I shared these exact words during my Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech, Class of 2024. Expressing ~ To what lengths was I willing to go to reach greatness?

The NFL is a serious journey! It tests you in many ways. On and off the field, there are challenges and just as many setbacks; only to find out when you are at this level, how willing you are to stay hungry and work through it, staying after greatness. This craving for your own greatness inevitably brings out the best of your talents over time, but you realize your off-the-field-work ethic is just as important as your on-the-field-work ethic and so is finding the right support team for both.

Here we are, 23 years after I started with the Colts in 2002. I am proud to have achieved my athletic greatness and dreams! Crucial to my success was finding the right “off-the-field team”, working in conjunction with Dr. Sari and her son, who I am proud to call my long-term friend and beast, Dr. Leon Mellman.

Please allow me to share part of my journey, in the late 90’s, before we had the internet, social-media and all of its supposed “self-help-diagnostic experts”. You see, I was dealing with severe cramping challenges when I played at Syracuse and then into my first NFL season with the Colts. At that time in my career, I discovered and explored many therapies offered in the pro-sports community and needed to find something that worked for me. Every nutritionist, dietitian, strengthening conditioning person and other doctors suggested eating more bananas, to take sodium, potassium and magnesium pills. But nothing worked! I continued to cramp and cramp. I was concerned, my family was very concerned.

Then in 2002, I was introduced to Dr. Sari Mellman, PhD and Dr. Leon Mellman of B-Your Greatest “BYG” Being Your Greatest. Sari is the founder and developer of Dietary Engineering, a nutritional Diagnostic Approach Protocol, that is integrated applied immunology specific to each individual. Sari developed this dietary protocol that becomes a dietary lifestyle to help her son, Leon, when he was a young kid who had serious immune system challenges that came out of nowhere. I was intrigued to learn that it is based on Sari’s very own diagnostic dietary engineered interpretation coupled with their own software specific to white blood cells “WBC” to food structures that cause cell death and those that do not. Sari and Leon’s approach goes much beyond a food allergy or a food sensitivity. Teaching this through our BYG calls right out of their Dietary Engineering BYG nutrition playbook formulated individually with my own diagnostics of “WBC” immunogenic response patterns correlating to diagrams of immunology, articles and research in the field and most of all how Sari and Leon’s Dietary Engineering Diagnostic software with their experience brings it all together teaching us “How To Play the Game” being interactive with our own systems.

I have been quoted in Sports Illustrated and ESPN saying “One of the worst things you can do is not try something because it’s different.” Well, I was desperate, so I reached out to Sari and started the process! It was critical and fundamentally important to understand which foods were compatible for my system to start with immediately that do not attack my white blood cells while at the same time sacrificing non-compatible foods which cause cell-death. Then I learned “How To Play The Game” applying this to my lifestyle becoming my own dietary engineer in time. My symptoms all became something of the past. A positive side effect was learning how to control my weight and inflammation through specific foods compatible with only me. From implementing my Dietary Engineering after my first blood draw, my mother and family members also became patients, all gaining benefit.

I cannot thank Sari and Leon enough, my-off-the-field team, for what they taught me then, at the starting point of my NFL career, to the end of it on the field and still keeping my BYG-food focus off the field. The journey of how the NFL’s physical combat changes our system’s tissue function and the pressure to perform mentally and physically requires more organ function, tissue and cellular function. I could feel that ! The BYG system with this Dietary Engineering protocol made sense and it works. How to interpret what our systems communicate back to us thru the dietary engineering system helped me maximize performance, recovery, and most beneficial it gave me control, it gave me ultimate consistency thru the correct foods for my system. I could reproduce this daily thru the week in preparation of the next game trusting certain foods to do what we needed them to do specific to my system only. Then learning to be aware of your Horizontal time. The first time I remember hearing Sari with her special voice mentioning that phrase “horizontal time” – “HT” – for short, I said what is that and wow it was fascinating to learn of this then and to this day I still practice being aware of it, my HT time. What Sari and Leon teach, about organ function specific to white blood cells then specific to your dietary engineered diagnostic challenge lists, it’s a game-changer or a cheat-code. The whole way thru my first year to Leon’s teachings today, being aware that over time as the years go by our systems change, being interactive with your own system, knowing how to interpret it is part of your BYG journey, the learning process. Their scale reactivity system to white blood cell communication, to the dietary engineering diagnostics applying the “How To Play the Game” protocol and BYG philosophy. They guided me through what I was doing then for a living which gave me the ultimate edge while trusting certain foods to do what i needed them to do specific to only my system. I now have a higher level of nutritional education that still applies to making daily decisions today…what to eat, the timing of my BYG feedings, how to challenge food into my system which foods to challenge and why choose one food over others listed from my diagnostic challenge lists finding what is the next food compatible to me and did I get enough “HT” to help my organ systems with the foods I’m eating and challenging it’s a fun system or which PG-foods am I going to eat today, this week and what am I trying to accomplish this week with my system right up to game time. Leon will teach you much more about this and what a PG-food is, lots to look forward to in the chapters ahead. It all comes together, it did for me then it still does for me now and being a father of two beautiful girls, I am looking forward to sharing this powerful knowledge as they grow up. What I learned throughout my NFL journey and still learning to this day being patients of Dr.Leon’s. I cannot thank Sari and Leon enough for what they teach me and my family.

Now people ask me all the time, “Dwight, what did you do, who did you work with?” to help me stay healthy, recover quicker and perform at my very best.

I simply say: my off-the-field team, and I got this guy, Dr. Leon he is a beast, not even close to your regular sports doctor or counselor, not a normal human being, multiple skill sets like a generational athlete ~ like me, except a doc.

I am not talking about nutrition through your mouth anymore, we are jumping into Leon’s “pro-level hands-on” sports chiropractic work for the body and the brain and mental performance BYG counsel…
Leon taught me, what he calls “how to BYG-stack”. applying one therapy before the other, then a different therapy after the one just applied and on and on, based on how cells and soft-tissue with positive inflammation is created and flushing out negative inflammation, circulation to the joint and how the nervous system works. We are electrical beings. This is where Leon’s beast mode comes in being hands-on. When you experience it, hearing about something special or witnessing it, you feel the presence of that person their consciousness they are on that next level, that Pro-level…that’s Leon.

Leon taught me how to interpret that I was not overdoing things…a very easy thing to do for a Pro-Athlete to themselves in their first couple of years;
Leon’s sports corrective chiropractic adjustments, paired with Leon’s soft tissue vitamin combing procedure, (more about that in an upcoming chapter) a protocol he developed using the ARP-Wave instrument working with me our first year together. We sometimes start or finish the “BYG Stack” applying many different timelines of self-administered hyperbaric oxygen chamber protocols Leon prescribed, specific to what we are going to accomplish that day and achieve it very the weeks schedule as we got closer to the game. The timing based on what happened that day at work physically or mentally, where I was with the scale, levels of inflammation based on Leon’s interpretations of my nervous system scans, dynamic tissue scans, pulse wave profiler scan and a few other evaluations Leon and I would do then get into the sports pro-level hands on work adjustments from head to toe with brain hemisphere work then dietary engineering counsel of my BYG feedings for the reminder of that day, week and right up to game time. At this point reading this intro your starting to get it, how it all comes together, stacking greatness that unfolds at game time.

My “off-the field team” started with Dietary Engineering, and I tell people that’s where you should start, getting your own individualized nutritional program. This way you can learn immediately how to reduce inflammation specific to you thru your correct foods. What is right for me may not be right for you and what’s right for you could be wrong for someone else. Then over time as you give and take combat to your body what ever your sport might be like Jack Nicklaus says who also worked with Sari in the game of life your system changes you need to learn “How To Play the Game” and interpret that. Dietary Engineering prepares your body inside and out on a cellular level that’s specific to only you for anything else you choose to now pair up to your system. For me again many other things out there for my body was just regular treatment, my body was telling me, I felt I needed more. I told Sari about this on one of our BYG calls and she said interview my son Dr.Leon aside from knowing dietary engineering counseling with me he is a sports chiro and very different. “One of the worst things you can do is not try something because it’s different.” As they say, and the rest is history.
We can say “Hall of Fame History” !
What Leon adds to the dietary engineering nutritional program works. You want to experience the very best of what Leon can offer, to guide you into the greatest version of yourself, your wellbeing to overall health, it extended my longevity and durability. Those are the two most critically important and dynamic factors for any athlete regardless of your sport, male or female. It starts with what you eat and goes into your mouth. Feeding your digestive system the correct foods feeds your brain and your overall body.
Leon says, sometimes people can’t get their mind right but they can gather up enough strength to get their food right and when they get their food right then there mind gets right, a process I have experienced myself and many others I have referred…. To my-off-the-field-team. From putting on some of my teammates and my own family on to Leon and what he does. Now we are more local and family flies in for their BYG Care how he brings it all together they were blown away then and still are now, achieving some of the same results.
Leon helped them to reach a new level of individual healthcare Greatness.

As I became my own dietary engineer and brought all this together, my innate talents continued to surface. As I reflect on my own evolution on and off the field, I soared, spinning left and right, flying through offensive lines, frustrating and confusing them.
It was fun! Not everyone is willing to put in the extra work that goes way beyond what people know as the normal, regular work. We (my off-the-field team and I) beat the odds of injury timelines, from being possible IR’d to constantly impressing others around us. With my comeback times, we always finished ahead of it, making my dreams come true, being my greatest! And the NFL community has been watching this over the years! Demonstrating just how special this was in conjunction with the highest level of trust, when in 2007 before the team deployed to Miami leading up to the Super Bowl, Coach Caldwell, Tony Dungy and Jim Irsay trusted me to leave the team to get the medically necessary time with Leon’s visits to nurture a foot/ankle issue. The NFL cleared Dr. Leon as one of my team when not many doctors would have been cleared to do this before the biggest game of the year.

Realizing along your journey the level of commitment from people with which you will work, as that momentum builds, managing the challenges as you get through with your “on-the-field team” and your “off-the-field team” you grow together just as a family grows, they become extended family. It is a private culture of sorts, meaning, unique human beings like me and others some not pro athletes but Pro-Doc’s like Leon who are willing to go way beyond the norm and proud to call my long-term friend and beast, Dr. Leon Mellman. Those of us who realize and learn to understand ourselves as the unique athletes that we are attract this work ethic which is not normal. We organically attract this, Leon organically attracts this, like my friend Calais who is playing in his 17th NFL season which we all tease him about, he is another special one and works with Leon,

What we did was ahead of its time! Now-a-days it is much more common for many athletes to have their own private guys, their “off-the-field” team of people, but I like to think we helped set that trend, just like I set the “spin-move” trend quoted by Chris Berman, during my NFL Hall of Fame Enshrinement Intro….
These life-changing stories about my journey and other patients of Dr. Leon’s in this “BYG-Book” I hope they move you, get your chin up and inspire you. To bring together your “off-the-field” team and Be Your Greatest.
“Your hard work and sacrifice are the key to opening the door to your dreams.”

Being Your Greatest is a Choice.

Unapologetically and Respectfully,