How Many Calories Does Michael Phelps Eat?

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 :(

Even 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.

Just 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!

I think that is a lie. Unless he says that in a magazine I don't believe it.

He 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.

They showed video footage of him consuming the food on tv the other night.

That 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.

I 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 :)

OMIGOSH! 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

Oh...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.

I'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.

Phelps 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.
Athletes 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.

Swimming 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.

That'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.

and aren't most world-class swimmers 3% body fat or something like that? i'm sure he expends insane amounts of energy when he trains. when you're using as much energy as he is, white carbs and other simple sugars are the way to go because they're easily digested and converted into energy. for us sedentary mortals, it's just stored as fat.

Athletes have to took lots of foods with high protein , the athletes are doing lots of physical work so they need lots of energy compare with normal people , normal people they won't do much physical work.

wow, that is 10 times what i eat in a day- and i thought i ate too much!

No veggies? No fruits? Huh...

He probably burns a further 1000 calories stirring pasta and buttering sandwiches.

I'd like to see him giving some of his money to starving people- surely he needs to justify the vast quantities of his food somehow. He's like Goliath!

I was impressed by the sheer volume as well, then I noticed the source was the NY post, not the NY Times. The Post is the magazine that publishes articles about secret wars and celebrity affairs and global conspiracies, right? The article doesn't mention the source of their information. I.E. "According to his trainer," or "As Phelps said," or something that legitimizes the information.

I am amazed how can he stay awake after eating huge meals like that. Not to mention HC traning. Maybe he takes a nap after meals?

It's exaggerated. Here's what a nutritionist has to say.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080813/the-olympic-diet-of-michael-phelps

I was surprised to learn that Michael Phelps didn't eat healthier foods. But I guess when you are that active you can eat whatever you want.

a muscle burning machine like him can consume a huge amount of calories. and as long a he gets a gram or gram and a half of protein per pound of his body weight. he can eat anything else he wants. a calorie is a calorie. doesnt matter where it comes from. cause he uses everything for energy.

I imagine he probably COULD eat something close to that once in a while, but I highly doubt the coach is really going to encourage his athletes to be eating that crappy. You can exercise all you want and still have a heart attack from poor diet!

if you look at the food they listed... Mayonaise was the worst thing.
eggs= protien vitamins and minerals. cholesterol from food is not connected to high blood cholesterol...
the bread in the sandwiches and french toast could be a problem for a person that doesnt exercise.
probably the worst for him... the energy drinks.
the general public is so mis informed about nutrition and exercise.
thats why we are an obese culture that spends billions on diets and low fat and fat free foods.

and even spending that much money.. we are still obese

for a normal 25 yr old man with an average day, he should consume about 3000 calories a day. all the listings on the side of food containers about average daily intakes are based on an average of a sedentary 55 year old person. so.. if phelps consumes up to 12000 calories a day ... you dont think that he exerts at least 3-4 times as much energy during the day as an average 25 yr old guy?

To the people saying his diet isn't "healthy":

You are vastly mistaking what an athlete of his caliber requires compared to a normal person. First of all if he needs 12,000 some calories a day what good in eating a couple of apples or head of cabbage going to do for him? They have very little caloric value, and would be more or less a waste of time.

And if you're asking how does he get his require vitamins etc. I'd assume he gets simply by virtue of consuming as much food as he does.

And if you're questioning about the health values white bread/mayonnaise. Those things are nearly as bad as they've been blown up to be. Especially if the consumer is an athlete such as Phelps. Mayonnaise is eggs/protein and oils, Cheese/protein, and the sugary things are obviously absorbed more readily than anything else. It's more the association that these foods come with that they've been labeled as unhealthy a more sedentary world, but it's really not the case.

Wow that is a lot of calories. Years ago when I was doing long hard weightlifting workouts six days a week I would eat 5,000 calories a day. I had no luck increasing from 5,000 no matter how hard I tried.

I guess this really shows the kind of output that a world class athlete puts out in training every day. I wonder how many people really realize how impressive this kind of input this is while still keeping his bodyfat as close to 0% as he does.

i eat that much too, except im 345 pounds lol

This is slightly off topic but with 2000 calories of energy drinks, he must be getting an insane amount of caffeine (given that most energy drinks are 150 calories or so). Maybe that is the only reason he doesn't get tired after such heavy meals.

I'm surprised some people are actually jealous that he can eat that much. I don't care how much you like to eat, 12,000 calories a day would get real old real quick. Michael Phelps doesn't GET to eat that much, he HAS to eat that much. I can't envy that.

when i first heard this on the news, I was sooooo jealous. but damn... he's so hot.

Delicious food.........good choice Phelps.

wow i can't believe how he stayes in shape and eats all that. he must a have a big workout scedual planned for the next olympics!!!

Lila, I agree.
I'd love to get my mouth on that.
Ahem. Sorry.

I once ate a candle