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and the playersвЂ™ union, recognizing more must be done, offer retired players medical exams, health club memberships and other services.

I dialed back the carbs, added whole grains, couscous, quinoa.вЂќ вЂњI reversed everything I was doing,вЂќ said Thomas, who weighed about 320 pounds in the N.F.L. He has since lost about 50 pounds by eating less and eating healthier. Thomas, who retired last year after 11 seasons with the Browns, gained roughly 30 pounds after entering the N.F.L. The former linemen Matt Birk and Nick Hardwick shed dozens of pounds after retiring and publicized their achievement.

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A study published in The American Journal of Medicine found that for every 10 pounds football players gained from high school to college, or from college to the professional level, the risk of heart disease rose 14 percent compared with players whose weight changed little during the same period. players, according to a study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.ДЄnother study showed that the average weight of offensive linemen ballooned 27 percent, from 249 pounds in the 1970s to 315 pounds in the 2000s, as the passing game evolved. From 1942 to 2011, they have gained an average of three-quarters of a pound to two pounds a year, about twice the average gain for all N.F.L. Linemen have been getting heavier, faster. The index, which is viewed as a general indication of weight relative to size, does not take into account muscle mass. A third of those screened were at 35 or above, or significantly obese. About two-thirds of those players - not just linemen - had a body mass index above 30, which is considered moderately obese. The Living Heart Foundation has examined several thousand former players since it was formed in 2001 with financial backing from the N.F.L. вЂњIt was see food, eat food,вЂќ Thomas said. He gobbled burgers, frozen pizzas and large bowls of ice cream. Joe Thomas, an All-Pro lineman with the Cleveland Browns, said that as a freshman in college he ate every few hours to gain the 40 pounds he needed to get to 290 pounds.

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Coaches often leave it up to the players to decide how to gain weight. In some cases, players were converted from tight ends to down linemen, and needed extra weight to play the new position. Many linemen say they were encouraged by their high school and college coaches to gain weight to win scholarships and to be drafted by the N.F.L., where a lot of players were required to become even bigger. вЂњTheir eating habits are hard to shed when they stop playing, and when they get obese, they get exposed to diabetes, hypertension and cardiac problems.вЂќ

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вЂњLinemen are bigger, and in todayвЂ™s world, rightly or wrongly, they are told to bulk up,вЂќ said Henry Buchwald, a specialist in bariatric surgery at the University of Minnesota who works with the Living Heart Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides free medical tests to former N.F.L.

Blocking for a $25-million-a-year quarterback, it turns out, can put linemen in the high-risk category for many of the ailments health experts readily encourage people to avoid.

This is a big reason that former linemen, compared with other football players and the general population, have higher rates of hypertension, obesity and sleep apnea, which can lead to chronic fatigue, poor diet and even death. Without the structure of a team and the guidance of coaches for the first time in decades, many of them lose the motivation to stay in shape, or cannot even try, as damage to their feet, knees, backs and shoulders limits their ability to exercise. In retirement, these huge men are often unable to lose the weight they needed to do their jobs. But their great girth, which coaches encouraged and which helped turn some players into multimillion-dollar commodities, leaves many of them prone to obesity problems. In the past few decades, the N.F.L.вЂ™s emphasis on the passing game and quarterback protection has led teams to stock their offensive and defensive lines with ever-larger men, many of them weighing well over 300 pounds. An insidious scourge that has nothing to do with head trauma is ravaging retired N.F.L.

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