Matt Forte Will Eat Phytoplankton (?) but Not Pizza (???)

Listen, we all make tough decisions in life and sacrifice for our jobs. Whether it's the commute. The hours. Not telling that one guy at the office he's an idiot even though he is. But athletes, they're crazy. And sorry, Matt Forte, you've gone too far.

Forte is 30. And he's still a running back in the NFL. He is the exception, not the rule.

To stay fit and healthy enough for a full season at that age, Forte is doing everything he can. It means manipulating his diet.

He wakes up each morning and has a drop of liquid phytoplankton, according to this NJ.com story. Sounds pretty unsavory/like something Ray Bradbury made up.

"It tastes like basically liquidized spinach or any kind of green, like kale," Forte told NJ Advance Media's Darryl Slater. "So it's not bad, but it's a little salty."

The article goes on about Forte's clean-eating lifestyle. God bless if you can do that.

Then there's a stop and it's heartbreaking. Suddenly you realize to what extremes athletes put themselves to just to play a game and earn millions of dollars. Forte says that he hasn't had one single slice of pizza since he moved to New Jersey. Not one. Do you know how sad that is?

He'll treat himself to deep dish in Chicago in the offseason as some kind of binge on non-pizza food stuff, but he won't let himself try anything from the best pizza city in the world. Matt Forte, we weep for you. He should follow the leadership of his head coach, Todd Bowles, who says his diet was way different when he played for Washington in the 1980's.

"We had McDonald's every day for lunch," Bowles said. "Quarter-pounder with cheese, apple pie, French fries. Every day."

What good is being a professional athlete if you're not enjoying it? When Forte's career is over years from now and he looks back on it, will he look back at all the yards he's run for, the money, the glory, or will he be filled with regret—about all the pizza he didn't eat? It's never too late, Matt.