ORLANDO, Fla. — Rex Ryan was thinking of his family, not himself, when the Jets’ portly coach decided to have lap-band weight loss surgery earlier this month.
Making his first public appearance since the procedure, Ryan told reporters here today at the NFL’s annual meeting that he knew his ballooning weight had put his health on a slippery slope and jeopardized all his hard work.
“I’ve got everything right now,” a slightly leaner-looking Ryan said, relaxing on a hotel lobby couch. “I mean, I’ve got the world by the you-know-whats. It’s unbelievable. Everything that I’ve ever wanted in my life — great family, healthy family. I’m financially [set].
“I’m doing exactly what I want to do, which is coaching in the National Football League. And I’m a head coach in the National Football League. … But if you don’t have your health, you don’t have nothing. I want to be around and enjoy my kids, see my grandkids.”
Ryan, who underwent the previously undisclosed operation March 13 at NYU Medical Center, revealed today that he weighed 338 pounds on the operating table and had lost 20 pounds — down to 317 — in the two weeks since.
Doctors told Ryan he should expect to lose 5-to-10 pounds a week, and the Jets’ 47-year-old sideline boss has set 250 pounds as his target goal. Ryan said he hasn’t weighed 250 since 1995, when he was in his second year as an assistant with the Cardinals.
“Two-fifty would be great for me,” Ryan said. “I would love to be 250. That would be a hundred pounds [lost], but they actually think I can lose more than that.”
Ryan said by the time the procedure takes full effect, his stomach will be just one-tenth its previous size.
“Because my stomach is going to be probably one-tenth its size, I’m going to have to chew my food like crazy,” he said. “There’s ways of cheating the thing, but I don’t plan on doing it. It’s still going to take some kind of discipline to get it done. But I like the fact that I can eat whatever food I want. That was big.”
Ryan revealed several other details of what prompted the surgery, which came with the full back of the Jets and team owner Woody Johnson.
The coach said he mulled lap-band surgery — which places a band around the uppermost part of the stomach to restrict intake — for the past five years and considered having it during the Jets’ bye week last season.
Ryan put it off, though, worried that complications might prevent him from coaching the latter half of what proved to be a surprise run to the AFC title game by Gang Green.
Ryan still hadn’t decided on the surgery after the season, choosing instead to attend the famed diet center at Duke University to get counseling that might change his eating habits.
The Duke visit, which was paid for by the Jets, explains why Ryan was in Raleigh, N.C., for an NHL game that resulted in the infamous photo of his flabby, pre-op gut that drew national headlines.
What finally prompted Ryan to have the surgery was a meeting with former NFL offensive lineman Jamie Dukes — a recipient of the same surgery six years ago — at the scouting combine in Indianapolis last month.