Are you hesitating about what to eat before a tattoo? Well, you won’t be anymore. Tattooing is one of the craziest hobbies people have. It may express your personality, your love, or even your desire as well.
You can’t skip the pain you’re going to experience on your skin. But you can minimize it by following some simple tips. Having a healthy meal is one of the essential facts that can help you get less skin trauma.
This is why we have come up with our ultimate guideline to give you a more clarified idea about what to eat before getting a tattoo.
Can You Get A Tattoo On An Empty Stomach?
Getting a tattoo on an empty stomach is not a wise decision at all. You might be wondering why eating before a tattoo session is so important.
The fact is that your eating habit, especially what you’re going to eat before getting a tattoo, can change your whole tattooing experience.
Tattooing is such a process where your body is going under severe physical trauma and you’re getting skin damaged. This is why you need to make sure that your body has optimum energy to face all of these.
You can compare the process with a physical exercise where you can’t let your stomach remain empty. When you’re on a tattoo session, your body starts burning whatever is stored in your blood, such as sugar.
If your body has no additional calories, you’re just going under a total crap, and your whole tattooing experience can be terrible.
What to Eat Before a Tattoo
Eating before getting a tattoo makes your body nourished; thus, your body can cope with the skin trauma you’re going to face. However, you can’t randomly eat whatever you want. You have to be careful about what you’re going to eat.
Before getting a tattoo, you have to make sure you’re taking foods that have a sufficient amount of,
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin A
- Protein
- Zinc
- Water contents
Here are some healthy foods and drinks that you can take before a tattoo and why you should eat them.
Drink Plenty of Water Before Tattoo
Proper fluid levels in your body can significantly help you to keep you refreshed during tattooing. According to many users’ experiences, people who stay hydrated at the time of tattooing feel tattooing is easier than dehydration.
It would be best if you didn’t remain dehydrated at all when it’s time to get a tattoo. However, drinking plenty of water doesn’t mean you just have to drink fresh water only.
You can have healthy drinks also such as lime water, fruit juice, lemonade, etc. These will help to maintain water levels in your body and prevent your skin from being dry.
Have Some Protein
Protein contains about 20 different amino acids that work to keep your muscle and bone stronger and provide you a lot of energy. You can’t ignore the fact when you’re getting a tattoo; your body requires a lot of energy.
This is why experts always suggest having a sufficient amount of protein before getting a tattoo. Most importantly, protein is an essential element to heal your wounds effectively.
Although you’re not going to have any big wounds during tattooing, the skin damage the process makes can be horrible sometimes. Luckily, protein will speed up the healing process of your skin. So, try to eat foods that are rich in protein.
Here are some of the food sources that can provide you a significant amount of protein:
Eggs
Eggs are considered the most nutritious foods that are an excellent source of healthy fats, vitamins, brain nutrients, and precious antioxidants. You can eat whole eggs for optimum protein, but you take only the white portion if you want to avoid fat.
Almonds
Almonds are rich in some vital nutrients that include Vitamin E, fiber, magnesium, and manganese. Eating almonds can be a good source of quick energy that can help you during your tattooing session.
Chicken Breast
Chicken breast is one of the most common and popular foods that are rich in protein. Eating chicken breast without skin will give you a significant amount of calories that mostly come from protein.
Milk
Milk will give you almost all vital nutrients, no matter if it is little in amount. However, milk is one of the most reliable sources of protein. So, have a glass of milk before your tattoo session.
You can also eat:
- Lean meats
- Nuts
- Legumes and beans
- Fish and seafood
Consume Vitamin C
Foods that are rich in vitamin C can play an essential role in healing your skin after tattooing. Your skin requires collagen that’s the major protein to make up your skin during the healing process.
To make a sufficient amount of collagen, your body requires vitamin C. This is why eating foods that contain vitamin C can effectively boost the healing process of your skin. Hence experts always suggest eating foods with vitamin C.
The most common foods that are rich in vitamin C include leafy green vegetables and citrus fruits. No matter if you’re eating them raw, or by making juice, you’ll get adequate vitamin C from these foodstuffs.
However, eating them by cooking can decrease the nutritional value, so try to avoid it. If we say more specifically, you can eat raw or juice of :
- Strawberries
- Peppers
- Kiwi fruit
- Spinach
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Tomatoes
- Baked potatoes
- Brussels-sprouts
Eat Foods Rich in Vitamin A
Vitamin A is another essential vitamin that can help you to get relief from additional skin trauma quickly. Vitamin A is a type of antioxidant that’s crucial for the skin healing process and promotes collagen production so far.
However, you should avoid taking too much of it. Try to take a small amount of vitamin A; otherwise, you may experience nausea, headaches, dizziness.
To get a sufficient amount of vitamin A, you can eat:
- Eggs
- Milk
- Low-fat dairies
- Yellow and orange vegetables
- Fish
- Dark green vegetables
- Sunflower seeds
- Carrots
- Winter squash
- Sweet potatoes
- Spinach
- Red fruits
Eat Foods Rich in Zinc
Every single tissue of our body contains zinc. The reason is its vital role to heal not only our skin but also any kind of injuries.
Zinc helps our body synthesize proteins, develop collagen, and utilize fats that combinedly work to promote tissue growth on the skin we tattooed.
Although the chance is low, people can suffer from infections on the skin after tattooing; fortunately, zinc helps to make your immune system stronger.
You should not only eat foods that contain zinc before getting a tattoo, but also it’s essential after getting a tattoo.
To get a sufficient amount of zinc, you can eat:
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Red meats
- Chicken
- Seafood
- Fortified cereals
- Bread
- Whole grains
What to Eat During 3-4 Hour Tattoo Session
A long tattoo session can be a painful as well as a stressful process. It is worthless to say that a 3-4 hour tattoo session might require some precaution and a lot of preparation.
Many people often prefer taking drugs or alcohol. However, this is not a good idea at all. So, try to eat some foods that have nutritional value as well as keep you refreshed.
Having a healthy diet can be a significant part of your preparation. In this case, healthy snacks will be the best choice for long tattoo sessions.
Good snacks can help you to fasten the healing process, maintain fluid levels, and tackle some chemical imbalance in your body as well.
You can eat whole grains, berries, foodstuffs that contain iron, such as a nice steak. However, it may depend on your usual eating habit.
One may prefer eating cheeseburgers or spinach, where your choice can be different. If you love a raw food diet, that would be the best option.
All you need to do is replace junk foods with some stuff that can provide you enough calories or help you maintain water levels.
What to Eat To Speed Healing
After getting a brand new tattoo, you might be delighted too much, but what about the pain you’re gonna face? You can’t ignore it, but you can minimize it. This is why eating the right foods and taking the right drinks is so important.
Believe it or not, some foodstuffs can speed up the whole healing process after getting a tattoo. Here are some of the foods that you can take to speed up healing.
Oranges
Oranges are the preferable food after getting a tattoo just because of their abundance of Vitamin C. As we mentioned before, vitamin C is essential to healing your skin.
Taking oranges will keep your skin moist and sturdy; thus you’ll feel your skin more youthful. Oranges contain a significant amount of natural oils that help to moisturize skin and make the skin feel healthier.
You can eat orange or drink it by making juice; the benefit will be the same. Moreover, you can use orange peel as a body scrub.
Broccoli
Eating broccoli is a good choice for skin health as it can promote skin health, provide nutrition, and treat acne. It contains some vital nutrients and minerals as well as some essential antioxidants and fibers.
Blueberries
Blueberries are the promising source of antioxidants that you need most when a tattoo heals. Blueberries help to nourish your skin and fight against acne. Eating blueberries will make your skin feel smoother.
Garlic
Garlic is incredibly effective in repairing your skin and making the skin glow more. It contains some agents that fight against acne as well.
Pineapple
Pineapple is suitable for both the internal and external portions of your skin. Pineapple contains a significant amount of vitamin C that helps to make skin look younger.
Also read: What to Avoid After Getting a Tattoo?
Can You Eat Chocolate Before A Tattoo?
If you’re thinking about eating chocolate before getting a tattoo, you’re going to suffer. That may seem to wonder to you. However, the fact is that chocolate contains sugar, which is a pro-inflammatory element.
Eating chocolate can slow the healing process down. In fact, many experts suggest keeping sugar level zero and cutting all the carbs about one week before. So, try to avoid eating chocolate before having a tattoo.
What Happens If I Don’t Eat Before A Tattoo?
If we analyze the tattooing process biologically, the answer will be clear to you. When an artist is pushing ink in our skin, our nervous system activates flight and fight response.
As tattoo ink is unnatural, our body perceives it as harmful and threatening. Hence your body starts fighting, which requires a lot of energy.
In this situation, if your body doesn’t have enough energy, you might be ending up in a horrible situation. So, eat before getting a tattoo to conserve the maximum amount of energy.
What Should I Eat The Night Before Getting A Tattoo?
Before getting a tattoo, you should prepare yourself to face the trauma. Eating healthy foods is one of the crucial parts of your preparation. Especially at night before getting a tattoo, you should take healthy meals.
You can eat any of the foods we have mentioned above and obviously, drink a lot of water. However, your food intake should be optimum. In short, you should avoid foods that are rich in Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Zinc, and protein.
Conclusion
So, you might have got a clear idea about what to eat before a tattoo. If you ever think about having a tattoo with an empty stomach, your thought might have changed right now after reading our article. Eat healthily and keep your skin healthy, that’s all.
