Enes Kanter details his former, astonishingly massive, eating habits
You look … different.
You hear that … a lot, as NBA training camps start up. Once-familiar faces come back with new tattoos, side parts, new uniforms, alternate uniforms, or a different shape altogether. On Tuesday, we'll delve into a few of these shapes, starting with the once-doughy Utah Jazz center Enes Kanter.
Kanter is an odd case, because his brief stint playing basketball overseas forced the NCAA into ruling him ineligible to play for the University of Kentucky during what would have been his freshman year in 2010-11. The NBA's prolonged lockout then extended Kanter's basketball hiatus, so by the time he showed up to camp in December of 2011, Kanter hadn't played any organized ball since his time at prep school ended in the spring of 2010. LeBron James was with the Cavs back then.
And Enes had been with the baklava, all along. He's down an astonishing 51 pounds as he enters Jazz camp this time around, but in discussing his former lifestyle as a nearly 300-pound performer, Kanter has us wondering how he even made it to half-court last season.
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From Bill Oram at the Salt Lake Tribune:
"First my breakfast: I was eating like six eggs, omelet with six eggs; seven or eight pancakes, with sugar, whipped cream, everything; then a breakfast burrito. That was just my breakfast. Then I came to practice and my lunch was just like pasta, chicken alfredo or whatever, and then a burger and an appetizer. Dessert? No. Dessert was at dinnertime. Dinnertime I ate another burger, a big meal again and a dessert."
My favorite part? "Pasta" for lunch. "Chicken alfredo, or whatever." Just your daily calorie allotment, before following it with "a burger and an appetizer."
To be fair, Kanter is 6-11 and leads a strenuous athletic lifestyle that demands massive quantities of food just to provide daily fuel to sustain his employment.
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To be fair, Enes Kanter should probably be dead by now. Even if he kept the dessert for dinnertime.
In a remarkable turnaround, spurred on by "seafood and salad" according to Kanter, he's down to 242 pounds. That's a trim that might not even be enough for a 6-11 center, even if Kanter prefers to do his damage for the perimeter. We thought as much until the Tribune passed along this photo, from Kanter's Twitter account:
Yeah, he'll be fine. And unlike Tyrus Thomas, it's good to get the bad eating habits out of the way before you can legally rent a car.
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