakes me up every day. I’ll get up and have my routine with him now.

So you have to force yourself into a routine a bit?

Yeah, totally. When I first started doing this, it was really easy to be like, I’m just going to sleep in. Who’s gonna tell me otherwise? I was and am my own boss. I really had to force myself into forming habits around my day, which made things a lot better.

Do you have anything that you do to separate your job from your daily life when you’re working from home? There’s got to be some sort of mental switch that you flip when you go from streaming for lots of people to relaxing, right?

Before I had this job, I would go to work and come home to play games to relax. So sometimes I’ll play games on streams for the majority of the day, and then to wind down, I’ll sit back and play some more games at night [laughs]. My audience really loves first-person shooters and battle royales, games that are more fast-paced. They don’t like World of Warcraft or similar games as much since they’re more low-key. Sometimes at night, I’ll finish streaming for eight hours, and be like, “Alright, see ya guys later!” I’ll put my son to bed, and then play some World of Warcraft. It’s kind of hard to explain to my wife and difficult to justify in general.

You were working on the computer all day, and now you’re getting back on it at night to blow off some steam. I’m sure part of streaming is that you really have to dial everything up and perform for your audience.

Oh yeah, totally, that's a huge part of it. I mean, more than playing, the biggest part of my job is talking. I’m talking and talking, reading the chat, responding to viewers, playing the game, looking back over at the chat—it’s a lot.

I saw you were posting on Twitter about some weight loss progress you made recently.

Yeah! I tend to go through phases—in college, I was lifting a ton, trying to lift as heavy as I could, and then stopped. Then I had this running phase. I don’t know why, but I did that for awhile. Then I progressed to CrossFit for a bit, and lost some weight while doing that.

Right after I got married, I guess you could say I got really... comfortable. I’ve always been a bigger guy; I was like 225 pounds in high school. At the beginning of last year though, after I got married, I was up to 325 pounds. I just kind of took some time off from working out and was eating anything I wanted. The wake-up call came when I went to the doctor and he told me I had high blood pressure at the age of 28, which is not great.

What did you start doing to address that?

The biggest thing was my diet. At first I tried a bunch of different kinds of diets. I tried Keto and it didn’t really work for me; I would eat a piece of bread and feel like I gained five pounds from that. So I went simple and tried to incorporate more proteins, more veggies, and less carbohydrates. If I was eating carbs at all, I tried to make sure it was complex carbs like brown rice. Just doing that, I dropped 20 pounds in the first month.

After plateauing a bit, I tried different diets again, including programs like Optavia. I felt way lighter from that, but it was just so unsustainable for me. I was down to about 260. I know my body, and I know what I like, so I knew that wasn’t going to last. But over the last year I’ve gotten down to 270ish from about 325.

And recently, I started working out again, though that’s been thrown for a loop because of the pandemic. We do have a Peloton that I got for Christmas, though.

If the other diets you were on didn’t feel sustainable, what's the diet like now?

I’ve been focusing on intermittent fasting. I’ve still been eating clean, but not being super hard on myself. What my routine now is when I wake up, I’ll bike for about 30 minutes, doing interval and HIIT rides. That’s at around 8 or 9 in the morning during my fasting window, and I don’t break my fast until 2 p.m. During that time, I’m basically just drinking a ton of water. It was a tough adjustment for me, but I realized that I didn’t really need to be eating all day. Sometimes I would think that I was super hungry, but it was just because my body was on a set schedule.

When I first started working out again, I had to be careful, because I didn’t want to overdo it while also fasting. It’s been interesting to see how my body gives me different cues now. You can tell that around 2:00 p.m., I’m starting to get hungry and more irritable; if I’m losing in a game, I get double-mad.

Thankfully my wife has been an incredible help with this new diet. I’m always live during the time period in the morning where I’m fasting, and then at 2:00 p.m. is when I break my fast with either a small meal or a snack. I love pistachios. I’ve been eating a ton of them. At first I wasn’t too big on them, but now I’m in love with them. I have no clue why, but breaking my fast with pistachios is like, amazing. That will usually take me to the end of my stream at about 5 or 6 p.m., and then I’ll have my big meal, and a little snack before bed.

Seems like it’s been quite a journey.

It has. I get a good amount of questions from my Twitch chat about this, and, like, I’m no health expert by any means. This is all just stuff that I did myself trying to get my health under control. It’s not necessarily about trying to look better or anything. My blood pressure is better and I’m feeling healthy again.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Real-Life Diet is a series in which GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in-between about their diets and exercise routines: what's worked, what hasn't, and where they're still improving. Keep in mind, what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

The Australian actor prepped for his glowed-up role by hiring a trainer, going all-organic, and sleeping as much as possible. 

Originally Appeared on GQ