The Michael Phelps Diet Might Kill Most People
Posted Aug 13th 2008 5:46PM by Shane Bacon (author feed)
Filed under: USA
I guess when you swim five miles a day and make winning gold medals look as simple as rafting down the Guadalupe, you're allowed to munch on whatever you want.
That said, it's pretty crazy an athletic specimen like Michael Phelps is said to be knocking out nearly 12,000 calories-a-day as part of his "diet."
Here's the daily menu, if you can stomach it.
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.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.
Honestly, I'm tired just reading about all of that. The 6'4", 195-pound Phelps's eating habits might seem as ridiculous as the Macaulay Culkin scene from "Home Alone" but I guess when you're working every muscle a human has in the pool, you need this much energy. Even a doctor is saying so.
"I think for him, because of his caloric demands, he can probably eat whatever he wants to," Mark Klion, a sports medicine doc and orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York said."if you've got to eat that much, it better be enjoyable, or you won't be able to keep up. Phelps might not be so eager to shovel down a pound of tofu in a sitting."
So, there you have it. If you're looking for your kid to be the next Olympic Zeus, make sure you're packing him with enough pasta to piss off Pisa because he's going to need that energy. That or the kid will just get fat.
It's strange that after reading this I feel a lot less guilty about scarfing down that mid-afternoon Snickers. Phelps relates to even us regular guys!
Now why oh why didn't I ever think of becoming an Olympic Swimmer????
That being said, I really, REALLY find it next to impossible to believe that this extremely fit person is eating like this every day. Just can't be. Can it??? Think he uses Fitday ?
Another thing, where's the protein? Something sounds fishy to me. Or should I say - cheesy? I'm seeing an awful load of that.
Robin, I saw the piece they played on NBC during the Olympics about Michael Phelps' "diet". They followed him to the restaurants in the area around his apartment, because apparently he doesn't cook for himself, so all the restaurants know him really well. I was stunned. My roommate and I were watching TV together and both of our jaws dropped. I told her "I could eat an entire carton of ice cream a day if I was an Olympic swimmer!" We both couldn't believe how much he ate!
I guess there's some protein in the eggs for breakfast and ham in the sandwiches at lunch. Maybe he gets lots of meat on his dinner pizza? I read an article where Dara Torres described her training & eating schedule and it sounded like her diet was much healthier. She didn't specify calories (actually doesn't count them as it said she had an eating disorder in college), but emphasized healthier foods.
On the other hand, with all of his gold medals, clearly Michael Phelps is getting some good fuel in there!
It sounds like a lot of protein in there to me -- eight eggs for breakfast, lots of cheese, probably at least a pound of ham at lunch, plus more cheese, and I bet his dinner pizza is loaded with sausage, pepperoni, ham, and again more cheese.
But to swim so much every day, the man needs his carbs, the more the better. I bet if you looked at a weight lifter's diet it would involve more protein and less carbs.
Yes, there's definitely some protein in there. But out of those 12,000 calories, (man - I still can't get over that number) it's not a very large percentage. Clearly, the boy needs his carbs, cause there's an awful lot of them in his diet.!!! And fat. Lots of cheese in there as well.
I would get so tired of all those eggs. Why not a steak once in a while rather than all those carbs for lunch and dinner? I know--he needs the carbs for the stamina. Seriously, how DOES one eat that much? He ought to be eating all day long to get those calories!!
The other thing the TV show said was that he just can't get his weight above 200... eating all that... But he really does just eat, swim, sleep.
rockinrobin, the guys doing the Tour de France? They burn 9,000 calories a day during the race, which is why they all look so wasted by the end. They can't eat enough to keep up...
Yeah, why didn't I become an athlete? Oh wait... I know... it was something about not liking pain...
Never mind what he's eating, the quantity of food is shocking as well. I seriously do not think I could consume that much food. If I had to eat 12,000 calories a day, I'd have to eat it in nuts, because I would be sick on the amount of food he is eating. I definitely couldn't consume that much food and then hit the pool or the gym. I'd have to lay around all day trying to digest it.
And I think I can pack away some pretty high volumes of food. No one would ever describe my eating habits as birdlike. As kids, our friends parents were SHOCKED by how much my sister and I ate and we were always being complimented for being "good eaters" (if that's a compliment, these days, I'm not so sure). I'm embarrassed by the size of the salad I eat with dinner every night. But what I'm eating is nothing compared to him.
Last edited by BlueToBlue; 08-16-2008 at 10:47 PM.
I see a TON of protein in that diet ... not sure why some people think there's not much.
Breakfast:
8 eggs - 48 g protein (assuming there's only one egg in each of his 3 fried-egg sandwiches, plus the 5 egg omelet)
Bowl of grits - 2 g protein (assuming he eats a double serving)
French toast - 24 g protein (using IHOPs french toast - after all, it's eggs and bread)
Lunch:
One pound enriched pasta - 58 g protein
Ham and cheese sandwiches - 36 g protein (assuming 2 sandwiches w/ 4 slices ham each, not counting the cheese)
Energy drinks - 50 g protein (wild guess here - my protein drink after the gym is 250 cals and packs 26 g protein, so I'm guessing 50 g is low)
Dinner:
One pound enriched pasta - 58 g protein
An entire pizza - 120 g protein (that's the number for a Pizza Hut medium meat lovers pizza)
Energy drinks - 50g protein
So estimating *conservatively* he's getting ... 446 g of protein a day.
Never mind what he's eating, the quantity of food is shocking as well. I seriously do not think I could consume that much food. If I had to eat 12,000 calories a day, I'd have to eat it in nuts, because I would be sick on the amount of food he is eating.
And I think I can pack away some pretty high volumes of food. .
I was trying to think back to the days when I would eat and eat and eat. More then any man I've ever met, that's for sure. And I tell you, even back then, I don't think I ever ate THAT many calories. Now mind you, of course I wasn't doing much physical activity either . I know he's an athlete and all, an Olympian to boot, , but I still find it mindboggling what he is consuming. I wonder, now that the Olympics are over for him, what he's eating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhotoChick
I see a TON of protein in that diet ... not sure why some people think there's not much.
Photochick, when you eat THAT amount of calories, you're most likely bound to get in lots of every food group. But I still think percentage wise, it's just not all that high. I mean there are folks around here who don't even eat 1500 calories and get in over 100 gms of protein. So Phelps getting in 500 gms on 12,000 calories, is just not that much, IMO. But obviously, someone (thank goodness ) knows how to feed him, cause he's obviously one very, very successful young man.
Last edited by rockinrobin; 08-18-2008 at 08:01 AM.
My parents used to tease that my sister and I ate like birds too - vultures! But we were skinny active kids. I never weighed over 115-120 until I finished college and went to work.
Photochick, when you eat THAT amount of calories, you're most likely bound to get in lots of every food group. But I still think percentage wise, it's just not all that high. I mean there are folks around here who don't even eat 1500 calories and get in over 100 gms of protein. So Phelps getting in 500 gms on 12,000 calories, is just not that much, IMO. But obviously, someone (thank goodness ) knows how to feed him, cause he's obviously one very, very successful young man.
My calories came in at about 1300 today with 111g of protein. So if I just increased my portions until I was at 12,000 calories, I'd be eating over 1,000g of protein. At 500g of protein on 12,000 calories, only 17% of Phelps's calories come from protein. Even folks around here that don't eat much protein are eating more protein than that!
It makes me wonder--if Phelps was eating 12,000 calories of really healthy food, would he be any faster? I suppose when you've won eight gold medals in a single Olympics, you don't really care about being any faster than you are. But it would still be interesting to know. I also wonder if he were eating more nutritious foods, would he still need to eat 12,000 calories a day. Or does he have to eat that much because some of the calories he's eating aren't really providing much in the way of nutrition.
Talk about high maintenance numbers......
?
But we were skinny active kids. I never weighed over 115-120 until I finished college and went to work.
