Since he was a kid growing up in Kitchener, Ontario, Winnipeg Jets center Mark Scheifele has always tried to eat well. But diet and fitness were not at the top of his priority list until he met Gary Roberts, who played 21 seasons in the NHL and is now considered one of the hockey world’s preeminent fitness gurus.

Last summer, before the start of his sixth NHL season, Roberts’ influence prompted Scheifele to take his diet more seriously than ever: He consulted with a nutritionist, took a food sensitivity test, picked the brain of Tom Brady’s chef, and then hired his own personal chef, whose services he shared with teammate and roommate Andrew Copp.

The result: Despite losing a good chunk of the year to injury, Scheifele notched 23 regular-season goals and then helmed a remarkable playoff run, scoring 14 goals in 17 playoff games and leading the Jets to the conference finals. We recently caught up with Scheifele to talk about the perils of eating corn, his rules of thumb for grocery shopping, and his unyielding hatred of all things mushroom.

GQ: What does your day-to-day eating routine look like?

Mark Scheifele: In the morning, I wake up and have a lemon water, to cleanse the body of all the toxins and other crap that have been digesting overnight, and to get my stomach primed to absorb everything during the day.

I took a food sensitivity test last summer, and eggs were a bad marker for me. They are very inflammatory—not good for my system. I am now totally off eggs. So my breakfast options are oatmeal, coconut flakes, granola, fresh fruit, chia pudding with toppings, or a smoothie bowl. I try to eat foods that are high in fat in the morning, because that’s the energy you want to burn off as you’re working during the day.

I am dairy- and gluten-free, but for lunch, I try to keep a variety of options so that I don’t eat the same things over and over again. If it’s a game day, there’s going to be a huge chicken component for lunch, paired with a carb—rice, sweet potato, or quinoa. On off-days, I’ll try to have anti-inflammatory foods. Fish is usually an option, or a vegetarian bowl, or sweet potato falafel.

What about snacks during the day? What are your options for dinner?

I’ll have pineapple water around the house. We’ll have snacks, like super-seed energy bars.

Before a game, I won’t eat much red meat—it’s definitely fish, chicken, or pork, not steak. I only throw red meat in there when I need to get my iron levels up. A lot of it is really based around our schedule: whether we have a game the next day, whether we played the night before, and how many off-days we have. It’s just based on how I feel, and on really listening to my body, which has helped me a lot.

What about after the game?

A lot of times, I struggle to eat after games, but I try to get as much in me as I can. Usually it’s chicken or pork, and there’s always salad, and a lot of carbs. You want to get your carbs up after the game, considering all the energy that you just burned.

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People can be picky about the vegetables they eat. Are you that way?

Honestly, just mushrooms. That’s the only vegetable I don’t eat. Other than that. I am good with anything. If you put a mushroom in front of my face, I will not go anywhere near it.

What is it about mushrooms that bother you?

I don’t even know. I think it’s just the texture, and the way it looks. If I’m at a restaurant, I’ll tell them to hold the mushrooms, and when they ask if it’s an allergy or just a preference, I always say that it’s an allergy because I don’t want mushrooms on any of my food at all.

Not even on pizza?

No chance.

What else did you learn from the food sensitivity test?

There’s a bunch of different tests—saliva, blood, stool—and they pull a bunch of information from each of them. When you get your results back, there are certain foods in red, yellow, and green categories. The green ones are good—you can eat as much of those as you want. You have to take the red and yellow foods out of your system for two weeks, and then you start to re-introduce the yellow foods, and see how your body reacts.

Corn was a yellow food for me. It made me feel sluggish, so I never reintroduced it into my diet for good. Lentils were another yellow food, but when I reintroduced those into my diet, it was totally fine, so they got to stay.

How has your eating routine changed since the start of your NHL career?

It’s night and day. It’s crazy to think that when I first got into the NHL, I thought I was eating healthy, but I never realized all the extra junk I was having—things that weren’t organic or whole. I thought I was eating a healthy granola bar, but they were actually full of sugar and sodium.

Sure, we’re athletes, and maybe we can burn that off. But that’s what makes the Tom Bradys of the world who they are today. They don’t take those days off. They don’t put that extra junk in their body, and it gives them the edge over that next guy.

Have you noticed a difference in your game since you changed your diet?

For sure—especially my energy level during games, practices, and workouts. Because I’m eating the right foods at the right times, it lowers the stress level in my body during the day and really helps my body recover. I sleep better, too, because my body isn’t overworking itself to digest things overnight.

What did you learn from Tom Brady’s chef?

I learned about eating more seasonal, plant-based food in the warmer summer months. You know, way back in the day, when people came to Canada and the United States, in the summer, they based their diet off the fruits and vegetables they could gather. That’s what our bodies are meant to to. We are meant to eat those foods in the summer.

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In the wintertime, especially here in Winnipeg where the winters are really cold, your body needs a lot more animal protein and heartier vegetables, just to keep your body warm during those months. I found that to be a big thing as well.

What about sleep and recovery routines for you?

I’m a big proponent of getting eight to nine hours of sleep a night. I have a Biomat, when sends infrared heat into your body—it’s really good for healing ligaments. Before I go to bed, I’ll usually lay on my Biomat for five to twenty minutes, and then I take a cold shower to get my body temperature down.

I also try to not have any late-night snacks, or eat anything past 9:00 P.M. That food is just sitting there—it isn’t digesting.

When you allow yourself to break the routine during the season, what are things you like to have?

Ice cream and chocolate bars are my two weaknesses, but I try to plan it out a little bit. If we’ve got two days between a game, I’ve got time to get those things through my system. If we play on Sunday, I’ll go for a bowl of ice cream on Friday.

What are your favorites?

For ice cream, there’s a place called Marble Slab Creamery here in Winnipeg—I’ll usually get this flavor called Sweet Cream, and I’ll have Snickers, Kit Kat, and Nerds on it.

What tips would you give to younger hockey players about their diet and fitness routines?

I think the biggest thing for kids is to focus on eating whole foods. My nutritionist put it in a really good way: When you’re at a grocery store and don’t know what to get, just read the ingredients. If you understand all the ingredients, chances are good that the food is good for you. If you look at something and it has, like, acids and binding agents, it’s probably not good for you.

Also, just listen to your body. At the end of the day, it’s about what you feel good eating. The body is a crazy thing, and it’ll usually give you the thumbs-up or thumbs-down pretty quick.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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