Wayne suggested I write about Michael Phelps’s insane intake of calories. I must note here that I have not watched any of the Beijing Summer Olympics nor the recent previous summer Olympics games. Anyway, even if you don’t have cable like me, you couldn’t live your life without hearing or reading Michael Phelps somewhere or another. Seriously, is this guy even human? Maybe he’s a robot Speedo created in their top secret underground lab.
Michael Phelps stands 6′4″ tall (1.93m if you’re metric) and weights 195 pounds. He consumes between 8,000 to 12,000 calories a day with a calorie being the amount of energy to raise one gram of water one Celsius degree. An average joe consumes about 2,000 calories a day. Doing the calculus-like math, the Baltimore Bullet is chowing down on the equivalent of food for six people. Here’s what a typical day would be like for Mr. Phelps, food-wise.
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes. [I think I could eat this breakfast over the course of several days.]
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. A whole entire pizza. Energy drinks.
The swimmer trains five hours a day, six days a week so he’s using energy as quickly as he’s taking it in. I tried to find information on what other elite pool people eat, but that was sort of fruitless as only articles about Michael Phelps popped up in Google. A lot of how much an athlete eats depends on his/her size and the type of sport. For certain sports, you might concentrate more or carbs or protein. The Michael Phelps diet wouldn’t work for me since I can barely swim. Put me in a pool and I flounder around. Maybe for you, not me, that’s for sure.
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