When the Green Bay Packers drafted Robert Brown in 1982, he weighed 240 pounds. At 6 feet, 3 inches, that’s technically obese. But he wasn’t big enough. “After my first season, the Packers wanted me to put on weight because they wanted me bigger” in order to play defensive end, says Brown, now 55 and retired in Columbia, Maryland.

So he amped up his weight training regimen and boosted his caloric intake by adding meals, snacks and late-night protein shakes. In total, he ate about 6,000 calories a day. “I kind of force-fed myself,” Brown says. Over the next four years, he put on about 40 pounds.

It paid off. Literally, he avoided the fines teams commonly impose on players who weigh in outside of their required range for their position. Professionally, it was worth it too. “It helped with strength and power — the ability to handle bigger guys across the line of scrimmage,” says Brown, who played for 11 years and holds the record for all-time games played for a defensive lineman in Packers’ history. Bulking up was necessary, he says, “for me to survive, for me to have a career.”

More and more, that seems to be the case, says Jeffrey Potteiger, a professor in the Department of Movement Science at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where he’s also dean of The Graduate School. In a study out this year in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Potteiger and colleagues found that the average weight of professional offensive and defensive linemen increased 60 pounds between 1942 and 2011, in part due to how some of the game’s rules have changed to make smaller, quicker lineman less valuable. “In the 1950s and 60s, 250 pounds was considered very big,” Potteiger says. “Nowadays, you could not play offensive or defensive line at 260 pounds. Now, everybody is over 300 pounds.”

That’s troubling, since obesity is linked to a host of health conditions including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers. Excess weight is particularly a problem when it sits around the middle, since such fat distribution is linked to metabolic syndrome, or an increased risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, says Potteiger, who’s found that high school and college football players with excess belly fat are more likely to have metabolic syndrome.

“Football players are generally viewed as being physically active — and they are, and they’re generally viewed as being in great shape — and they are,” Potteiger says. “But there’s a subset of those players who have to pay extra attention to their health.”

Fat, Fit or Both?

There are plenty of health benefits that come with being a professional athlete — obese football players included. After all, regular exercise is linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, some cancers and an early death, as well as better bones and mental health. “The fact that they’re so physically active and fit really kind of protects them [from some health risks], just like anyone from the general public,” Potteiger says. “There’s enough literature to support that that’s better than being fat and unfit.”

What’s more, for people like Brown, “fat” isn’t the right word. By the time he reached 280 pounds, only 9 percent of them were body fat. That’s not uncommon: Potteiger’s study found that while professional football players have gotten heavier over time, their body composition hasn’t significantly changed. For at least some of their muscular physique, they can thank improved training tactics and modern nutrition, says Dave Ellis, a sports dietitian and past president of the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association.

“The amount of outcome-based research that we have to go on now on fueling tactics that really … help people meet their goals and improve performance — that’s really been a rich story in the last decade,” he says. “Before that, the quality of the information was poor.”

On the other hand, being a heavy professional football player comes with considerable long-term health risks — outside of head injuries. While some research shows that NFL players live longer than the average American male, players with BMIs of 30 or more (considered obese) have double the risk of dying from heart disease. Even people like Brown whose weight is more muscle than fat can face associated health issues such as arthritis and other joint problems, according to a 2009 University of Michigan report on retired NFL players.

“If we’re concerned about health, we shouldn’t be looking to professional athletes as our role models,” says Linda Bacon, an associate nutritionist at the University of California–Davis and author of “Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight.” “Some of the things that are required to perform well are not good health practices in the long run.”

But there are ways to balance health with performance, Potteiger says. “It’s such a complex issue because if you don’t get bigger, your chances of success on any level are severely reduced,” he says. But if you do, your chances of good long-term health may shrink. “So, as these people get bigger,” Potteiger adds, “they have to do it the right way.”

That means gaining less than 1 pound each week, eating 1 to 1.5 grams of protein for every 2 pounds of body weight, eating enough carbohydrates without going overboard on the calories, resistance training three to five days a week, making room for plenty of rest and recovery, and avoiding “shortcuts” like performance-enhancing drugs, Potteiger says.

He also suggests coaches, trainers, sports dietitians and other team leaders monitor players’ blood pressure, belly fat and other signs of metabolic syndrome — not just their weight. The smart ones already do, Ellis says. “It’s not just the scale,” he says.

Game Over

Bulking up for the sake of the game (and a job, no less) is one concern, but what happens when professional football players’ careers end is another. The University of Michigan survey of over 1,000 retired NFL players found they were more likely to have BMIs over 35 — considered a significant health risk — than men in the general population, although BMI doesn’t account for how much weight is muscle versus fat. “They’ve been told to gain weight, gain weight, gain weight, maintain this body mass — and now all of a sudden, they retire,” Potteiger says. “And we know that weight loss for big people is difficult. If it was easy, we wouldn’t have the obesity problem that we have.”

Brown, who’s now 325 pounds and about 24 years out of the game, says one of the biggest challenges for players is going from the structure and routines in the NFL to none at all. “A lot of guys … just don’t know how to eat, when to eat, how to exercise because they never had to do it by themselves,” he says.

Fortunately, they don’t. The NFL Player Care Foundation, for example, hosts events around the country where former players get screened for prostate cancer, blood pressure, mental health problems and more. The Trust (run by the NFL Players Association), partners with other organizations like the YMCA to get health information and resources in the hands of former players. And the NFL incorporates nutrition and fitness information into retirement transition programs, says Dwight Hollier, a former linebacker and NFL vice president of wellness and clinical services. “We know that weight management is a challenge for some of our former players,” he says. “We will continue to support these players and connect them with the proper resources needed.”

The Living Heart Foundation, an organization that promotes retired athletes’ health, and the NFL Players Association, which represents professional football players, have also partnered to sponsor programs to help retired players manage and lose weight.

In one such program in the District of Columbia, seven retired players attended weekly sessions that involved health education and physical activity, such as going for a walk or attending a spin class together. Researchers also gave participants Fitbits to track their progress and encourage them to compete outside of the sessions. “We really tried to tailor components knowing their interest and shared history,” says study lead Melissa Napolitano, associate professor of prevention and community health at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. After six months, the players had lost an average of 18 pounds — and 1.5 pounds of belly fat. Napolitano hopes the results will spur more funding for similar programs in the future.

“Obesity and overweight is a national public health issue, and retired players — and any retired athlete, for that matter — are unfortunately not immune to some of the negative health consequences,” Napolitano says. “The awareness is there — it’s just going to take a little time to build up programs and build up a network to really help the retired players.”

For Brown, the goal is to drop to 300 pounds by this summer. One day, he’d like to weigh 250. But to get there, his regimen looks a lot different than it did when he was aiming to bulk up to 280 pounds: He exercises in the pool or on a stationary bike, since his years in the NFL took a toll on his joints, and he tries to follow a healthy daily diet. “Obviously,” he says, “I can’t eat 6,000 calories.”

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Are Football Players Too Fat? originally appeared on usnews.com