Alim McNeill lost 22 pounds this winter. He said he gave up candy — among other things — to do it.
Sounds simple, eh?
It’s not. Not when, say, you get a craving for a chocolate bar sold at a corner grocer that’s wrapped in paper … and papery aluminum foil. Believe me, the chocolate is so good it deserves two layers of protection.
I’m not a big candy fella, but I’m a big fella — bigger than I’d like these days — and that heavenly (Satanic?) chocolate bar doesn’t help. So, don’t eat it, right? Oh, were it that simple. Food choices rarely are.
Which makes McNeill’s weight loss and body transformation — he was visibly leaner during spring OTAs — worthy of deep respect. He didn’t just cut out the candy and stay away from red meat, he began controlling his portions, hardly an easy thing to do for an NFL defensive lineman, where 300 pounds is the starting point.
You might say, well, it’s his job, and that’s true, but then we might say, well, it’s your life, and your joints, or your heart — walking away from the things you love to eat is still difficult, even excruciating. Salt and sugar have that kind of power.
JEFF SEIDEL: It’s only training camp, but it’s undeniable: Lions built to win now — and future
So do memory, nostalgia and habit.
For some, certain foods — and tastes — are an addiction, or at least a form of self-medicating. Or a link back to childhood, when someone prepared something that soothed the weary soul. Sometimes, I think of a scene from “Ratatouille,” the Pixar classic about a rat who dreams of becoming a chef.
Toward the end of the movie, the rat chef cooks an elegant version of ratatouille for a skeptical critic. He takes a bite and is transported to his mother’s kitchen table, where he is nursing a scrape on his leg after a bicycle spill. His mother sets a bowl of steaming ratatouille before him, the downhome version that’s a staple of parts of rural France.
“Peasant food,” someone grouses, in shock that the rat chef would choose such a dish to feed the critic. Yet the critic’s first bite of the rat chef’s re-imagined version is so powerful he darn near jumps time, decades back, to that memory of his mother. He drops his fork as he chews.
That’s the chemistry we fight sometimes when trying to change the way we eat. And while I don’t know the reasons McNeill made the food choices he did, you can bet they were buried deep.
Or maybe he just loved sugar?
Hard to blame him there.
What finally got him, he said earlier this spring, was the realization that he wasn’t fully taking advantage of his football gifts. And that drive eventually superseded the comfort and pleasure he sought in the way he ate.
The transformation, he said, Wednesday after two days of practice against the New York Giants, liberated him.
“I feel free,” he said.
He was talking about his movement on the football field, about the sense he has when he explodes after a snap, or bull rushes an offensive lineman, or chases after a fleeing quarterback. In other words, his body feels the way he thinks it was always meant to feel, a feeling he could only imagine before this winter.
He began to sense that feeling during OTAs earlier in the year, and definitely felt the lightness the first week of training camp and even during the first few days after playing with pads. But all of those drills and scrimmages were against the teammates with whom he shares a locker.
WHAT WE SEE: Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta, Brian Branch shine vs. Giants
Playing against an opponent offered a different kind of test, to see what it felt like to get after it in his new body.
“I felt great,” he said.
McNeill’s noticeably quicker off the ball.
“Get-off,” as it’s known.
The increased velocity should help as he transitions from nose tackle to three-technique, a spot where he’ll be able to rush the quarterback more. It’ll also give his coaches more choices.
If he can show he can pressure the pocket, he’ll be able to play in more formations, and on more downs, or at least more of a variety of downs.
“More packages,” as he said.
Versatility is critical. It starts with speed. If he’s getting over the line of scrimmage more quickly, he’s making the defense think in different ways about his presence. Causing an offense to think is essentially causing it — or parts of it — to slow, or to pause for a moment.
“Make them make decisions,” McNeill explained, who played last season around 330 pounds and reported to training camp around 305.
That’s the goal and, frankly, always the goal in the ever-changing chess board that is an NFL game. McNeill wanted to be as useful a piece on the board as he could be. And while he showed promise as a rookie and outright moments of dominance as a second-year pro, he was still inconsistent.
Yet it’s one thing to decide you want to become more consistent and another thing to do it, especially when the first step means changing your body, which really means changing the way you eat.
SHAWN WINDSOR: Lions will be faster, thanks to their rookies. It may be why they’re better, too
Which means changing the way you think about food, or at least certain foods, and that, as almost everyone knows, is difficult, even for those who depend on the state of their body for their livelihoods.
“I’m making sure I’m eating good, I’m hydrating,” he told reporters at the start of training camp. “I’m not just doing dilly-dally stuff, I’m making sure I’m recovering and stuff throughout the day. So, it’s just being a professional about everything you do, inside the building and outside the building.”
Plenty of professional athletes haven’t been able to make the changes McNeill just did. When they do, they deserve respect, because that chocolate bar is out there.
Always.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.