Luka Garza is an American-Bosnian professional basketball player. Garza plays for the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He comes from an athletic family. His both parents have played basketball and are retired players.
While Luka was playing college basketball, he was the consensus pick for national college player of the year for the season 2020-21. He was drafted by the NBA in 2021. At first, playing at the national level, proved to be quite hard for Garza.
The factor that was making it more difficult was his weight. He weighed around 272 pounds when Luka joined the NBA. The heavyweight was slowing Garza down. After a few tough games, he decided to get rid of the unhealthy weight once and for all.
He ended up losing 30 pounds. This was a big shock to his fans as he had just entered the NBA. He got a lot of questions about how did he do that. So, all of Luka’s fans, while Luka is busy playing basketball, let me answer your questions about his weight loss.
Luka Garza’s Weight Loss Journey
Soon after joining the NBA, Garza embarked on his journey to lose weight. He abstained from all unhealthy food and substituted it with all healthy and organic food. He also did a lot of workouts in the gym in addition to his daily workout routine as an athlete.
Luka practiced modesty in consuming calories. Following are diet and workout plans that helped Luka get rid of extra and unnecessary pounds and become quicker.
Luka is not the only athlete who has lost 30 pounds. Find out how the Canadian professional baseball first baseman, Josh Naylor, lost 30 pounds.
Luka’s Diet Plan
In order to shed pounds, Garza opted for the flexitarian diet plan. As its name suggests, flexitarian is a flexible diet. It is an alternative to a more strict diet of vegetarian. Even though the main focus of the flexitarian diet is on eating vegetables and fruits, occasionally having meat is allowed.
Garza opted for this diet because he wasn’t ready to go full vegetarian. As an athlete he needed protein. Most of the time, Garza ate veggies and fruits for lunch and dinner, however, he also ate chicken and fish occasionally.
However, following the flexitarian diet proved to be quite hard to follow. Talking about the diet, Garza said, “It’s been tough. I’ve been tough on myself to get myself in shape for this, but it’s been worth it.” After Luka lost a huge amount of weight, he switched to a more balanced diet.
Nevertheless, he will remember how the flexitarian diet helped Luka in losing pounds. It wasn’t only the diet plan that Garza focused on. He paid equal attention to his workout routine as well. As it was equally important.
Luka’s Workout Plan
Garza would visit the gym at 7 in the morning. He would do all types of cardio workouts. From weight lifting to push-ups and from squats to boxing. Garza also spent a lot of time cycling and swimming. In this way, he burned enough calories to get lighter.
After losing 30 pounds, Garza said in his interview, “The biggest thing I’m happy about is just showing that I’ve kind of transformed my body a little bit. I’m different, I’m moving better.”
He added, “I was having some self-evaluation of how am I going to be able to translate to the NBA. What can I do to get myself quicker and faster to impress people to want to draft me?”
Before & After Weight Loss
Garza achieved an amazing feat by losing 30 pounds! He did this by sticking to a flexitarian diet and hitting the gym for 2 hours every day. This hard work brought his weight down from 272 pounds to a healthier 242 pounds. That’s quite a transformation!
Final Words
Life is the name of constant change and in this change, we see a lot of different things. By getting drafted for the NBA, Garza saw a change as well. It was up to him whether he would avail the opportunity or let it slip by. What Luka did is well-explained here.
Also, read how The American professional golfer, Christina Kim, lost 60 pounds by eating healthy food and exercising.