Have you heard about what Tom Brady and Gisele eat? Or what about vegan athletes like Venus Williams? It was a conversation that came up at For The Win last week, as we all munched on the junk food sitting around the office and sipped our coffee. So six FTW staffers took a challenge: Pick an athlete’s diet and stick to it for two days. Here’s how we did:

1. The Todd Bowles diet

Brandon Marshall shared the diet on his Instagram account last month after he lost 19 pounds on it.

Dieter: Charles Curtis

What I ate:

Day 1 breakfast: Two eggs over easy, blueberries and raspberries

Day 1 lunch: Chicken cutlet, broccoli

Day 1 dinner: Flounder, bok choy, quinoa … and a lite ginger/soy sauce (oops!)

Snacks: Salted chickpeas, black beans, protein drink after a workout

Day 2 breakfast: two eggs over easy, blueberries and raspberries … two slices of bread (ugh)

Day 2 lunch: Chicken cutlet, avocado, broccoli

Day 2 dinner: Salmon, roasted Brussel sprouts

Preparation: I looked at Marshall’s posts on the diet and tried my best to recreate the dishes. Bok choy replaced cabbage because ew, steamed cabbage.

Did I cheat? Yes, yes I did. And I’m not proud of it, but I felt it was impossible to write while my stomach consumed itself. I needed bread. I wanted a little flavor on my fish. Don’t athletes have “cheat days” too? I failed you, Brandon Marshall.

General thoughts: I had respect for pro athletes’ dedication to staying in ridiculous shape, but now, I have even deeper respect. Until I consumed carbs, I was pretty exhausted even though I pushed myself to do a workout to further simulate the experience. But I simply got a taste of the experience and cheated a few times – how could guys like Marshall do it day in and day out without cheating? That’s dedication.

2. Jamie McMurray, NASCAR driver

McMurray shared his diet with For The Win earlier this year.

Dieter: Nate Scott

What I ate:

Day 1 breakfast: Coffee, yogurt with blueberries

Day 1 lunch: Beef brisket sandwich with cole slaw and pickles, plus a side of baked beans and mac &cheese

Day 1 dinner: Steak

Day 2 breakfast: Coffee, yogurt with blueberries

Day 2 lunch: Big Mac and an order of french fries

Day 2 dinner: Ordered fish on an airplane, regretted it, ate pretzels

Did I cheat?: I honestly don’t know how anyone could cheat at this diet, but I had some pretzels, which he didn’t specifically mention as something he eats.

Why did I cheat?: I wanted some pretzels.

General thoughts: I’ll ride with McMurray any day of the week.

3. Venus Williams, raw food vegan

Dieter: Ted Berg

What I ate: Tons of fruits and vegetables, some nuts and seeds, a couple of vegan protein bars from a health-food place around the corner that I had never been to before in four years of living here, and one bag of particularly disgusting “Blueberry Hemp Snacks.”

Did I cheat? Over the two days, I drank four cups of iced coffee — which I think is a no-no. I had all four of them with milk, which is most definitely a no-no. I know from past experience that giving up coffee would have meant giving up being able to focus on a computer screen, so I had to compromise. And coffee sucks without milk.

Overall thoughts: I mostly chose Venus Williams’ diet by working backwards. When I’m not eating sandwiches or Taco Bell, I try to eat mostly meats, fruits and vegetables, and so I knew following the diet of some paleo athlete would mean only some minor adjustments and a couple days’ worth of dedication to not cheating. I thought this post would be funniest and most interesting if I found a diet as far from my own as possible, so I settled on this one because meat means so much to me. I even pre-wrote in my head parts of a bleak and desperate post about going two days without juicy, delicious meat and how hard it was.

Only then I tried it and found out it really wasn’t so bad. I mean, yeah, I felt hungry a lot of the time, but I typically feel hungry at most times besides the hour after I’ve eaten a giant meal anyway. I missed meat, certainly, and found myself salivating at the sight of the burgers being enjoyed in restaurants’ outdoor-seating sections near my apartment. But fruits and vegetables, even raw, can be fairly tasty on their own, and limiting myself to them for two days just wasn’t terribly difficult. If anything, I learned that a bunch of my otherwise cool and smart co-workers have weak constitutions and pampered sensibilities, as I found them whining about not being able to eat cookies when meanwhile I’m out here giving up meat.

Roadblocks: The big thing is the cost. I can fill up on about two dollars’ worth of chicken, but it costs more than twice that much for a little thing of blackberries that hardly accounts for a whole meal.

4. Jordan Burroughs, Team USA wrestler

Burroughs shared his diet with For The Win earlier this year.

Dieter: Nina Mandell

What I ate:

Day 1 breakfast: Banana, peanut butter, spinach, berry and Greek yogurt smoothie.

Day 1 lunch: This juice



After this I was really hungry and having the most trouble focusing, so I emailed a spokesperson for USA Wrestling to ask Jordan how he did this. Jordan, it turns out was kind of busy because of the Olympics, where he will be competing and likely will win another gold medal. So after whining a bunch to my co-workers, I quit, really for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Sorry, diet challenge.

Did I cheat? Yup. A lot.

Preparation: I made a smoothie the night before and bought those ridiculously expensive juices from Whole Foods.

Overall thoughts: I picked badly when it came to this diet challenge and hope that for his sake Jordan left a lot out when he was telling me what he ate earlier this year. Also, that juice was surprisingly good.

5. Tia Blanco, pro surfer

Blanco posts a lot about her diet on Instagram, which was really helpful.

Dieter: Hemal Jhaveri

What I ate:

Day 1 breakfast: Coffee

Day 1 lunch: Grilled vegetable Panini, potato chips and a pickle.

Day 1 dinner: Traditional Indian food. Basically, a vegetable side dish and roti, plus rice.

Snack: Figs, almonds, and rice crackers.

Day 2 breakfast: Coffee

Day 2 snack: Watermelon juice and four figs

Day 2 lunch: Vegetable soup

Day 2 dinner: Same traditional Indian dinner: vegetable, roti, a mustard green soup and rice.

Day 2 post-dinner: rice crackers and tea

Did I cheat? Hell yeah. I didn’t skip my morning coffee with milk, which is really the only thing I eat before noon. There ended up being some budget-level grated parmesan on my grilled panini, but since that was mostly artificial stuff anyway, I figured it doesn’t really count.

But otherwise I was pretty good. The only time I had to make a real decision to sacrifice was when I skipped eating an ice cream sandwich Tuesday night.

Roadblocks: I’m already a very strict vegetarian so going vegan for a couple of days wasn’t a huge deal, but I cheated enough to know that I would never really make the full sacrifice of not eating dairy. Like, cheese just tastes way too good. Sorry, guys.

Preparation: I told my sister, who does the cooking in my house, “Hey, I have to go vegan for a few days” to which she replied, “You’re so dumb.” But she did pack me very vegan friendly snacks for work.

Overall thoughts: I would be a very good vegan if I could cheat every so often. But I wouldn’t give up cheese in my burritos, or cream in my coffee, or pizza, so actually maybe I would suck. What I did realize is that I don’t have a ton of dairy in my daily diet. Some cream, a bowl of yogurt here and there and I’m good.

I think that most extreme diets are stupid, but going vegan isn’t really the extreme if you’re already mindful about what you eat. Plus, I went to yoga both days I was going vegan, so I did walk around with a sense of moral superiority.

6. Tom Brady

Brady’s personal chef opened up about the QB’s diet earlier this year.



Dieter: Charlotte Wilder

What I ate:

The saddest meals in America (Brady doesn’t eat sugar, caffeine, wheat, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, eggplants, fruit — except bananas in smoothies—, dairy, cooked olive oil, iodized salt, anything fun).

Day 1 breakfast: Hard boiled egg and a banana (Tom eats bananas in smoothies sometimes and I was desperate already).

Day 1 lunch: Pathetic salad of romaine lettuce, chicken (he only sometimes eats chicken, but that means he does eat chicken, so I went for it), asparagus, and broccoli with only olive oil and balsamic on it.

Day 1 snacks: A few peanuts (I didn’t find anything that said he couldn’t eat those, so I went for it, though he probably can’t).

Day 1 dinner: Leftover salmon and grilled summer squash.

Day 2 breakfast: A sad egg again for breakfast, but no banana.

Day 2 lunch: Same lame salad.

Day 2 dinner: More leftover salmon and summer squash (I made way too much food on Sunday night, apparently).

Preparation: I didn’t. I forgot we were doing this, so I went to the farmer’s market on Sunday and bought these beautiful blackberries, blueberries, a loaf of bread, and huge hunk of cheese, and then on Monday morning (before I ate breakfast, though), I remembered. Fortunately, I’d made an uncharacteristically healthy dinner on Sunday of grilled salmon and summer squash, which resulted in tons of leftovers, so for dinner on Monday the only rule I’d be breaking was that I cooked with olive oil. Otherwise, I was at the mercy of the USA TODAY cafeteria, and couldn’t eat the exciting things in my fridge at home. The situation wasn’t looking great, but neither was Nina’s green juice that she pulled out of her bag that she bought the night before, so maybe prep wouldn’t have saved me anyway.

Did I cheat? Yes. Like, a lot. It turns out that I am terrible at dieting: I had coffee, because I am not a masochist, and three chocolate-covered raisins on Monday morning before I remembered I wasn’t supposed to. I also ate almost an entire bag of Newman’s Own tiny chocolate chip cookies while I watched/wrote about The Bachelorette on Monday night because I was so nervous about who would win. I was also starving and I lack self-control.

Roadblocks: Psychological ones. I do not understand how you can live like this. The diet made me really angry at Tom Brady, and I technically didn’t even follow it. You can’t eat anything on this stupid regiment, so the only way you could do this without wanting to put yourself in a blender is if you have a personal chef who’s willing to make “cheese” out of ground up cashews and trick you into eating lentils for dessert.

Which, to be fair, Brady does have. But I, a mere mortal, do not. What I did possess, when I was able to stick to not eating normal foods, was a very bad mental state and a sense of being virtuous for eating all those vegetables. But virtuosity has nothing on chocolate chip cookies, so this was not worth it. Also, this diet won’t even make you good at sports — I threw a football before and after I ate like Tom Brady, and it went the exact same distance both times.