The Real-Life Diet of Joe Thomas, Who No Longer Resembles an NFL Offensive Lineman
Joe Thomas is well aware that his weight loss has been the subject of much intrigue since he retired from the Cleveland Browns in 2018. There’s a fairly benign explanation for the transformation: Thomas isn't shoving around enormous men for a living anymore, so he’s been able to drastically reduce his caloric intake. There have been other post-retirement developments, like the blood tests he took that revealed a host of food intolerances, and the swimming exercises he’s leaned into for cardio. But mostly, not eating 7,000 calories a day has caused the dramatic before-and-after photos that may have emerged on your Twitter timeline.
Ultimately, Thomas’s goal is to get back to his senior-in-high-school look, which would put him around 250 pounds, rather than the 320ish-pound physique that helped make him become one of the best offensive linemen in NFL history. Residing in Madison, Wisconsin, with his family, Thomas says he’s happy with his weight room routine (more bodybuilding than powerlifting) and his diet (keto-ish plus some intermittent fasting). They make up a bendable-not-breakable plan that allows for the occasional vice, like a birthday cake with his kids, or a beer or four with his friends on the weekends. He breaks it all down below.
GQ: Tiki Barber once told me he’s in better shape and feels significantly healthier post-retirement than during his playing days. Do you feel the same way?
Joe Thomas: I definitely feel healthier. I feel a lot less pain in my body now that I’ve retired. I think a large part of that is I’m not running into 300-pound grown men anymore. But also, it’s the diet. Since retiring, I’ve done two different blood tests with different doctors, trying to figure out how food affected my body. Remarkably, they weren’t bullshit—they both came back pretty consistently that I had some food sensitivities that were affecting me in a negative manner. If I drank a protein shake of whey concentrate right now, within 30 minutes, I’d have stomach problems and I’d notice significantly more soreness and inflammation in my knees. It was amazing to me, but doing some reading and talking to different doctors, they said that I probably drank so many protein shakes when I was playing football that my body developed a sensitivity.
What made you want to do those blood tests after you retired?
Towards the end of my career, I had a lot of wear and tear, a lot of arthritis that was building up. Being 300 pounds for over 15 years was starting to take its toll. I was constantly on all sorts of anti-inflammatories and medicines to deal with the pain. Trying to keep that weight on meant eating a lot of crap. I’m not really naturally a huge guy, so to be 300 pounds, I was eating 6,000, 7,000 calories a day. I realized how powerful changing my diet—eating more vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, more whole foods, while throwing in intermittent fasting—can be as an anti-inflammatory, and for the health of my gut. I wanted to eat healthy to feel better, but also hopefully have more energy, sleep better, and live a longer, happier life. I just wanted to educate myself. I can be 255 pounds and not lose my job now.
What exactly were you eating on a day-to-day basis during your career?
Breakfast was usually a big bowl of oatmeal, a big thing of Greek yogurt with berries, granola, flax seed, honey, and then maybe 8-10 scrambled eggs and 4-5 pieces of bacon. Between breakfast and lunch, I’d have some type of snack, whether that was beef jerky, a protein shake, or a high-calorie smoothie. Lunch was a hamburger with all the fixings, plus french fries.
After practice I would have another protein shake or a smoothie, and then for dinner I would eat, like, a pan of lasagna. That was 2,000 calories, basically, and I’d add a big glass of whole milk. Before bed, I would usually eat a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies and a bowl of ice cream, or sometimes a freezer pizza in the oven. And I’d always drink a big casein protein shake before bed with some milk. I really focused on crushing a lot of sugar and protein before bedtime. It was the only time of day where I was consuming more calories than I was burning.
That sounds hellish, and like it didn’t make you feel great. So how did you end up playing 10,363 consecutive snaps?
Despite all the crap I was eating, and the anti-inflammatories I was taking, I was still taking care of my body the best I could. I was religious with the way I stretched, the way I would do my soft-tissue work, whether it be massages or foam rollers. I was very good about getting in the hot tub and cold tub, and getting in the training room. I also love to do yoga, and I give yoga a lot of credit for my longevity in the NFL. I think the additional mobility created the mind-body connection that helped me be very aware of small little imbalances or injuries within my body before they became big injuries.
Did other linemen eat as much as you did? I’d imagine not every guy had to consume as much food to keep weight on.
It’s interesting—in the NFL, I’d say it’s almost an equal split of guys that were tight end types that moved to offensive line and had to eat a lot to keep that weight on, versus the guys that were really big and had to go on a diet to get their weight to where it needed to be. Of course, the guys who had to slim down to play offensive line hated us skinny guys who were constantly shoving our faces with ice cream, cookies, pastas and breads.
How does the workout routine of an offensive lineman compare to that of a skill position player?
I think offensive linemen generally took the weight room and the workouts much more seriously, because we saw that it was a vital part of our training. We needed to be big and strong, and our muscles needed to be in good shape to handle the beatings. You wanted to have that muscle mass to handle the big guys that you were going to be throwing around.
Whereas, generally speaking, receivers and cornerbacks tried to avoid the weight room like the plague. Most strength coaches forced them to workout, so we did some of the same things, but offensive linemen had a steady diet of the presses—bench press, incline press, overhead press, front squat, back squat, hang cleans, power cleans—all those big, compound movements are really important. The skinny guys were going to come in and do the very minimum and get out. Anytime they got a chance to skip a workout, they would.
As for your diet now, you do intermittent fasting and keto, right? How did you land on those?
Basically, my principle is during the week, I try to be low carbs—keto, maybe. I’m mainly avoiding sugars and processed carbohydrates. My intermittent fasting is cutting breakfast out. I’ll eat a small, late lunch, and I do my lifting primarily in the afternoon so that by my dinner, which is usually with the family, I can have my biggest meal of the day. And if I do cardio, I do that in the morning.
It’s important to try and balance my own diet, my own health, my own lifestyle, with the needs of my family. If it’s somebody’s birthday or we’re having dessert as a family, I still have room for that. On the weekends, I’ll eat whatever. I’ll drink beer with buddies, eat pizza or pasta. I think it’s a good mental reset. It helps you make the healthy lifestyle something you can do in perpetuity.
If you let yourself have those weekends where you don’t go bananas, but you’re allowed to go have beers with your buddies, then you come back on a Monday looking forward to skipping breakfast and having some vegetables while avoiding the sugars. I’ve found in my first year of retirement that it’s been a good balance for me. It keeps my weight down, which is important for a guy with arthritis in his knees, hip, and back. But also, knowing which foods my body doesn’t react well to while still allowing my brain the freshness of being able to go out with friends and family.
Yeah, that sounds like a good balance.
The only times I’ve gotten in trouble have been when I don’t have a plan. As a football player, I’m used to buffets, right? You go to the training table in college, and it’s a buffet. In the NFL, you sit down for lunch and dinner in the training facility and it’s a buffet. You’re not going to feel full until 45 minutes after you eat. You can put a lot of food away in 45 minutes.
Now, I’ve got that plan in my mind when I sit down to make myself a plate. Then when I’m done, I get up, walk away, and do something else. Thirty minutes later, I’m suddenly full, I’ve got energy, and I don’t feel weighed down.
One other thing I did in my last year-and-a-half in the NFL that carried over and made me a much smarter eater was this app called MyPlate. I have no affiliation—it was a free app that I downloaded. It really helped me understand exactly how many calories were in certain foods. Now, I don’t even have to track the calories anymore. I know if I want to get 100 grams of protein at dinnertime that will fit with my training and calorie intake for that day, I should have a certain amount of chicken breast, or steak, or whatever it is.
Last question, and I’m going to give you a moment here to brag: Do you think your consecutive snaps streak is given its proper historical credence compared to like, yardage or touchdowns records?
It’s hard for me to compare that to other records in the NFL, but I’m certainly really proud of it, especially in light of the fact that from a team standpoint, we didn’t have a lot of success overall. But it was important to me to always be out there for my teammates no matter what our record was or what the score was. I felt like I had a job to do and I wanted to be there for those other guys. They were counting on me just like I was counting on them. Looking back on my career, that’s something I can tell my kids about it and say, “Daddy showed up to work everyday. You should too.” I can put my dad hat on and be an annoying dad about it.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
