Denver's Cutler says he had no energy, should have seen warning signs

"I've felt great. I've felt 100 times better," he said. "Just a difference now and four, five weeks ago is tremendous. It's hard to explain what you feel like when your levels are at 400, 500, it's different. You don't have any energy, you don't really want to do anything, you sleep a lot. It's tough to deal with."

Cutler said he had all the classic signs of diabetes: unexplained weight loss, frequent urination, constant thirst, lack of energy. Without a family history of the disease, though, he never suspected that was the culprit.

Cutler, the 11th pick in the 2006 draft, threw for nearly 3,500 yards and 20 touchdowns last season but the Broncos missed the playoffs for a second straight year. It was obvious as the season wore on that his arm strength wasn't what it was his rookie year, when he started the final five weeks of the season.

"I'm not going to blame it on that, but thinking back, there were some throws that didn't have a lot on them," Cutler said. "I was able to go out and perform, I just wasn't that energetic. I was tired. After the games, I was completely wiped out. Some games I didn't do a whole lot. There was something wrong."

In the weight room, he couldn't lift as much, and when he and teammates Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler gathered in Atlanta over the winter to work out together, Cutler said there were times he couldn't get out of bed in the morning he was so exhausted.

"They would ask me what was up and I would say, 'I don't know. I'm just so tired,"' Cutler recalled. When he went back to campus to visit friends at Vanderbilt, they, too, wondered what was wrong: "I was pale, I was skinny, I couldn't run. It was pretty dramatic."

Now, he feels like a million bucks and he's eager to get into practices and exhibitions to see how his body reacts and how he can keep his blood sugars in control during competition.

As for his changes in diet, no more eating, as he put it, "anything and everything."

"It's a big adjustment," Cutler said. "You're 25 years old, you're used to eating whatever you want, doing whatever you want. If you want to go out to lunch, go ahead and go. Now, you're counting carbs and eating healthier and injecting insulin at the table. You've got to have your insulin, your needles, your glucose meter, yeah, it's a big change. But it's something you have to deal with."

Eating less fast food is a silver lining to his diagnosis, said Cutler, who is looking into getting an insulin pump in the next month and plans to expand his charity work to include juvenile diabetes.

He also wants fans to know he's going to be all right.

"This is a serious, serious disease, and I'm going to have it for the rest of my life," Cutler said. "It's not going to change me on the field. I'm going to have some lifestyle changes, but I'm probably going to be a better quarterback this year than I was last year."