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CHAPEL HILL – If you haven’t seen Mack Brown since last football season, you just might not recognize him. At least at first glance.

The North Carolina football coach embarked on a new lifestyle last January, and looks like a new man in many respects. And he feels like it, too.

“I’m in better shape than I’ve been in 20 years,” he said Tuesday during his summer press conference at the Kenan Football Center.

Brown has lost 35 pounds and “has more to go” before hitting his final goal of 50 pounds. He is proud of this accomplishment, as he should. Brown will be 72 when the Tar Heels open the season versus South Carolina on September 2, and it’s increasingly difficult to lose weight the older people get.

He jokes his wife, Sally, is a great cook as well as Italian, so her efforts in the kitchen make showing restraint a challenge for the Hall of Fame coach.

“She wants me to eat what she doesn’t eat, so that wasn’t good,” Brown said, laughing. “Partly, it was her fault, lack of discipline on my part.”

He went to strength and conditioning coach Brian Hess a couple of years ago saying he wanted to start working out, citing plenty of gained weight that began during Covid. Hess gave him an intense plan, though Brown wasn't ready for that.

“I said nope, I’m not going to do that,” he said, again chuckling.

Then a speaker came in and told the team a story about how a man stranded in the desert in Arizona fell cutting his arm badly. He had no food, no water, no cell service, and no mode of transportation. His arm was bleeding badly, so to save himself, he cut it off.

“That’s the only way he could live,” Brown said. “So, the (speaker) basically said, ‘If you’ve got something that’s not good in your life, cut it out. Cut it loose.’

“And I’m sitting here telling these players to be in great shape, I’m sitting here telling them to lose weight or gain weight, and here I am, I let myself get out of control and I got way too heavy.”

So, what have been the biggest changes?

Brown started fasting late last winter, he doesn’t eat until 11:30 or noon each day, doesn’t eat past 8 PM, he’s cut his portions, has cut out sugar, and limits himself from six to one Diet Peach Tea Snapple per day.

“So, now I take the one, and I sip it very carefully,” he said, laughing. “I’ve got to use it for the whole day.”

If you’re driving around Chapel Hill, you might see Brown walking by himself, often to and from work, as he lives on the edge of campus. Those extra steps are part of the process.

“I walk every day, and I do feel better,” he said. “It’s not easy. People who have to try, it’s not an easy thing.”

Brown described himself as a “nervous eater” that came on strong during Covid, and next thing he knew, he’d put on 30 pounds. Now, he looks at calories on everything he eats.

“I was a snacker, so if I’d see a little bag of Peanut M&M’s, ‘Oh my gosh,’” he said. “ Now, I say, ‘210 calories? Not worth it.’ So, I put it down.”

And he has continued doing so for some time now. The proof is in how he looks, and more important how he feels.