A common storyline early in football training camp is which players show up to camp in shape and which ones are out of shape.
But with the Jets, the person whose weight loss is the most noticeable this training camp is head coach Todd Bowles. As he enters his fourth year with the Jets, Bowles looks like a different man.
He has no more gut, and his face is noticeably thinner.
Bowles has not stepped on a scale, but his old clothes no longer fit him and his wife believes he has lost 50 or 60 pounds since he committed in March to changing his diet and exercising more.
“You know when you’ve had enough,” Bowles told The Post after practice Wednesday. “I’ve had enough. I want to be better for myself and for my family. I want to be around a long time. It’s become a lifestyle.”
Bowles said he’s been “a little sick” after each of the past two seasons. The 54-year-old also was having pain in his right knee, which required a partial replacement in 2015. That pushed him to get in shape.
“It was just too much weight on my leg. I was never this heavy before,” Bowles said. “I just decided to start working out and get myself back in shape. That’s really the basis of it. So, I started eating better and working out more and taking longer walks and chipping away little by little. Before you know it, I got into a groove of working out. I started feeling better and my leg started hurting less. Standing on the field now, I feel great.”
Bowles first made changes to his diet. He said he is now eating smaller portions, has cut out bread and is loading up on green vegetables. One of the challenges for Bowles is not piling up his plate in the cafeteria at the Jets’ training center. While there are plenty of healthy, nutritious options, there are also plenty of unhealthy choices. The food is free for the coaches and players, so it is not hard to pack on the pounds with an endless supply of food available.
“I don’t sit down there anymore,” Bowles said. “I get a cup and I go. I have my portions in my cup. I don’t sit in there, because if you sit in there you’re going to go back for seconds and thirds.
“It’s dangerous. I just make sure I discipline myself and have the right portion and get out.”
Every morning, Bowles lays out his water for the day, too. He puts four 16-ounce bottles on one side of his desk. Those have to be finished by lunchtime. He puts four 16-ounce bottles on the other side. Those are for after lunch.
Besides the dietary changes, he has ramped up his exercise. He arrives to the Jets’ training center daily before 5 a.m. and works out. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday he lifts weights and then walks between 3-5 miles around the Jets’ practice fields. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, he walks for two hours and does a little over seven miles.
Bowles has added a treadmill to his office for when the weather is bad or so he can walk while he watches film.
The hardest thing for Bowles to give up has been cookies.
“I am a big snack guy,” Bowles said. “That was the hardest thing.”
He now snacks on small bags of popcorn when he gets hungry.
A coach’s lifestyle is notoriously unhealthy. There are long hours, stress and plenty of poor eating that goes on around the NFL. Last month, Bowles lost his close friend Tony Sparano, who died of heart disease at 56. The two coached together for seven years in Dallas and Miami. It has sparked Bowles to speak to the members of his staff about their health.
“You hate to see what happened to Sparano,” Bowles said. “I tell my coaches it’s mandatory to work out three times a week. If they don’t, they’re going to have a problem. We have to make time.”
Two years ago, Bowles was hospitalized after feeling ill two days before the Jets played the Patriots. He had kidney stones and gallstones.
“It wasn’t a life-threatening scare, but it was a scare,” Bowles said. “You don’t want to get sick during the season. I’ve never gotten sick. That scared me a little bit about me being healthier. I talked about it but I didn’t do anything about it. Now, I’ve decided to do something about it for myself.”
Bowles jokes that while he is slimmer, he is nowhere close to the 205 pounds he was when he was an NFL safety.
“I’ll never see 205 again,” he said with a laugh.
But Bowles does not need to see numbers on a scale to know he has changed his life for the better.
“I feel great,” he said. “I’ve got more energy and I can stand out there [on the practice field] longer. It’s a lot easier for me to stand up, and I don’t have any knee problems at all.”
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