JACKSONVILLE, Fla -- Jacksonville Jaguars' running back, Montell Owens is regarded as one of the NFL's top special teams players. The two-time pro-bowler is doing something that most people would consider radical for a professional athlete - eating a vegan diet.
For the past two years, Montell has really focused on his nutrition and he is recognizing how eating a plant-based diet is improving his performance on and off the football field.
According to Owens, "I really found that living foods, plant based products, whole foods are the things that give life essentially." He continues, "After I play a tough game, the more your body can spend time healing itself rather than trying to remove the harmful chemicals, by-products or agents, the more it can spend time doing what it wants to do, the faster you'll recover and that's really the name of the game."
Owens was introduced to this new outlook on food by his wife after she read the book, THRIVE: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life. The author, Brendan Brazier is a former professional ironman triathlete and Owens knew he was the perfect person to give him advice on not only training hard, but training effectively.
Brendan states, "There are things that a lot of people want, but don't have and I started to realize they could all achieve that through good nutrition. For me I just see that as the base for success if your nutrition is dialed in your odds of being successful whatever you are trying to do go up."
Both Owens and Brazier support the idea that the foods you eat can either work for you or against you. They say when you eat whole foods including grains, beans, produce and other nutrient-dense sources, then your body is able to recover faster after a workout which translates into your muscles building faster so you can train harder and improve quicker.
Brendan has worked with a wide spectrum of professional athletes including UFC fighters, baseball players, hockey players and even NASCAR drivers. He is noticing a growing trend for athletes to take their diet into consideration when trying to improve their performance. Other NFL players including Tony Gonzalez and Arian Foster have adopted a plant-strong diet and it's changing the face of the game.
"Believe it or not the the game is slowly but surely transitioning over into a clean eating, conscious lifestyle," says Owens. "Football's a game of inches, and if you're one inch in front of somebody that's the difference between a win or a loss."
Both of these top-athletes know they have a winning combination when it comes to nutrition and exercise.
Make sure to check out The Girls Gone Green website next week for a longer version of this story as it dives deeper into a plant-based diet and the relationship between these two amazing athletes. http://www.thegirlsgonegreen.com
