About a year after starting his quest to get healthy and inspire others to do the same, Jared Lorenzen is now The Less Hefty Lefty.
The former Kentucky and New York Giants quarterback whose weight ballooned to over 500 pounds in 2017 is happy to report he’s shed nearly 100 lbs since launching The Jared Lorenzen Project.
He’s had to fight through some setbacks in the process — bloodwork revealed thyroid and testosterone irregularities. When both were fixed, the workout and diet routines he implemented began to work.
“In six weeks, I lost 70 pounds,” he told For The Win in a phone interview on Wednesday.
But he’s also had to realize that he wasn’t the NFL athlete he once was, which has led to minor injuries along the way.
“It turns out if you put your body through hell for about 15 years,” he said, “it doesn’t want to fight back. I still have these dreams I can do what I used to and it’s not necessarily true. I put my body through a little bit too much too fast and had to recover from it.”
So what goes in to losing all that weight?
“A whole lot of rotisserie chicken” (with the skin off, of course) is a staple of his diet, with shakes for lunch, and strawberries and unsalted cashews for a snack. If he’s craving a scoop of ice cream, he’ll eat a more healthy ice pop or yogurt instead. He allows himself to have a steak occasionally.
Lorenzen walks as much as he can with the goal of 10,000 steps a day. Each week, he’s lifting three to four times and practicing yoga on two days. Once to twice a month, he does a “boot camp,” a combination of about 15 stations with different types of workouts.
He’s hoping to turn his transformation into one that can help others do the same — Lorenzen and his team are working on a free app that will include nutrition information, weight-loss plans, tips and “anything we can think of to make it easier for people to get healthy.”
The biggest X-factor is he’s not doing all of this alone.
“If you’re doing it by yourself, it’s difficult,” he said. “And if you get people out there to help you, it’s fortunate.”
When he does a health walk or a public boot camp, he’s sometimes joined by 15 to 20 people — they’re “friends, people that have followed the project and people who want to bring their kids out.”
And because Lorenzen continues to share his story both with appearances around Kentucky and with frequent updates on the Project’s Facebook page, there are people reaching out to thank him and inspire him.
“When I get out of bed, I’ll grab my phone and start reading messages, like, ‘I was 340 (pounds) and I’m down to 305,'” he said. “It’s like, get your butt out of bed and go do what you gotta do!”
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