When it comes to getting ripped like your favourite celebrities or sports stars, there are several factors that come into play. Not only do you need to have a foundationally similar body to them (height, for example), but you need to follow a strict diet plan to work in tandem with your training. Oh, and great financial resources, as well as personal chefs and trainers helps, too. Or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe.
LeBron James‘ diet has recently been put under the microscope and may have delivered the good news we’ve all been longing for: junk food can be good for you.
We reported some time ago that the LA Lakers star was a champion of the Ketogenic diet, one where you have to be strict with the foods you eat to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. It’s a tough ask for many of us with hectic schedules to find the time to be diligent when it comes to dinner time. But his former teammates have now claimed that LeBron likes to have ‘cheat days’ just as much as the rest of us.
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Speaking to The Athletic (via News.com.au), former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate Tristan Thompson said LeBron “has the worst f***ing diet ever*.
“He has like five french toast [for breakfast] drowns it in syrup with strawberries and bananas. Then he has like a four-egg omelette and then he goes and f***ing dunks on somebody. It doesn’t make sense.”
It’s not just breakfast time that LeBron feels the need to pig out, either, as Tristan adds, “He eats desserts with every meal. He’ll come with his one-week diet, vegan crap, but he literally eats like it doesn’t make sense. He’s really a specimen.”
“He eats like sh*t.”
Keen to see if the junk food diet could work for him, Tristan quickly found out LeBron is in a class of his own. “I started gaining weight and said, ‘F*** this’. I mean it works for him. He loves sweets. He eats desserts and French toast. It’s crazy how his body just burns it.”
Clearly then, LeBron isn’t the healthy eating poster boy we’ve all come to assume, although we should remind you that carbs don’t make you fat. Overeating does. Carbs are highly beneficial, especially to athletes such as LeBron.
But it’s the amount he can put away, combined with the performance he can give that baffled another former Cavaliers teammate, Kyle Korver, who adds that the often-lauded ‘greatest player of all time’ really is a marvel to behold.
“One of the years in the playoffs, we’d always do the Versaclimber because there would always be seven to 10 days between series.”
“We do this challenge, and I have never thrown up from doing cardio. And I am just, I feel like I might throw up. There are those benches on the side of the court, and I’m liked keeled over asking for the stretcher.”
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“LeBron walked off the Versaclimber, onto the court, gets the ball, looks at the far basket, full spring goes at it, jumps from outside the charge circle and windmill dunks it. And I’m like keeled over, trying to breathe.”
“That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen anyone do. It was unbelievable.”
Of course, LeBron isn’t the only man to feed his gluttonous cravings, as The Rock is always more than happy to show his followers the large portion sizes of junk food he indulges in. Although he justifies it with the hardcore workouts he then puts his body through.
So forget trying to keep up with the latest diet crazes. As long as you put the hard work in at the gym, you can earn yourself a cheat meal or two during the week.