Article content continued

“My biggest thing was watching my grandmother pass away from diabetes,” he said. “I had another family member in the hospital with fluid in his lungs. He had a damaged heart. I had an uncle who passed away after a heart attack.

“Even though I am active, even though I am healthy, certain things go a long way if you just cut them out. I look at their lives as examples of somewhere I don’t want to go down.”

Sullinger is never going to have one of those professional athlete, rock-hard bodies. He knows he didn’t win the metabolism lottery when he was born.

“I got the other end of that stick for sure,”he said. “I definitely did. I can’t just come out here and eat whatever I want. There are guys who can eat, not work out and still lose weight. I am not that guy. Every day is going to be a battle. Every day I have to do something, whether it’s just getting up and walking around. Just anything to burn calories and keep the weight off.”

Sullinger also discovered this past summer that his sleep habits definitely impact his eating habits, and he’s been changing them, as well.

“Sleep has a big-time connection to my weight gain because my body is not properly resting at a certain point,” he said. “My metabolism is not working at the proper levels, so sleep is very important. There are times during the season going back all the way to high school I could stay up until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, wake up at 8:30 and just function. This summer I learned for me what foods I could and could not eat and on top of that (the importance of ) just getting my (steady) rest.”

Sullinger says there is no food he has given up that he craves, simply because he knows he doesn’t want to pay the cost of giving in to that craving.

“I am a very stubborn guy,” he admits. “We are all stubborn at some point, but what opened my eyes mostly is just the type of money and the type of trust guys with these higher-paid contracts have, and really it comes down to just one thing. Being a pro and taking care of their body.

“A lot of people didn’t trust me as far as body-wise. ‘Can he hold up? Can he play this amount of minutes?’ This year, I’m just looking forward to taking on that challenge.”