Carmelo Anthony Made a Drastic Nutrition Change That’s Still Helpful Today

Getty Images Houston Rockets forward Carmelo Anthony

NBA free agent, Carmelo Anthony has been in shape the last five years.

The secret?

One diet change in 2014: he cut out carbs.

Ah yes, carbs!

Anthony cut carbs and meat from his diet and worked with trainer Idan Ravin.

In the 2013-2014 New York Knicks media guide Anthony was once listed at 235 pounds. In the summer of 2014, Anthony easily shed an estimated 30 to 40 pounds. ‘

“It wasn’t more about my diet, it was more about the training that I was doing and really pushing myself to that limit,” Anthony told me.

“I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time — maybe since I first came into the league.”

Anthony, like LeBron James, traded bulk for lean muscle. James’ program consisted of gaining 50% of calories from healthy fats, 30% from protein and 20% from healthy carbs.

“I applaud LeBron for doing what he’s doing,” said Anthony. “The diet that he went on, I don’t think that I could do it, just to be honest with you. That’s a hard diet that takes a lot of focus.”

A 10-time NBA All-Star, Anthony is looking for a new NBA team. Melo signed with the Houston Rockets this summer after clearing waivers in a trade that shipped him from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Atlanta Hawks.

The Rockets traded him to the Chicago Bulls before the NBA’s trade deadline and was later waived.

The third overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, the Los Angeles Lakers had been leaning toward signing Anthony for the rest of the season — until a mound of LA losses occured.

Anthony has averaged 24 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3 assists in his career with the Thunder, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets.

A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly.

He can score!

But he’s also contemplated retirement.

In an interview with Taryn Finley of the Huffington Post recently, Melo suggested he is at peace with the fact he may not play much longer:

“I’m sure [retirement is] coming soon. I’d be sitting lying to you if I said it’s not coming soon. I think I want it to come soon. I don’t think I want to do this forever, but because you love it so much, it’s hard to give it up. At the end of the day, at anything you do, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. But as long as you feel good with that.”

“I hope above all else that whatever it is, however he wants it to end, he gets to walk away and go down on his own terms,” Quentin Richardson, Anthony’s former Knicks teammate told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.

“He is one of the best 300 players in the world that’s not playing,” TNT’s Kenny Smith told me.

“You can’t say he’s not one of the best 300 players.”

A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly.

“I don’t know if they remember how good of a player he was and still is,” Blake Griffin told Basketball Society Online’s, Landon Buford during the regular season.

“Sometimes it’s the situation. It sucks to see as a basketball player to see people act [as if] he is something [that] he is not.”

“He’s a great player,” New York Knicks captain, Lance Thomas told me in December.

“He’s a great teammate, most importantly he’s a great human being and he’s always been a great advocate for the NBA as a brand. So I just want him to get back on a team and play the sport he loves that’s paved a way for him and his family, and he just loves to play basketball, so I really want him back on a team.”