“I got a rotisserie, so you can pretty much throw anything in that and just sit it and forget it,” Paul Pierce said with a laugh.

Pierce's go-to off the court

If only his weight loss program was that simple. This summer Pierce estimates he dropped between eight to ten pounds, a step he took to enhance the quality of his career. Pierce, 31, had seen plenty of players gain weight around the same age and he couldn’t afford to do the same. Not when there is a championship to defend.

“You always want to improve. I’m at the stage and the age where I’m not getting any younger and it’s going to be more difficult to keep off weight,” he said. “But it’s just making a conscious effort, especially as my career winds down for the last four or five years, to just be in the best shape possible.”

Pierce became his own personal chef and said goodbye to many of the foods he had grown accustomed to.

“I just cut back on a lot of meats, like red meats. I don’t eat a lot of steak as much as I did before, hamburgers, stuff like that,” he explained. “It’s more chicken and fish, salads, pasta. Not as much pasta either, but you gotta sneak it in there sometimes. There are some great Italian places out here in Boston.”

The NBA season keeps Pierce out of his kitchen so he has to be extra cautious on the road. The combination of eating in the locker room after games, late-night meals, and dining out are red flags he has to avoid, or pay the price the following day.

“It’s hard, especially when you go to Dallas and Mark Cuban puts all that food in [our locker room],” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t cheat though. I just know I’ve got to get some extra work in the next morning.”

Pierce's toughest competition?

While Pierce decided to lose the weight on his own, he was impressed by how much shedding pounds transformed his teammate’s career. Kendrick Perkins lost 16 pounds heading into last season.

“Just seeing him where he was day one,” Pierce said. “I watched him from a kid to now and if you look at his pictures from his rookie year, you’d be like, ‘Man, who was that?’”

So now that Pierce has traded in fried food for fresh fruit, what guilty pleasure does he miss the most?

“Man, Mexican food,” he said. “Growing up in Los Angeles you’ve got all the good Mexican places. I’m a taco guy, burritos, stuff like that. I cut back on those but I kind of sneak those in here and there. My mom makes the best chicken enchiladas. (Pauses) Man!”