Brad Keselowski Twitter Beef Genetic Freak
This calendar week, CBSSports.com's 3-office series on nutrition in the NBA will explore players from Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose to Blake Griffin and Ray Allen who've adopted similar nutritional approaches to attain a variety of goals.
'From worse than pet food to bodily nutrient'
Dr. Cate Shanahan was watching Dwight Howard play for the Lakers last season, and she was frightened past what she saw.
The Napa Valley doctor and nutritionist had no pale in whether Howard would re-sign with the Lakers; that was the least of her concerns. In conversations with the Lakers about spearheading a drastic alter in their nutritional program for players, Shanahan believed she had the found the ultimate examination subject in Howard.
"It looked like he was wearing oven mitts out in that location," Shanahan said. "It reminded me of patients who have pre-diabetes and neurological problems because of how sugar impacts the nervous system. That's where I became really concerned."
Shanahan's husband and co-writer, Luke, had sent a copy of their book, "Deep Nutrition," to the Lakers' longtime athletic trainer, Gary Vitti. Having been around professional person athletes for decades, Vitti had seen a lot of pitches. Simply Shanahan's book resonated, with its scientific and practical approach to a traditional diet of real nutrient. In the year since, the arroyo to eating has become the standard in the Lakers' locker room, at team hotels and on lease flights -- setting the tone for what could be a seismic shift in how athletes use food to not just fuel, merely besides medicate their multimillion-dollar bodies.
"We're making the shift from basically worse than pet food to actual nutrient," Cate Shanahan said.
When Shanahan was introduced to Howard final season, the All-Star center was having a miserable flavor with the Lakers and going downwardly a terrible path with his diet. Shanahan couldn't have found a more high-contour test case for her beliefs. If food can meliorate or damage your genetic code, as her research had shown, then why couldn't it have the same bear on on athletic performance?
"If you don't experience better in two weeks," Shanahan told Howard, "and so I don't know what I'm talking almost and I'll quit."
With Howard, the intervention began where it does with most athletes (and non-athletes, for that matter) who need to change their diets. Information technology began with carbohydrate. It turned out that Howard was consuming the equivalent of 24 Hershey bars a twenty-four hour period in the form of candy and soda -- not to mention the additional sugar his body was making out of all the empty starches he was eating.
"We knew Dwight had a saccharide-intake issue," said Luke Shanahan, whose Masters in Fine Arts from the world-renowned Iowa Writers Workshop has served him well in his role equally the program'due south architect and co-pilot. "We just didn't know how bad information technology was."
It was bad. At Cate Shanahan's asking, Howard had undergone a blood screening that revealed a frighteningly pathological profile. His glucose readings were through the roof, much college than they should have been for a ripped, 27-yr-quondam professional athlete who used to call himself Superman.
The Lakers arranged for Shanahan to meet with Howard, his personal administration and chef. It wasn't unlike the kind of sitdown you might take with a loved one who's going downwardly an unhealthy path.
"It was absolutely similar a family intervention," Cate Shanahan said.
Howard was struggling to return to form after back surgery the previous leap, and was wrestling with the enormous pressure of whether to re-sign with the Lakers as a free agent. Cate Shanahan believed his performance and recovery were existence seriously compromised by his poor nutrition. She saw the telltale signs of carbohydrate habit -- spikes in energy followed by crashes and erratic motor skills that were indicative of nerves misfiring.
"I said, 'I can't live this way because it'due south non healthy to have this high level of sugar in me,' " Howard said. "I only fabricated a commitment."
Like an addict, Howard had processed and sugary drinks stashed everywhere -- from his kitchen cabinets to a drawer next to his bed to the backpack he toted to games and practices. He agreed to get rid of it all and start over.
But his dietary transformation, and that of the Lakers, didn't stop there. At Shanahan's behest, they avoid sugar, processed foods and unhealthy oils – vegetable, canola, corn and other chemically engineered cocktails. It's more nuanced than that, and Shanahan has sold the Lakers on the science to back information technology upwards.
"She'due south not pushing supplements on us," Lakers point guard Steve Nash said. "It's all natural foods. At that place's nothing processed; nothing unnatural. ... Although it is a bit of an extreme diet compared to the traditional diet, what works in its favor as far as a safeguard is that it is a natural diet."
Nash believes the infusion of healthy fats and oils helped him recover from a broken leg last flavor, and he's belongings out hope for any border he tin can notice as he tries to overcome remainder nerve damage from that injury this flavour. Other players report that their joints aren't as sore and their muscle recovery is better, like Steve Blake, who says his knees haven't felt this skillful since he played for the Academy of Maryland.
"If you actually stick to it, it really makes a divergence," Blake said. "Everything they're telling usa, one, information technology makes sense, and two, [Shanahan] has science to dorsum information technology upward."
Chris Kaman, Shawne Williams, Jodie Meeks, Robert Sacre and even the eccentric Nick Young are among the Lakers who are all in. Others, like Jordan Colina, initially were skeptical simply are coming around. Kobe Bryant, who returned Dominicus after an eight-month recovery from Achilles' tendon surgery, has adopted some aspects of the diet that he believes promote healing.
"It's a different philosophy," Bryant said. "It's something that we all had to conform to, only we trust Dr. Cate implicitly. I've seen smashing results from it from when I started doing it last year -- watching your saccharide intake, making sure you lot're eating good for you fats. You've got to notice a remainder in that system. It'due south worked well for me."
The Lakers' programme is called PRO Nutrition, which somewhat obtusely stands for Performance, Recovery and Orthogenesis -- the latter existence the theory that evolution is strongly influenced past environmental factors, such as diet. It seems extreme considering it has basically turned the government's sacred food pyramid upside-down. Shanahan wants the players to go at least 50 pct of their calories from fat, and no more than 25 percent each from protein and carbohydrates. Wait, what? That'southward right. Basically the opposite of what you and everyone else alive have been doing for years.
Oops.
"We're a country running on empty carbohydrate, processed foods and vegetable oils," Luke Shanahan said. "... The first pace is to go vegetable oils out of your life and replace empty starches with nutrient-dense food."
The percentages vary from thespian to player based on specific needs. For example, Williams was 20-25 pounds overweight when the Lakers signed him in September, so his regimen called for fewer carbs and more fat and poly peptide. That'southward right, more than fat. Since starting the programme 3 weeks before training camp, Williams has lost 20 pounds while doubling his fat intake. Gone are the sugary drinks, cereals and candy grains. Gone, too, is his onetime wardrobe.
"All the clothes I brought with me are too large," Williams said.
Spreading the grass-fed gospel
Kaman has tried simply about every diet known to mankind -- depression-carb, high-carb, low-fat, loftier-fatty, low-carbohydrate, no-sugar and everything in between. But what's really grabbed him about the Lakers' program is that the source of the food is at least as of import as what kind of nutrient it is. Moreso, actually.
"For thousands of years before we had these chemicals and preservatives and processed foods, everything was fresh," said Kaman, a hunting enthusiast. "You cut it downward and you lot ate it, or y'all killed it and y'all ate it or wrung its neck and you ate it. It's the most basic form of eating and I retrieve that's the best mode to swallow."
When the protein and fat come from beef, it can't just be any beef; you'll only find beef from humanely raised, grass-fed cows with no added antibiotics on the Lakers' card. (Grass-fed cows produce meat with higher levels of good for you omega-3 fatty acids.) The fish is wild, not farm-raised, which limits toxins. All other protein is from humanely raised sources, such as complimentary-range chickens and pigs that have not been fattened on corn or other grains and have not been sickened and mass-engineered with antibiotics or hormones.
"At that place'southward a right way to raise a squealer and a wrong way," Lakers strength and workout coach Tim DiFrancesco said. "Pigs that are raised with hormones and fed corn and grains, aye, that'll impale you."
Shanahan wants her patients -- and, the Lakers are her patients, for lack of a improve term --to stop thinking almost food as fuel and start thinking of it as medicine. Think well-nigh it, also, equally a chef would.
"If it has zero season," Shanahan said, "that'south a really bad sign."
Vitti, in his 29th season equally the Lakers' head athletic trainer, had the clout to get the program green-lighted. But it wouldn't accept happened without DiFrancesco, a 32-twelvemonth-old descendant of New England dairy farmers who was appropriately dubbed "Grass-Fed Tim" last season by Metta Earth Peace.
"I could look out my window if I was visiting my granddad and run into cows eating grass as we were drinking milk at the table," DiFrancesco said. "I didn't think annihilation of it. I just thought this must be what everybody does."
If Cate Shanahan provided the brains (lath-certified physician, studied biochemistry and genetics at Cornell Academy), then DiFrancesco served as her optics and ears on the ground. After a stint as head athletic trainer for the Bakersfield Jam of the D-League, DiFrancesco joined the Lakers when the 2011 lockout ended. He stepped abroad from the fettle training business organisation he'd been running with his brother in Salem, Mass., with the hope that he could spread his grass-fed gospel to the large leagues.
What DiFrancesco saw on cafe spreads provided by NBA teams and in refrigerators from the exercise facility to the arena during his early trips around the NBA stunned him.
"I was really shocked and amazed what the typical NBA player was getting educated on -- the correct things to do nutritionally and the right things to do training-wise," DiFrancesco said. "I was really surprised when I entered into the league at what they were being told."
In improver to the preponderance of chicken fingers, burgers, chips, chips, pizza and sugary drinks, DiFrancesco saw that even well-significant efforts to clean up players' diets were falling brusque.
"There'southward this fear that if an athlete doesn't go enough carbs, he might keel over and dice," DiFrancesco said. "He might get to first quarter and driblet dead if didn't swallow enough pasta the day earlier. I was seeing sugar and a lack of fear of sugar, when it should be the opposite. They demand to embrace fat -- good fat -- and fear sugar like it'southward going to kill us, because it is doing that before our eyes."
Getting back to being Superman
Howard has get such a laic that he's continued to follow the programme in Houston and has even gotten the Rockets to implement some of information technology. For ane thing, there's no more processed or sweets on the Rockets' squad flights. GM Daryl Morey and longtime athletic trainer Keith Jones take even followed the Lakers' lead and made a catering bargain with Whole Foods for route trips.
"We had to make that modify, and I should've pushed harder earlier," Morey said. "With Dwight coming, I think information technology made it that much easier to make sure we got it done."
Howard's new teammates' response?
"They think I'chiliad crazy," Howard said. "... But you've got to start doing piddling things at present that will prolong your career.'"
Within weeks of starting the program, Howard said his claret-glucose levels declined lxxx pct. After increasing his consumption of salubrious fats and decreasing processed carbs -- "No bread," Howard said -- all the claret markers that are indicative of heart health went in the right direction, too. After some initial lethargy during the detox stage, Howard said his endurance improved and his energy levels became more consistent. His body-fat percentage -- hovering around 5-six percent his entire career -- dropped to 3 percent, he said.
"I would always tell [the Lakers] how bad I wanted to get back to existence Superman," Howard said. "Their response was, 'Well, you have to sacrifice something.' "
Since Howard left LA, the Lakers' program has gotten fifty-fifty more sophisticated -- and has gathered more than support in the locker room. On the road, DiFrancesco used to take cab rides from the team hotel to the nearest Whole Foods and stock up on salubrious prepared meals, likewise as naturally fermented items such equally pickles and Kombucha, a raw tea rich in anti-oxidants and probiotics that several players now drink instead of soda. Now, Whole Foods caters every Lakers chartered flight and road trip, right down to the uncured meats and raw cheeses for charcuterie plates that sit on a tabular array in the locker room before games.
"The most surprising thing to me," Williams said, "is that the food still tastes good."
Vitti said the nutrition reminded him of the Mediterranean roots, when his mother always had a soup bone and a boiling pot on the stove.
"Anybody that writes a sports nutrition book seems to recollect it is a must-read," Vitti said. "But when I received Dr. Cate'south, information technology was drastically different and very close to the way I grew up. ... My parents are from Italian republic, 92 years old and in slap-up health."
Whereas most trainers travel with a suitcase loaded with pills and powders, DiFrancesco has replaced well-nigh of those with existent food. His luggage is stocked with raw nuts, squeezable packs of hazelnut butter, kale fries, grass-fed beef jerky and more. He'south non just a strength coach; he'south an organic Sherpa, personal shopper and a consultant to players' wives, girlfriends and personal chefs about how to prepare healthy food at home.
"What my real championship is -- strength and workout charabanc -- becomes mode more effective when you tin combine eating the right foods, the right fuel and nutrient as medicine with training the correct mode," DiFrancesco said.
Buying in
On his Twitter account, DiFrancesco posts photos of Lakers players filling up their grocery carts with healthy snacks also as massive amounts of grass-fed beef and humanely raised pork that he and some players accept ordered from sustainable farms. Kaman, Sacre and DiFrancesco all the same have freezers full of meat from a 400-pound grass-fed cow they ordered from a San Diego butcher in October.
For every road trip, Shanahan will study the room service and hotel eatery menus and color-code items then the players know what to avoid. Some hotels make substitute items available – such equally cooking meals in olive oil instead of partially hydrogenated oils that promote inflammation and illness while hindering recovery, she said.
When the players are eating at home, no part of the animal goes unused. Shanahan and DiFrancesco have advised the players' food preparers on how to make tasty dishes out of nutrient-dense organ meat (Nash and Kaman love liver pate) besides every bit soups and stews with broth simmered in bone marrow, which Shanahan says promotes healing and joint health. That'south the part of the diet that Bryant has thoroughly embraced, though he'due south been more than cautious most other aspects.
"He felt a difference immediately in his joints," DiFrancesco said. "He's excellent when it comes to making sure that every meal, he'due south getting some of this liquid-gilt bone broth. ... It'southward comfort food."
Like Bryant, other players haven't bought in 100 pct.
"Some guys say they're on it," Kaman said, "but I don't know how serious they are."
Hill, i of the holdouts, has become more than interested. He'southward scheduled a grocery trip with DiFrancesco this week in LA before the team embarks on a road trip.
"Babe steps," Cate Shanahan said.
Organ meats and bone-based broths are among the iv "food pillars" that Shanahan has identified, along with fermented or sprouted food and raw, total-fatty unpasteurized dairy. It's the mode DiFrancesco was raised to consume -- and Shanahan would argue, the style much healthier populations ate for hundreds of years before the American diet became the processed, toxic mess that information technology is now.
Not only are the Lakers unafraid of healthy fats, they practically freebase them. The pregame beverage of choice is something the players telephone call "bullet-proof coffee" -- java seasoned with two teaspoons of pastured butter and heavy, grass-fed cream.
"The caffeine dilates your blood vessels and delivers the fat to the brain," Kaman said. "It'due south proficient."
So it begs the question: All of this work, fourth dimension, commitment and sacrifice ... for what? Where is the evidence that eating this style -- for athletes or anyone else -- makes a difference? Where is the show that all this fat is OK?
"I'm going to eat this way until I die," Kaman said. "As long as I don't take a eye attack from all the butter I'm taking in."
For the long haul
Shanahan explores the chemistry, genetics and anthropology behind the approach in painstaking detail in her book and in resources and new studies she's constantly posting on social media. Only like anything else on social media, the nutrition customs tends to be an repeat chamber -- like voices and viewpoints forever bouncing off each other, seeming to confirm some unalienable truths without having to exist bothered with the inconvenience of dissenting opinions.
"In that location'due south no hard-core evidence that this stuff helps; there really isn't," said Morey, who has been on the cutting edge of using advanced statistics and analytics to guide every basketball game determination he makes. "So if a histrion were to claiming me, I'd be honest with him. That said, there's a lot of directional studies that admittedly say it makes an impact. ... We just feel strongly that fifty-fifty though the science is a trivial early on information technology, this can aid."
Later years of health authorities telling the states to eat low-fat, high-carb diets, there's a movement afoot suggesting that it's actually the candy carbs and sugars that are causing illness – not the fats, as long equally the fats are from quality sources.
Last month, the Nutrient and Drug Assistants woke upward from decades of slumber and issued a ruling that would all only eliminate trans fats -- predominant in the partially hydrogenated oils that the Lakers accept eliminated from their carte -- from the food supply. It remains to exist seen whether the mass-producers of the food manufacture will supercede trans fatty with something that's better or worse for us.
In October, Sweden became the first Western nation to plant nutritional guidelines that turn down a high-carb, low-fat nutrition subsequently the Swedish health quango pooled the results of 16,000 studies on the causes of eye disease and diabetes and found no link to saturated fats --and instead, constitute links to sugar and high-carb diets.
Scientific studies come and go, and many of them have been wrong. For the purposes of this story, all nosotros have are the anecdotal results of some professional athletes who've tried a new (or old) way of eating.
"I've definitely noticed my joints aren't every bit sore, aren't as strong when I wake up when I don't eat the bad oils," Kaman said.
During a recent interview on a Lakers road trip, Kaman dug through his haversack and pulled out some kale chips and hazelnut butter, which he keeps with him at all times for snacking. He said his sustained energy has improved, and his trunk-fat percent has gone from nearly 15 percent to 13 pct. He's taken the no-sugar mantra to some other level, avoiding fruits, which are high in fructose.
"I'd say 85 to 90 pct of guys [in the NBA] aren't committed to their bodies," Kaman said. "They don't care considering they're already built to where they expect good. They're a freak show, they're ripped, they're lean and they can bound loftier, so they don't care. I'm at the other end of the spectrum."
Howard, the kind of nutritionally ambivalent, freakish concrete specimen Kaman is referring to, knows better now.
"I can tell in one case I've had something bad, my body feels different," Howard said.
Howard's new boss, Morey, is grateful for the changes, but isn't relying on them to make a difference in the standings.
"I add information technology to the list of a lot of things we practice because we call back it helps, simply I'm not counting on information technology," Morey said. "If someone heard this story about usa irresolute our nutrition, no person should run out and bet on usa in Vegas."
Whatever happens every bit far as wins and losses, the Lakers have been sold on some other numbers linked to the program. When DiFrancesco shared the players' bloodwork and trunk-fat changes with Mitch Kupchak last flavour subsequently a few weeks on the new nutrition, the Lakers' GM was floored.
"Mitch said, 'How can this guy take fabricated those body-composition changes that fast? How tin can this have happened?'" DiFrancesco said.
And just every bit Howard has taken the diet with him to his new team, DiFrancesco hopes players stick with information technology for life.
"We are doing this for you as a l-, lx-, seventy-year-sometime," he said. "This is for your wellness as a human being being. It'south going to help you lot as a Laker, but it's more than that. ... One time yous put all that on the tabular array, information technology's difficult to walk away and non feel good about it."
Source: https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nutrition-in-the-nba-part-i-lessons-learned-in-la-help-howards-career/
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