Mike O’Hearn and NFL Veteran Heath Evans on Nutrition for Teenage Athletes

On Mar 18, 2023

Episode 37 of The Mike O’Hearn Show was published on Generation Iron‘s YouTube channel on March 17, 2023. The show’s namesake was joined by 10-year NFL veteran Heath Evans. Evans was drafted into the NFL in 2001 and played for the Seattle Seahawks, Miami Dolphins, New York Giants, and New Orleans Saints during his decade-long career — he won SuperBowl XLIV with the Saints in 2010.

Evans retired in August 2011 and became an analyst for the NFL Network until 2018. As a guest on The Mike O’Hearn Show, Evans and O’Hearn spoke about nutrition for young athletes. Check it out below:

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The discussion opened with Evans’ experience training the Garden of Life CEO Jordan Rubin‘s son, Joshua. Evans met Joshua when he weighed 160 pounds and, by Evans’ analysis, was not a gifted athlete. In the three years they have trained since combining Rubin’s nutritional programming with Evans’ training protocols, Joshua has yet to see a plateau in his progress.

When O’Hearn and Evans were in their teenage years playing football, wrestling, or running on the track team, their caloric intake was in such a surplus that O’Hearn “didn’t know what a surplus technically really [was].” Combinations of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, canned tuna, chocolate milk, and pasta consumed every two hours were part of O’Hearn’s routine.

Evans and O’Hearn believe that the vast amount of nutrition information piped through influences on social media like Instagram is “misleading” and, in Evans’ words, “uneducated.” O’Hearn furthers that notion to suggest that education is often conflated with intelligence, which he doesn’t believe is always the case.

Evans and Rubin have Joshua Rubin consuming 10,000 calories per day at 17 years old, with his primary meat sources being water buffalo and duck eggs. Evans and Rubin feel that the nutritional density of water buffalo is part of why Joshua has not endured any training plateaus thus far as he ramps up to play college football.

O’Hearn suggests to parents of children who are aspiring to play competitive sports or compete in competitive bodybuilding to not diet their kids down the way adult bodybuilders do. He feels young teenagers who are going through puberty should have a nutrition program that helps support that natural growth.Be sure to watch the entire episode with Heath Evans to hear his insight on how he navigates the nutrition for the teenage athletes he trains.

Mike O’Hearn and NFL Veteran Heath Evans on Nutrition for Teenage Athletes

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