CHARLOTTE — For the last three years, how he looked on the football field was almost secondary for Hunter Renfrow, because he didn't even feel like Hunter Renfrow.

But now, after a lot of trial and error and even more chicken and rice, the veteran wide receiver is back to the point where the passes he catches, the routes he runs, and the familiarity with the offense are the important things, and he can just concentrate on the playing football aspect of his job.

"The first week or so just getting back into it, my body was still not sure about it, but I've felt pretty good," Renfrow said with a grin recently while talking about OTAs and minicamp.

That "pretty good" might be a flimsy qualifier for a guy who is just trying to get back to playing football after a year away. But Renfrow is trying to get back to playing football after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune condition that caused him to drop down to 150 pounds and left him battling bouts of fatigue that made the things he's done forever seem foreign to him.

But as he begins to work his way back to fighting for a roster spot with the Panthers, Renfrow is at least back on the level playing field of physical health. He admitted he didn't feel like himself for his last two years with the Raiders, and he spent last year out of football trying to get back to what he was used to being his normal energy levels.

"Honestly, this is the best I've felt since probably 2021, by far," Renfrow said. "Really, the last three years, I struggled my last two with the Raiders, and last year just struggled with fatigue, but this is by far the best I've felt since 2021. It's like anything: Rome wasn't building a day. Just taking it day by day, stacking good days and telling yourself, even though you don't feel great, that it will get better. Just keep pushing through, putting one step in front of the other kind of mentality. And I feel like I've done that and every day I've felt better and better and better and better. I'm still not exactly 100 percent where I want to be, but I feel a lot better.

"I feel like my body has adjusted well to the load. Not that OTAs is an incredible amount, but I've been pleased. My body felt better than I thought."

As he's taken those gradual steps, Renfrow has stood out at moments during OTAs and minicamp, showing flashes of his old route-running ability and catching deep balls during practice that serves as a reminder of how good at football he's been. A month ago, he arrived as a guy whose own body had been fighting against him for the last three years. By the end of minicamp, he looked more like the guy who caught 103 passes for 1,038 yards and nine touchdowns in 2021 — to use his words, the last time he felt good.

Panthers head coach Dave Canales has noticed and said there were reminders often of what Renfrow could offer the team as he worked his way back.

"Absolutely," Canales replied when asked if there was hope of Renfrow getting back to his old form. "Every day, you see him shine in different ways. Outside of Adam Thielen, no one's had more catches in the NFL than Hunter (in this group), and so to see him show up in different ways, attack a zone, attack leverage different ways on his releases, it's so cool.

"Because you can coach up that stuff, but to see him be comfortable out there, he makes plays every day. So, it's really exciting."

Even Thielen, the elder statesman of the group, has said he's picked up things from Renfrow this offseason while watching him work, which reminded him of how talented he was.

Renfrow is trying not to get ahead of himself because he knows how day-to-day all of this is.

The 29-year-old has to be intentional about everything that goes into his body, knowing that one meal or snack of slipping into bad habits can lead to the kind of discomfort that makes playing football far from the first thing on his mind.

"For me, it's been knowing what I can eat and what I can get away with and still not feeling fatigued," he said. "I've been cutting out sugar for the last month and a half, and I think that's been a big thing for me. It's been more what I'm fueling my body with in training. If I feel great, then I will go out there and train because I'm going to give everything I have while I'm out there, right? But there's a big difference when I feel good when I don't feel good, and lately, really, the last month, I felt pretty good.

"My last two years in Vegas, I feel like one day a month I felt decent, while the other 29 I felt bad. Now I feel like there's one day a month I don't feel good and the other 29 feel good. So it's kind of flipped the script. It all stems from what I put in my body, how I feel it, and I've just been excited about how I felt."

Learning those nutritional triggers has been a process for Renfrow. He loves ice cream but knows it's not something that's conducive to returning to the field. "I just feel so bad after I eat it, so I don't eat it," he said with a shrug.

And in one of the cruel ironies that he didn't realize at the time when he was with the Raiders, he was actually the team's Fuel Up to Play 60 spokesman. So he'd talk to schools about the importance of eating a healthy breakfast, including a lot of dairy, which is no longer part of his routine.

But that's not the only thing he's had to learn. Fried foods create inflammation for him, so those trips to Zaxby's that were so routine are now a thing of the past. And for a guy who was born and raised in South Carolina, the reality that calabash shrimp can't be a regular part of your life is a hurdle.

Instead, he eats a lot of chicken, more than ever imagined.

"I mean, there's a 100 different ways to make chicken," he said with a laugh. "You can season it differently. I didn't realize I like chicken as much as I do."

There's also a lot of rice, a lot of steamed vegetables, and an absence of processed foods.

"The swings are so big, so I eat one little small piece of fried food, and I feel pretty bad for a couple of days," he said. And so just cutting that out, I feel more energy from a day-to-day aspect.

"Really, it's stuff I should be eating anyway because I didn't realize that eating cleanly could taste good. It sounds simple, but eating the things I should be eating anyway and staying away from what I'm not supposed to be eating. Now I'm realizing, all right, there are healthy options that taste good, you know? I don't have to go for the Pringles or whatever, and I can eat clean, and it can taste good and make me feel better."

That's a far cry from the last three years when the condition left him listless and lacking the ability to work his way through problems and overcome obstacles as he did in college, when he went from a walk-on at Clemson to catching game-winning passes in the national championship game.

"I've always been healthy; I've always been fortunate to be healthy," he said. "So when I went through that time in Vegas where I just felt so bad, I was like, I'm never going to feel good again. So the best way for me to describe it is like I'm running on clean fuel again. I can wake up in the morning and breathe and feel like I'm getting a full breath instead of just feeling bloated. In a way, it's like riding a bike, but you've been doing something for so long, and really, the last three years I had, I had been wanting to do these things, but I just couldn't physically do it.

"So now I feel like I'm back to where I was three or four years ago, where I feel as quick and as fast as I've been, and I can actually do the things now again. So it's fun, you know?"

Of course, all that fun also comes with the knowledge he's competing for a roster spot, in what he calls "the deepest receiver room I've ever been a part of."

"Everyone does something different, which is good; everybody does something well differently, which is good," he said of his new teammates, a group that includes Thielen and a pair of first-round picks in Tetairoa McMillan and Xavier Legette. "That's what you want, but from an inward standpoint, you're just competing, trying to be the best version of yourself, and I know that's coach talk, but still.

"This has the makings of something special, you know, so I'm excited about it."

And perhaps the most important thing for Renfrow is that he can be excited about the football again, and not just about feeling good.

When you spend three years wondering if you're ever going to feel good again, being able to worry about football feels good by comparison.