- San Francisco 49ers superstar George Kittle is considered one of the top tight ends in the NFL.
- He told Business Insider how he fuels up on game days depending on the time of kickoff.
George Kittle is very particular about how he fuels up ahead of each game.
The 6-foot-4, 250-pound San Francisco 49ers superstar — who is widely considered one of the top tight ends in the NFL — is remarkably steadfast in his pre-game regimen. In the 24 to 36 hours between his final walkthrough on Saturday and kickoff on Sunday, Kittle told Business Insider his "routine is a hundred percent the same all the time."
And that translates to his pre-game meals, too, he said while discussing his partnership with Alka-Seltzer. The only thing that varies for Kittle is whether he's eating his go-to pre-game breakfast or his go-to pre-game lunch, which depends on the time his game begins any given week.
If he's playing in an early afternoon game, Kittle said he'll "usually only have one meal" — breakfast — because you're going to be at the stadium for three to four hours before the game."
"If it's a breakfast thing, I'll eat hash browns, over easy eggs, grilled peppers, onions, and ham and/or bison or turkey sausage — something like that," Kittle told Business Insider. "And then I mix that all up like a big breakfast bowl. That'd be my breakfast one."
If the game starts closer to the evening — think Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, or Thursday Night Football — the four-time Pro Bowler still starts the day with his jam-packed breakfast bowl. Then, later, he'll add a second large meal for "lunch or right before I get on the bus to go" to hold him over until after the game.
"It's usually two small filets with a plate of pasta and some broccoli," Kittle said. "And sweet potato if they have it."
The meal lines up with his preference for lean meats. Kittle recently told GQ he eats "chicken and steak, as clean as it gets" and is "not big into much else."
In recent years, the 30-year-old has added another pre-game boost — one fueled by superstition — to his meal plan: a pumpkin loaf from Starbucks. But unlike the rest of Kittle's hyper-regimented formula, the somewhat surprising pre-game snack he shares with his teammates has been an inconsistent part of his agenda.
"It is on and off a little bit," Kittle told BI. "We were going like a year and a half strong, and then last year we lost three out of four games, and so we stopped doing the pumpkin loaf and then the second that we stopped doing it, we won 12 straight."
"So we were like, okay, no pumpkin loaf for a little bit," he added.
But as of the 49ers' bout against the Seattle Seahawks on Thanksgiving Day, the loaf is back. Kittle and company "restarted it up" ahead of the 31-13 rout of their division rivals.
"We were in Seattle and that's the place of the first Starbucks ever, and so we had to get a little pumpkin loaf there," Kittle explained. "And I think it went pretty well for us on Thursday Night Football."