Tom Brady's diet drove a wedge in his relationship with Donald Trump, book claims
- Tom Brady and Donald Trump became friends during Brady's second NFL season in 2001.
- But a new book claims Trump said their friendship soured because of Brady's notoriously strict diet.
Tom Brady and Donald Trump don't agree on food much these days, according to an excerpt from the forthcoming book "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future" by Jonathan Martin, per Yahoo.
The two became friends upon first meeting in 2001 when Trump asked Brady to judge a Miss USA competition. They regularly complimented each other in public statements throughout the early 2000s.
But according to Martin, Trump said their friendship began to sour after Brady married his wife Gisele Bundchen and began following a notoriously strict diet and lifestyle in 2005, Yahoo reported.
"The football star, Trump said, had not been the same after marrying Gisele Bündchen, who insisted on cooking him a painstakingly health-conscious diet," Martin wrote.
In 2004, before Brady's marriage to Bündchen in 2009, Trump said that he'd wanted Brady to marry his daughter Ivanka Trump.
"I think he and Ivanka would make a great combination," Trump told Playboy at the time.
Brady told Howard Stern on Sirius XM in April 2020 that he chose to distance himself from Trump when the former president launched his presidential campaign in 2015 and asked the former NFL star to speak on his behalf at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
"It was uncomfortable for me because you can't undo things, not that I would undo a friendship, but political support is a lot different than the support of a friend," Brady told Stern.
Brady's diet restricted most foods, while Trump is a McDonald's fan
Brady, who played for 22 NFL seasons until his retirement this year at the age of 44, followed one of the strictest diets of any professional athlete in his bid to stay on the field that long.
Brady started shifting his eating habits in 2005 when he hired his longtime body coach Alex Guerrero. He followed a consistent diet and recovery routine, and hardly ever strayed from his set meal plan, he wrote in his 2017 book "The TB12 Method." He famously earmarked several major foods groups as completely off-limits, including dairy, sugar, gluten, refined carbs, caffeine, processed meats, and some fruits and vegetables like strawberries, eggplant, and tomatoes.
Brady also got 80% of his calories from plant-based sources, and just 20% of his food was meat or fish.
The purpose of this was to avoid foods that are believed to cause inflammation, which can increase the risk of injury and organ damage, according to WebMD.
Trump, on the other hand, followed a very different lifestyle. His consisted of much more soda and fast food.
The former president's quarters on Air Force One were filled with McDonald's, KFC, pizza takeout, and Coca-Cola, according to The Times.
Trump told Fox News that he often didn't eat breakfast, but would break that rule if there was a McDonald's McMuffin available in the morning. He also skipped lunch most days, according to the 2018 book "Let Trump Be Trump," by Corey Lewandowski.
Lewandowski wrote that dinner was where Trump got most of his calories, and McDonald's was his go-to dinner destination. The former president would usually eat two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and a small McDonald's chocolate shake, which equates to 2,430 calories, according to the McDonald's Nutrition Calculator.
Trump is more restrictive than Brady in one area though: alcohol.
Brady occasionally drinks alcohol and said on Twitter that he celebrated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl LV victory parade with tequila in response to a video that showed him drunk at the parade. But Trump told the Daily Mail in 2015 that he has never consumed alcohol in his life.