How Many Calories Does Michael Phelps Eat?
Most athletes train on sports drinks and Wheaties.,
But others, like Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps, opt for fried-egg sandwiches, chocolate chip pancakes, and ham and cheese sandwiches!
Unlike his swimming prowess, Micheal Phelps's diet misses the mark.
The Micheal Phelps' Unofficial Diet Plan
Breakfast
Starting off his day by three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch
Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.Dinner
Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza. (src)
Then he "washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks." That's a grand total of 4,000 calories a day; a whopping amount by civilian standards.
But apparently the perfect mix for a world class athlete.
What About the Caffeine?
With the help of Energyfiend.com, we figure that's at least 1900mg of caffeine a day!Since most energy drinks are 100 calories/8oz serving with 80mg of caffeine, along with his two cups of coffee!
Why So Many Calories?
At the Beijing Olympic Games, Phelps swam 17 times over nine days of competition!
So if you're a famished dieter dying for chocolate-chip pancakes and pizza, all you have to do is swim a billion laps in the pool, then you can eat all you want.
But Micheal Phelps isn't the only professional athlete with ludicrous food choices.
Other Big Eaters
During his 60-day prison sentence in 2007, former Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson devoured $700 worth of food that would make his cardiologist cry.And while the 6-foot-3, 300-pound lineman is built like a vending machine, the roster of items he ordered reads like he raided one, too:
- 162 beef sticks
- 40 honey bun sweet rolls
- 35 summer sausage blocks
- 35 bags of barbecue chips
While he and other inmates were given things like a scoop of grits for breakfast, a bologna sandwich for lunch and a chicken leg for dinner, that's hardly enough for a massive professional athlete.
But not all athletes are addicted to junk food. Kansas City Chiefs star tight-end Tony Gonzalez is a 247 pound ripped vegan.
Does extreme exercise give you license to eat whatever you want?
Read More
- A Culture of Bad Food: Can it Change? (Diet Blog)
- Which is Healthier: Avocado Oil or Olive Oil? (Diet Blog)
- Meet Greg, 155 Pounds Down! (DailySpark)
- Brad Pitt Gives His Kids Coke for Breakfast! (Diets in Review)
86 Comments
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Created / Updated: January 26, 2012
Holy crap. I love the sound of the fried egg sandwiches. But uh, one... not three. Doesn't exactly fit into a weight loss diet though, unfortunately :(
Replywow!n i thought 2000 was alot.my question is where does he put it all.im vegetarian n on a typical day i usually get in 1200-1500,n he's consuming 12,000 on a typical day,dats crazy.
ReplyUm, ok 1200-1500 is extremely low, given a typical person in a coma requires 1400 calories a day to sustain themselves. These low-cal diets only lower metabolism which leads to weight gain. I personally am on a 5,000 calorie a day diet and I'm a 6'3'' and 167 lbs and i dont exercise. I have a high metabolism. If micheal phelps needs 12,000 calories a day to live his day-to-day life, then thats what he needs
ReplyActually, 1,200 is quite healthy, Caloric intake all depends on your age, gender, height, and how much you exercise. There's a system to determine how many calories one should intake on a daily basis, I, personally, to stay healthy, eat about 1,333 a day. 2,000 is the average for an adult. One can still eat plenty of food while on a diet of 1,200-1,400. I eat less than 1,300 calories a day and I never get hungry. A -2,000 is healthy, and perfectly normal.
ReplyCalories have nothing to do with health.
ReplyThat person in a coma you're talking about must be a rather large person. Depending on your size 1200 can be healthy, I'm a very very small person (4'7) and not very active. 1200 would be on the high side for me (yes I have talked to my docter about my calorie intake) it all depends on your size
ReplyEven if he burnt 1200 calories an hour (100 calories every five minutes), he'd still only burn 6000 in five hours of working out. The rest of that can't be from a higher metabolism, can it? Muscle doesn't raise your metabolism that much. That has to be an exaggeration, doesn't it? Or perhaps an irregular day.
ReplyWhat are you talking about. His body not only needs to maintain his muscle mass, but also has to have enough energy to be able to swim constantly. How is this an exaggeration? Or do you just know nothing about the human body?
ReplyWe do not just burn calories when we are exercising. After the workout is we our body needs protein the most, egg sandwiches, for example. We burn 800kcal a day just by breathing... You add that to high metabolism which is increased by the exercise, and voila!
ReplyYou have to keep in mind that Michael Phelps is swimming in cool water which also has a caloric drain in terms of body heat use over and above his demands used for swimming.
ReplyActually he burns more calories sitting at a desk than an ordinary man does walking
ReplyThis is totally legit, i should know, i am a swimmer! As a teenager at high school level practices, I normally have to consume 4000-6000 calories with a 2 hour practice each day, and 8000-10000 doing 5 hours a day. So for him with his 15,000 meter practices, its no wonder he needs the calories, I'd actually thought he would eat more! But then again, he has stopped growing.
ReplyJust thinking about eating all that food makes me feel sick ...
Surely this can't be entirely accurate either? It seems rather high on the bad kinds of fats, refined carbs and sugar and low on fruit and veges and whole grains. Even if he does need to load up on energy to support his workouts surely there must be better strategies? However what do I know, given that I'm not a sports nutritionist!
ReplyI think that is a lie. Unless he says that in a magazine I don't believe it.
ReplyBecause magazines are definitely the most accurate source of information? Right. No.
Replyas opposed to the internet. Yes.
ReplyIn defense of magazines, most employ fact-checkers whose job it is to verify everything. They're not perfect, but they come pretty close.
Replyas opposed 2 him telling the press or being seen eating all of that food.....if it was, i would believe it
ReplyHis body is so well trained he burns more calories sittong on a chair than most people do walking
ReplyHow about a Video of him saying he was told to eat between 8-10K calories?
http://2008gamesbeijing.com/michael-phelps-daily-diet-video/
ReplyHe probably burns more than 1200 an hour during his workouts. You can't really compare an Olympian's workout to something even a good regular athlete would do even on a hard day. If I run 6 miles in an hour, which is even a bit slower than my pace, I burn around 900 calories (100 calories per mile for a 150lb guy, and I'm carrying another 40+ pounds to account for the additional burn). Faster runners, and longer distance runners, probably burn a significant amount more than that. An elite athlete like Phelps probably a lot more than that again.
ReplyA lot of people here are talking about running and walking.
ReplyPhelps is SWIMMING, which burns a LOT more calories, as it uses every muscle in the body.
Not to mention his giant muscle mass, which requires more energy just to breathe.
I believe this. It makes sense and is legitimate.
They showed video footage of him consuming the food on tv the other night.
ReplyThat is a great reason to become a world class athlete. Would LOVE to eat like that!!
It's also in his book. Doesn't mean it is true and that he actually consumes that much every day. It's good for PR, though.
ReplyI guess the rule of thumb is, if you can swim six times faster than a regular swimmer, you can eat six times more than a regular person too :)
ReplyOMIGOSH! I need to go back in time to my teens and start becoming a world class swimmer so I can eat a pound of pasta and an entire pizza when I want.
Whoa.
I hope he's able to scale that down when the grueling training scales back, or M.P.'s gonna lose that magnificent physique and get fat.
Dang, he's got shoulders a girl can really DREAM ON. Woo hoo!!!!!
The Princess
ReplyOh...GOD I wish I were this guy. ...Just for one day, though. ...Maybe half a day. I would get really really sick if I ate that much.
ReplyI'm one of the few people that doesn't follow the Olympics. So when I saw this blog post title in my rss feed, I thought for a moment Micheal Phelps was a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and that confused me because who the heck cares how many calories the Phelps family consumes? I'm glad I was wrong and it was an Olympian instead. I really need to start following the games I guess.
ReplyPhelps is an amazing man. From what I've seen of him, he probably burns energy doing his equivalent of standing still. I think he probably does eat that much, I know that Thorpe went through similar amounts.
ReplyAthletes on Phelps’s level are one in a billion; I doubt most people could manage on that diet even if they did follow his training program. (Including the ridiculous amount of time he seems to spend standing on podiums these days)
It's certainly not a lie. He works out three times a day, often for a total of six hours. I work out for 1/4 of that with a master's team and I'm ravenously hungry afterwards. He's said it himself: he basically swims, eats and sleeps.
Replyplus he swims 45 miles a week
ReplySwimming is a serious carb burner! That's why it makes you very hungry after working out, and is not the recommended activity of choice for weight loss for most people.
ReplySeems like I read a couple years ago that swimming in water cooler than your body temperature contributes to the ravenous feelings after getting out of the pool. I can't remember the scientific explanation, but yeah, they said it could make you eat more than you would after engaging in some other form of exercise.
ReplyThat's quite a feat! I wonder if how much his diet wavers to coincide with his training cycles.
It's funny, I saw an interview from the late 70's with a Canadian gold-medallist from the '84 games (Alex Baumann). They asked him about his diet and he said he ate about 7000 calories - ANY calories, no matter where they came from. I remember thinking "wow, things are sure to be different now - they must time their nutrients, pound supplements, periodize their nutrition, etc.." well, doesn't look like things have changed as much as I thought.
Reply