Johnson and the 5,500-calorie-a-day diet thanks to the “monstrous mush” – Corriere.it

One of the main weapons of the Philadelphia Eagles who will play the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night are the lines: the defensive one, which brings pressure to the opposing quarterback, and the offensive one, which protects quarterback Jalen Hurts. It is the role that requires the presence of the strongest and heaviest athletes and one of the weapons of the Eagles’ forward line, led by Jason Kelce, is the right tackle Lane Johnson: shirt number 65, he is a 32-year-old veteran in the NFL, who is almost 2 meters tall and weighs 150 kilos. The curiosity is that Lane Johnson has reached that weight by working further on a nutritional level on an already decidedly abundant basis: three years ago he weighed 141 kilos, he was struggling to add mass through his diet but wanted to further increase volume and muscle mass. To do this, he turned to a personal trainer named Stan Efferding, professional bodybuilder author of the book “The Vertical Diet”, who tailored a 5,500-calorie-a-day diet for him to make him even more physically difficult.

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It is certainly not the most calorie-rich diet assigned to an athlete, remembering the swimmer’s 10,000-calorie-a-day diet Ryan Lochte and that of 12,000 from the other American swimming pool superstar Michael Phelps, but among the peculiarities of the diet observed by Lane Johnson is the “Monster Mash”, a dish that the Eagles player eats every day as he told the site “The Athletic”. The most faithful translation, albeit unappetizing, is «Monstrous mush»: minced red meat, beef or bison, white rice, scrambled eggs, broth and red peppers. Efferding – who has worked with many stars physically, including the Icelandic giant Hafthor Julius Bjornsson, who played the part of “The Mountain” in the TV series “Game of Thrones” – explained what makes the dish “special” for the Eagles player: “I looked for something that was easy to consume, a quantity of food quickly digestible so you’re hungry again soon enough and can eat the meals you need to build up the amount and type of calories you need. Being moist, you can eat a ton of it. I came up with the idea while working with sumo wrestlers, who eat larger portions to digest better and get hungry again sooner, having to consume a huge amount of calories.’

Food, body and psyche

Lane Johnson has already had a successful career: he was drafted in the first round in 2013 with the fourth overall pick and is a pillar of the Eagles, with whom he won the Super Bowl in 2018 and was selected to the Pro Bowl four times. But he wanted to further limit his physical level, working on nutrition: «The problem is that you can put on muscle and lose fat, but at the same time it’s important not to feel bloated or particularly unhappy during the diet», admitted the player to « The Athletic». Hence the mix curated by Efferding: in addition to the “Monster Mash”, many simple carbohydrates, salt – to give flavor and recover the sodium that Johnson expels during the very tough NFL training sessions – orange juice and practically zero sugary foods. About 250 grams of protein each day — don’t overdo it, to heal your muscles but not feel too full — and fat below 30% of your calorie intake: the rest is carbohydrates, up to 5,500 calories. “That sounds like a lot for a normal person, but it’s not exaggerated for the performance of an athlete for whom nutrition is a full-time job,” explains Efferding.

Pain resistance

Lane Johnson will be on the field at the Super Bowl and will do so by gritting his teeth due to a groin strain that has been tormenting him for weeks, which got worse during the playoffs and which he will treat after the game with an operation: «It’s the philosophy with whom I grew up – he told Media Day of the Super Bowl in Arizona, speaking of the injury he lives with – my father rode bulls, so a groin tear or a collapsed lung is something that was the order of the day in their culture, I know how to handle it”. Later the father, David, gave up riding bulls and became a road worker, but it is a family of real fighters: recently the father of Lane Johnson underwent heart surgery, his mother Ray Ann was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma six months ago but the first treatments are going well while the Eagles player has had to fight anxiety and depression, especially after spending three seasons dealing with an ankle injury. He thought about retiring, isolated himself in the family and then managed to dispel the shadows and talk about it: «Mentally now I feel good. What sportsmen like Kevin Love or Tyson Fury have told in recent months has been very valuable, I discovered that some of my teammates also suffered from similar ailments and this helped me a lot, to talk about it and get out of it “, he revealed on Monday to the following media in Super Bowl. Now Lane Johnson, between a Monster Mash and a glass of orange juice, is preparing in his own way the game that is worth an entire season to get a second NFL ring on his finger, the result of hard training on the pitch, in the gym but also at table.