Jared Lorenzen provides a learning lesson to all youth athletes during Childhood Obesity Awareness Month
Most football fans are casually aware of former NFL quarterback Jared Lorenzen. While he may not be a household name, he certainly is recognizable.
Lorenzen should be known for his exploits on the field. After all, he won a Super Bowl ring with the Giants as a backup quarterback behind Eli Manning and is the all-time leading passer at Kentucky.
However, Lorenzen is known better for numbers that involve his weight, rather than his on-the-field statistics.
Whether referred to as the ‘hefty lefty’ or ‘Pillsbury throwboy’, Lorenzen is instantly recognizable as the quarterback who played professional indoor football while tipping the scales at 320 pounds. The video footage of his ‘big-boy’ athletic prowess went viral.
"Hefty Lefty" Jared Lorenzen offers his quarterbacking services to ailing Jets. https://t.co/Ns4U7fEGqC https://t.co/c9TVQWga3N
— Shutdown Corner (@YShutdownCorner) November 2, 2015
Lorenzen’s struggles with his weight were highlighted in a feature by ESPN. Lorenzen is no different than most of us: he loves food. After all, America has a love affair with food. We have a channel dedicated to food and another dedicated to cooking.
This does not even take into account the plethora of blogs and vlogs that are dedicated to the subject. Heck, we even have a day dedicated to ‘smores.
Think of it this way, when we celebrate something, we often do it in conjunction with food. Conversely, when we are sad or depressed, we often turn to food for comfort.
Accordingly, for someone who is addicted to food or struggling with weight management issues, it is difficult to resist the myriad of temptations. After all, you gotta eat sometime.
Lorenzen’s issues with weight management were apparent long before he ever stepped foot on the football field. When he was born he weight a whopping 13.3 pounds.
“I tell everybody I came out of womb at 13.3,” said Lorenzen. “I’ve been big from literally day one. I’ve always been big, my weight in New York (while playing with the Giants) was high-280s, low 290s.”
However, it was lessons learned as a young man at the family dinner table that continue to plague Lorenzen.
The feature story highlighted Lorenzen’s food intake while young and impressionable. Healthy, nutritious, homemade cooking was non-existent.
Instead, he primarily consumed food from the frozen aisle: TV dinners, macaroni and cheese, fish sticks and other assorted treats. He also had a strong sweet-tooth. He picked up an addiction for Dots gumdrops because they were always left over from Halloween.
These patterns were exacerbated after his parents divorced when he was 15 years old. He began spending most of his time with his father, who didn’t instill healthy eating habits in the younger Lorenzen.
The ESPN feature on the quaterback's youth described father and son as living like, “frat brothers. They ate pizza and takeout Chinese. Every day Lorenzen drank two 2-liter bottles of Kroger's knockoff Mountain Dew. Dessert was those sweet Little Debbies.”
"That was like our bonding," Lorenzen says. "He had his box, I had my box."
Eating a Nutritious and Heathy Diet
Lorenzen’s obesity issues should sound alarm bells for youth athletes and their parents. Being physically active is a healthy habit and often effective at keeping the weight off. However, sometimes being physically active, like Lorenzen, is not enough to manage weight, especially if a young athlete is eating poorly.
An article published by the CDC in 2014 points to this very fact.
“Widespread practices supporting availability of healthful foods, beverages, and physical activity in out-of-school-time (OST) settings would further obesity prevention efforts,” the report said.
The publication investigated effective ways to increase youth health during out-of-school activities. The research identified three keys to increasing healthy habits:
- Drink right: choose water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages
- Move more: boost movement and physical activity in all programs
- Snack smart: fuel up on fruits and vegetables.
Unfortunately, many of us aren’t fully informed when it comes to healthy eating. If you are unsure where to begin, then here is a good place to start: Let’s Eat for the Health of It! The United States Department of Health and Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The guidelines are easy to follow and provide simple solutions that can be adapted into everyday life.
Remember, begin with simple changes and work your way up toward adopting increasingly heathy changes. This way you can celebrate small victories involving simple healthy changes on your way toward self-improvement, instead of failing to live up to an unattainable goal. Even something as simple as substituting one sugar-filled soda with a glass of water has been found to have health benefits.
Above all, it is important that you child consumes healthy nutrient-dense food and get at least 60 minutes of exercise each day.
“Engaging in these ideal health behaviors early in life can have a tremendous benefit on maintaining ideal health throughout the lifespan,” said Julia Steinberger, M.D., M.S., and a professor in pediatrics and director of pediatric cardiology at the University of Minnesota.
This belief is corroborated by the CDC, which stated on its website, “healthy eating in childhood and adolescence is important for proper growth and development and can prevent health problems such as obesity,”