15 Titans are now eating vegan

zn wrote:

Anyway actually that was a really interesting article I thought.

Rams don’t do vegan, they do sushi.

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Yeah, i think its interesting that fifteen NFL players on one team would go vegan. I mean i dont think thats ever happened before. Generally the NFL culture has always believed veganism would make players weaker. Ive also read about some NY Giants that have gone gluten free. Its interesting to me cause i have been experimenting with a gluten free, sugar-free diet. Fwiw.

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Around the NFL, QBs are training and eating the Tom Brady way

NFL:https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2017/08/17/around-nfl-qbs-are-training-and-eating-tom-brady-way/2hpOwhcZZmIBPYLXtArfkN/story.html

Aaron Rodgers went almost-vegan in 2016, cutting dairy and most meats from his diet.

Russell Wilson dropped 10 pounds this offseason, avoiding all yeast, mold, dairy, and gluten.

And Marcus Mariota risked the ire of his coaches this summer by ignoring their recommendation of playing at 230 pounds and dropped his playing weight to 215-220.

Thin is definitely in this season for NFL quarterbacks, and it’s not by accident. It’s a movement being led by Tom Brady, who dominated the league in his late 30s and is still going strong at 40, thanks to his vegetable-based diet and flexibility training over muscle mass.

The rest of the league has noticed, and many quarterbacks are starting to follow Brady’s lead, cutting weight and working on flexibility to avoid injuries, improve recovery between games, and lengthen their careers.

“I just think it’s so the thing right now because Tom’s doing it,” said 18-year NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, now with ESPN. “You’ve got the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers announcing he gave up dairy. That’s a hard thing to do. But he did, and he had an amazing year last year.

“And now you see guys around the league — whether it’s Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Marcus Mariota, Andrew Luck — these guys are coming in lighter, and it’s not by accident. I think it’s because they’re seeing the success that Tom’s having and the longevity. He’s a trendsetter.”

Brady’s mission, outside of winning another Super Bowl, is spreading the gospel of proper diet, flexibility training, and rest. For 99 percent of football fans, the only way to learn Brady’s secrets is to buy a TB12 cookbook for $200, or his recovery pajamas ($79.99 each for the shirt and shorts on Under Armour’s website).

But NFL players get the education for free, and Brady has been more than happy to share his secrets with his fraternity members.

“I’ve talked to a lot of different players,” Brady said after a recent Patriots practice. “I think a lot of people ask me when you get to be my age. I feel like I know what to do. I don’t wake up with pain. I come out and play a game and keep working on things that I want to improve at every year, and it’s been a lot of fun for me.

“Hopefully I can share that with a lot of people. It’d be great to pass on that wisdom. I feel that’s part of my responsibility as a player to do that to other players who may want to seek the same thing, so it’s been a really enjoyable part of my career.”
‘If it works for Tom Brady . . .’

Brady’s influence on teammates is obvious. Nearly every player in the Patriots locker room visits the TB12 facility at Patriot Place for massage work and stretching exercises with Brady’s body coach and business partner, Alex Guerrero.

Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola are devoted followers of the TB12 regimen. Rob Gronkowski, the epitome of whey protein shakes and power lifting, is a recent convert, saying he has focused more on flexibility this season to try to avoid injury, and is now eating many of the TB12 prepared meals.

“I look at him and he turns 40 tomorrow and he runs around like he’s younger than me,” Gronkowski said. “So it’s pretty obvious right there.”

Quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett can often be seen working with Guerrero after practices. Safety Duron Harmon said at last year’s Super Bowl that he wears the performance pajamas.

“I mean, if it works for Tom Brady . . . ” Harmon said.

Around the league, Rodgers, 33, directly credits Brady with helping him realize the importance of a plant-based diet. Rodgers used to play at 230 pounds, but since cutting dairy and most meats from his diet, he has reported to Packers camp at 220 the past two years. Now Rodgers talks about playing until 40, just like Brady.

“I can’t give up some of the nightshades, but I think Tom sets a good example, and we have been friends for a while and talk about a number of things,” Rodgers told People magazine earlier this year. “He has kind of set the standard for taking care of your body.”

Brady is not exactly revolutionary in his approach. Drew Brees, who for years has shared the same offseason quarterback coach as Brady, has devoted himself to a similar diet, though he hasn’t tried to market it like Brady.

Carson Palmer cut carbs out of his diet as he recovered from ACL surgery in 2015 and lost nearly 20 pounds. In the 1990s, Warren Moon cut meat out of his diet, focused his training on flexibility exercises, and went to a chiropractor twice a week. He dropped 5 pounds from his playing weight and played until he was 44 years old.

“You just didn’t want to play heavy,” he said.
Arizona’s Carson Palmer is one who found that lighter is better.

rick scuteir/AP

Arizona’s Carson Palmer is one who found that lighter is better.

But Brady is the gold standard of today’s quarterbacks, the first to consistently dominate the NFL into his 40s. He’s also the most vocal about the importance of changing your diet and lifestyle. And if it’s working for Brady, many other NFL quarterbacks figure it can work for them, too.

“They’re all looking to Tom; he’s the pinnacle,” said Ryan Flaherty, senior director of performance at Nike who works with Mariota, Wilson, and nearly half of the NFL’s starting quarterbacks each offseason.

“He’s the guy that I think everybody wants to be, and even my young guys this year, [Mitchell] Trubisky and Deshaun Watson, both those guys are like, ‘Look, I want to be Tom Brady, but I want to be my own version of him.’ ”
Changing your body

Not everyone takes the diet to the extremes that Brady does, of course. Brady has said that his diet is 80 percent alkaline, 20 percent acidic, and that he eats a mostly-vegan diet that cuts out foods that cause inflammation, like tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, and eggplants.

When working with Mariota and Wilson this offseason, Flaherty emphasized a pescatarian diet replete with healthy fats — avocado, olive oil, fish — and eliminating carbs and sugar.

The goal wasn’t just for Mariota and Wilson to get thinner but to improve their speed. Wilson’s 2016 season was hampered by an ankle injury in Week 1 and a knee injury in Week 3. Mariota’s first two NFL seasons ended with injury — a torn MCL against the Patriots in December 2015 and a broken fibula in December 2016.

Flaherty doesn’t believe in the old theory that packing on a few more pounds of muscle will help quarterbacks take the pounding.

“It’s difficult for the young guys because, ‘The coaches want me at 230, my GM and everybody wants me at 235 because they want me to absorb hits,’ ” Flaherty said. “Well, the problem is the first two years, Marcus’s injuries have all been contact injuries, because he’s getting hit, he’s getting caught from behind. But if you’re fast enough and you’re agile enough, you’re not going to get hit.

“Russell, he came in at 230. He’s not going to be as agile and fluid and as fast as he is when he’s 220. Russell has to think, ‘I’ve got to be light, I’ve got to be fast, I’ve got to be agile.’ ”
Eluding tacklers could help prolong the career of Seattle’s Russell Wilson.

mark j. terrill/AP

Eluding tacklers could help prolong the career of Seattle’s Russell Wilson.

Even rookies like Watson and Trubisky have taken notice of the benefits of a lean diet. It’s not a lesson Brady learned right away. When he entered the NFL, his favorite meal was a ham-and-cheese hoagie washed down with an orange soda.

“Deshaun Watson was a great example,” Flaherty said. “He had no idea how to eat healthy. Fried food was a staple of his diet. Showing him, ‘Look, you want to be like Tom Brady? This is what Tom Brady eats, this is why he’s able to stay healthy for so long, this is something you need to emulate, you need to put into practice.’

“You’re able to show him how he changes his diet, how he changes his body and how that makes him feel. He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I used to eat like that.’ ”

Flaherty, who also works with Philip Rivers, Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, and most of the Arizona Cardinals, said he’s grateful to have someone like Brady leading the charge about diet and flexibility.

“I think it’s amazing having guys like Tom Brady who are so vocal about it, and how the proof is in the pudding,” Flaherty said. “He’s kind of an awesome example for the younger guys to see that you don’t have to eat a super high protein [diet], take Creatine, and eat high carbs to be 240 [pounds] in order to play for a long time.

“It’s great for me because I’ve been preaching it for a long time, but it takes guys who are the best at what they do like Tom Brady for the guys to pay attention.”
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.