MELBOURNE'S Clint Bartram said getting fat in order to get fit was the most difficult thing he has had to do during his 103-game career.

The weight gain was a key part of his preparation for a cutting-edge procedure he underwent on the Gold Coast last week in a bid to repair his degenerative left knee and extend his AFL career.

The process required Bartram to have fat extracted from his body through liposuction.

Stem cells were then harvested from the fat and re-inserted into the knee in the hope of generating the growth of healthy cartilage tissue and eliminating the pain.

Bartram said getting his body ready for the procedure was tough.

"It was up to me to put on as much weight as quickly as I could," he said.

"It sounds like a glamorous job but it was in all honesty one of the hardest things I have had to do in my football career.

"Everything was supersized. It was a just a matter of getting all my calories up and cutting back all my cardio work."

When Bartram went from eating five small meals a day to five very large ones, he could not believe the impact it had on his general wellbeing.

"It was genuinely taxing for me to continuously eat and go against my instincts, which are to eat healthy and keep active.

"I found it really challenging and it's not very appealing … I felt really, really ordinary, like I just had no energy."

Bartram put on nine kilograms to ready himself for the initial 90-minute procedure to extract the fat, a process he described as "a little weird".

Under twilight anaesthesia he was able to watch a steel rod go through his stomach to extract the fat without feeling any pain.

He was tender after the fat was removed but beyond it being an "eye-opening experience", he says the procedure was, in the end, no big issue.

Bartram is now on crutches for the next eight weeks and will travel to the Gold Coast every fortnight during that period to receive injections to foster the growth of the cartilage.

Scans taken in about three months will be able to give a good indication of the success or otherwise of the treatment.

While he is off his feet, Bartram will work on conditioning his upper body and should be allowed to swim by the end of this week.

He hopes to do some de-loading work on his legs before Christmas and then start running post-Christmas. He's already dropped a couple of kilograms and is back on the health bandwagon.

Bartram had stopped playing after round eight when the pain and the inability to train more than once a week began to make playing football nearly impossible.

He was keen to explore the experimental option after several other methods such as arthroscopy, platelet rich plasma (commonly known as PRP) and Orthokine therapy had been tried without success.

This process has yielded encouraging results when tried on athletes below the elite level, but it is the first time such a procedure has been used on a professional athlete.

While Bartram understands there is no guarantee the process will be successful he remains optimistic.

"It's ground breaking and it hasn't been proven but I suppose I'm pretty confident in my ability to recover and my due diligence going forward.

"I have some confidence in that I am not going to leave any stone unturned and if doesn't work, it doesn't work. I've given everything a crack so that is the way I am approaching the whole situation."
 
Bartram's knee has given him trouble since a training mishap led to an operation to repair the lateral meniscus in 2007. The pain at times has been unbearable but he has battled on.

Such an approach to adversity has won him the admiration of everyone at Melbourne, and when he speaks about his injury it's easy to understand how.

"It's been a blessing. It's been one of the best things that has happened for me because it has enabled me to see things from a different perspective and realise that football is not the only thing that is really good in my life," Bartram said.

Bartram combines perspective with a competitive streak. It means he won't die wondering, but he will maintain balance while going through rehabilitation.

"I have a lot of interests outside football," Bartram said.

Maintaining those interests and a quality of life beyond football is one other reason both club and player were keen to explore all possible remedies. Bartram is appreciative of the efforts of those around him.

"The club has been absolutely fantastic. They have explored every avenue possible and it's a real credit to them that they want to be cutting edge and they do have a genuine care for their players," he said.