Michael Phelps: He stole my pre-WLS daily diet

One of my favorite early Saturday Night Live skits was featured John Belushi as an Olympic athlete. The scene opens with clips of Belushi doing a high jump and running around a track, then cuts to a shot of him at the breakfast table. Clutching a cigarette, Belushi looks into the camera with complete gravitas and tells about his secret to staying fit: "I downed a lot of donuts. Little chocolate donuts. They taste good and they've got the sugar I need to get me going in the morning."

The commercial played off the classic "Wheaties" ads, which featured Bruce Jenner. The prevailing wisdom in those days stated that top-class athletes had to eat extremely healthy foods, like whole grain cereal and skinless, boneless chicken. However, as I recently read about Michael Phelps' daily eating regimen, I was surprised to see that his diet is much closer to John Belushi's than to Richard Simmons. To begin with, the Olympian consumes approximately 12,000 calories a day, roughly six times the RDA for a man his age. Second, it is heavily skewed towards carbohydrates and fats, which most diets eschew. Given Phelps' amazing energy expenditure (in the average week, the guy swims five hours a day, six days a week!

At any rate, Phelps' average daily menu is after the jump...

Breakfast: Three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions, and mayonnaise.
A five-egg omelet.
A bowl of grits.
Three slices of French toast with powdered sugar.
Three chocolate pancakes.
Two cups of coffee.

Lunch: A pound of pasta with tomato sauce.
Two large ham, cheese, and mayo sandwiches on white bread.
Energy drinks.

Dinner: A pound of pasta with tomato sauce.
Six to eight pizza slices (basically, a whole pizza!).
Energy drinks.

Looking at Phelps' diet, it makes a lot of sense. The combination of quick energy carbs and slow-burning fats probably keeps him fueled up for hours, and the huge amounts of protein help his body quickly repair muscle damage. Besides, with his amazing energy expenditure, it's not surprising that he quickly burns through the calories!

 Source:Slashfood

Hey Boner,

Good post, but I disagree with them. It doesn't make sense. No one can burn that many calories. He's just eating so much that it's going through undigested. Sounds like a lot of pent up frustration from having a lot more focus than most folks. All those hours face down in the pool. That would make anyone want to eat! Well it's paid off. Now, how to stop eating once all of that training ends.

Best Wishes,

Dave

Hey Dave,

I dont know about the pent up frustation part. I think it may have more to do with the fact he's "just a kid" eating a bunch of junk food (empty calories). On the other hand, you know he has the world's finest trainers and nutrionists in his corner so kind of interesting they would buy into this diet.

You're right about how tough it will be to change his eating habits once he's no longer hitting the pool for 5 hours a day and his metabolism slows down as he gets older. I think this is one of the biggest reasons for the obesity problem we have in the U.S. Once we get older and less active, we can no longer eat like we once did. We do and the pounds pile on and on and ..... Tough habit to break to say the least  

One thing for sure it you can't argue with the results.

Boner

 

 

Hi Boner,

Wonder how he'll eventually cut his calorie intake by 70% or more? It will be interesting to see.

Best Wishes,

Dave

I don't care what he eats but I must say that 12,000 calories is extremely high.  My brother said he ate between 5,000 and 6,000 calories per day during his USA trip and they rode between 50 to 100 miles per day.  My brother is 55.

The other part I noted with Phelps is that he doesn't cook and eats all of his meals outside his apartment.  He eats most of them in restaurants that feature either all-you-can-eat menus or super large portions.  He needs endorsements or he wouldn't be able to afford all of that food.

I know that my obesity has something to do with the eating habits I established as a young adult in order to try to compete athletically. At 6'2" and 210, I was the biggest kid on my HS football team. I showed up for my freshman year at college and I was among the three or four smallest freshman lineman and certainly all the upperclassmen outweighed me. I figured out after a couple of days of pad work that I was never gonna play unless I gained at least 60 lbs. And I did. Some of it in the weight room and some of it in the cafeteria. But from age 18 to age 21, I started out every morning pretty similar to what Phelps has described. I covered half my plate with scrambled eggs and the other half with broke open biscuits with gravy over both the biscuits and the eggs. I would pile a dozen slices of bacon on top of that and take my tray over to the drink area and get a quart of milk and a pint of apple juice. After I finished all of that, I'd go back to the donut machine and snatch anywhere between 3 and 6 of those little cake donuts straight out of the grease and stack them up like pancakes and pour sugar glaze on them and then go grab another pint or so of milk and finish all of that. I would conservatively estimate that I ate 2500 calories for breakfast every morning. I dont' recall lunches and suppers as much as the menu changed daily, but I probably punished myself in a similar fashion most of the time. It worked. By the end of my freshman year I weighed 235 and by the end of my sophmore year I weighed 265, and I was able to play a little at that weight. Of course there was a lot of hard weight training and running and agility work that occurred during that period so I didn't just turn to slop. I was wearing 38 pants at 265 back in those days. After I graduated from college, I dialed the hard work way back, but continued the eating. And consequently, other than very brief periods of time, I've been obese all of my adult life. I wouldn't trade the college fb though.

JFish,

Off topic, but wondering if you seen the P90X Plyometrics DVD? It has a lot of Heisman and "tire" drills. Reminds me a lot of HS football training. Really intense, too. You might like it if you like fb.

Best Wishes,

Dave

No,  I haven't seen it. I've seen you posting about it. I stuck with walking and a little bit of lifting all last winter and spring and that worked well for me. I was still to heavy to do much of anything that involved jarring impact. I'm probably still a little heavy at 268 to take a chance on any kind of exercise that involves much impact. At 48 years of age, I'm gonna err on a side of caution with my knees and ankles. I haven't done much of anything all summer, cause I've been working 14-15 hours a day out in the oilfield and don't have the time or energy for anything when I get home other than supper, a shower and then hitting the rack. But school is starting back up and I'm quitting the summer job and I'll have time to experiment with some workouts. My college aged daughter was home during the summer and kinda showed me the ropes on how to do the elliptical machine up at the school fitness room one day. I did about 15 minutes on it one day and was sapped. My short term goal is to get where I can do an hour on it without pussin' out. It's pretty low impact. I figure once I get in the sub 250 area I can start taking a chance on some of this crazy **** you are promoting on here. Except for the yoga at 104 degrees. I can't see that ever appealling to me much. You appear to the rest of us to be about half crazy when it comes to fitness. You know that right?

JFish,

Haha! Yeah I know I must appear half crazy (without perhaps, the half not...) My dream job when I was 18 was to be a Marine Corps fitness instructor, but due to scoliosis, I was 4F. Second and third jobs were steel framing construction and then fitness instructor. So you can see the trend. I happened, though to go through the fat-thin yo-yo. Half of the time I was MO, half the time really fit and thin from long triathlons, full marathons and even swimming marathons.

Now I'm enjoying the luxury of not having weight advance while exercising and having the exercise (maybe minus the first 20 minutes of exercise each day) be enjoyable.

There are 600 Bikram yoga places throughout the world and people swear that it improves their health and burns over 1000 calories in 90 minutes. This and my perpetual desire to learn keeps me going. (P90 X includes Karate and a somewhat different style of Yoga, so big learning there, too!)

So maybe crazy but liking it. I've always been a mover (literally).

Best Wishes,

Dave

Speaking of crazy, yesterday I did 45 minutes of P90X yoga and then 90 minutes Bikram Yoga. Then I got up the morning and by 5:30 had started the plyometrics video, followed by the Kenpo Karate video. The wife got up around 7:20 and said, "You're fast!". That really got me kickin'.

When somethinig that's normally considered "hard" feels as good as a massage, it's no longer crazy.

Best Wishes,

Dave