DALLAS — Look, Rob Ryan knows he's no male model.
That would be his son, Joseph, who works for the Campbell Agency in Dallas.
The Cowboys defensive coordinator knows he let himself go. He's not the same, slender athlete he was back at Southwestern Oklahoma State.
“Yeah, I'm fat,” Ryan says.
The words leave his mouth as easily as the double-meat hamburgers with extra cheese and jalapenos that once slid in.
Ryan is 55 pounds lighter today because of lap-band surgery. He tips the scales at 265 and vows to drop at least another 50 pounds to earn bragging rights over his twin brother, Rex, the New York Jets coach who also continues to lose weight with this procedure.
Rob did this for his health. He did it for his wife, Kristin, and his family.
He did it because the demands of his job make it difficult to imagine he could lose the weight on his own with diet and exercise.
Ryan is not alone in this struggle. Studies show that nearly two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese.
“Hey, everybody knows what you're supposed to do,” Ryan says. “Sometimes you just don't want to do that.
”I think this helps you do it. Honestly, it gets your mind right. It gets you in a place where you feel, maybe, ‘I don't need that', instead of just eating all the time for no reason.
“I think you just feel a hell of a lot better. I'm glad I did it.”
JUNK FOOD JUNKIE
It's September 2011, and Ryan is in his first season with the Cowboys. Assistant coaches arrive early and leave late — after almost everyone else in the building. It's that way in the NFL. Ryan likes to say he's no rocket scientist, “but I probably work more hours than they do.”
Ryan departs the team's Valley Ranch facility around midnight or 1 a.m. But he doesn't go straight to his home in Southlake. He stops by Whataburger or Burger King to pick up the biggest burgers they have.
Two of them.
Sometimes he'll skip the burger and go for a pizza.
“I can eat an entire pizza, easy,” says Ryan, whose van is littered with pizza boxes the day he arrives at Valley Ranch after the drive from Cleveland. “Not in an eating contest. I can just do it.
”I can eat anything, except that white one.“ Ryan is not a fan of pizza bianca.
But he loves candy. On the way to work one Monday morning, he finds an extra $70 in his pocket.
He pulls over and decides to spend it all on candy. Chocolate. Peanut butter. Skittles. ”An underappreciated candy right there,“ Ryan says.
He throws the bounty in a bowl on his desk and it's gone before the week ends.
”I don't think I overeat on the meal itself,“ Ryan says. ”It's all the junk food, the extra eating. It never stops.
“If you go out to dinner with me, you'll think I'm a normal guy. But I never stop.”
Food has always been a reward or a way to relieve stress. But he wasn't always big.
When he went to Southwestern Oklahoma to play baseball and wound up on the football team, he weighed 175 pounds.
He put on 20 pounds of muscle and it still wasn't enough.
“I was a skinny guy,” Ryan recalls. “I can remember weighing in when I was a freshman and sophomore in college and saying, ‘Damn, I wish I was heavier.'
”Well, you've got to be careful what you wish for.“
LONG HOURS ON THE JOB
Kristin Ralph meets Rob Ryan on a flight in the mid 1990s.
She quickly recognizes his poor eating habits as the two begin to date. Given the choice between a green bean casserole and grilled asparagus. .
Well, there is no choice.
Rob loves his burgers and pizza. He loves Mexican food. Shortly after they tie the knot, he tells Kristin, ”I never had a salad until I married you.“
He keeps the weight off early in their marriage because he runs three miles a day with the baby and dog. But as he climbs the coaching ladder, as the time he pours into his job increases, the pounds began to accumulate like so many empty candy wrappers and pizza boxes.
About six years into their 17-year marriage, he begins to put on weight. He finds himself with less time to workout. Diets don't stick.
”Out of nowhere it was like man, I got big,“ Ryan says.
The 175-pound college freshman is threatening to double his weight.
Rex has always been bigger than Rob. Not any more. Once Rex gets his lap-band in March of 2010 he begins to hound his brother to do the same. Rex's doctor recommends Dr. Adam Smith at Fort Worth Lap-Band, and the Jets coach passes the information along to his brother.
Rob finally relents. He meets with Dr. Smith in the spring of 2011 shortly after he joins the Cowboys and goes on a liquid diet to prep for the procedure. He gets all the way to the altar, then gets cold feet the night before the surgery and backs out.
Next Story
