by Barbara Berkeley, MD
Although I have written many posts about LeBron James (to the consternation of many of you, I'm sure), I have never written about LeBron's own weight. It never occurred to me, even though he has definitely gotten noticeably larger over the past couple of seasons.
Now, LeBron has reportedly gone low-carb in order to get back to optimal playing weight. This article in The New York Daily News is just one of the many written after LeBron posted an Instagram picture in which he was conspicuously skinnier than he was earlier this summer. According to Brian Windhorst, the reporter who shadowed LeBron in Cleveland and later in Miami, it is a low carb diet that is responsible. Bravo Le Bron! I wonder if he could possibly have been reading Refuse to Regain?
Alas, RTR has nothing to do with it. More likely LeBron has taken a cue from his good friend Ray Allen, reportedly a follower of the Paleo diet.
What particularly strikes me about the LBJ weight loss story is that that he needed to lose weight at all. Just yesterday, a patient told me that she was sure she couldn't lose weight because she was only walking three days a week instead of five. LeBron James is a 30 year old young man who loses gallons of weight in sweat every night he plays. He runs up and down the court, barreling like a freight train at high speeds for over 40 minutes. He plays in just about every game during the regular season. And when he's not playing, he's in the gym training or shooting baskets. And yet, LeBron gained weight. Even if he is feasting like Henry the VIII when he's off the court, we would assume that someone who is that young and who works out that much and that intensely would not gain weight. So much for the magical ability of exercise to cause weight loss.
Foods that we eat are converted to fat at different rates by different people. For almost all of the patients I see, the primary culprit is carbs going into fat storage. Once that weight is on, the only thing that will release it is good old dieting. The only thing that will keep it off is good old carb avoidance.
As for the strength and endurance of athletes who eat lower carb diets, there appears to be evidence (see this book by Volek and Phinney) that low carb eaters adapt to burning other fuels preferentially. There is still vigorous debate on this point, but it will certainly be interesting to see how LeBron does if he continues on a lower carb regimen throughout the season.
Can Ohio take on the world with a Primarian LeBron? Stay tuned!
For other LeBron articles: see LeBron and the Art of Weight Maintenance or enter LeBron in the search box. By the way, if you watch the link to "The Shot", notice how much thinner the people in the crowd were in 1989 than they are today.