Michael Phelps: Olympic Swimming Machine or Crazed Eating Machine?

Michael Phelps is a hungry, hungry boy. 

In a recent NBC interview, he stated that he eats something along the lines of the following for breakfast, every day: 

• THREE fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese and mayonnaise (gross),
• A five-egg omelet (your normal restaurant will serve a three-egg omelet),
• A bowl of grits (yummy—stick to the ribs),
• Three slices of french toast (alright, I would have barfed by now),
• And three chocolate-chip pancakes (a healthy desert).

One would guess that Phelps has a nice, small lunch, but one would be wrong. Phelps spends lunchtime gorging himself with:

• A pound of pasta (how is his stomach not sticking out like a balloon?),
• Two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches covered with mayo (he swims after? I can barely walk/waddle after a good meal),
• And 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks (that is five Monster energy drinks; how is he not convulsing in the water?).

Let's not forget dinner. Are you ready for this?: 

• Another pound of pasta (WHAT? Two pounds of pasta in one day? I can't eat that in a week),
• A whole pizza (I do that and my wife yells at me. Granted, I weigh 240 pounds on a good day),
• And another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks (how does he sleep at night? I have a Monster at 7 p.m. and will be up until 3 a.m.; if I drank five of them you'd find me running around pretending to be the Dread Pirate Roberts).

So, in the course of an average day, Michael Phelps consumes over 10,000 calories (That is more then Alicia Sacramone and the rest of the gymnastic team eat in a week) . The average male should be eating around 2,000 calories a day, and competitive eating masters like Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut will generally eat around 6,000 calories a day. Phelps takes in 4,000 calories more per day then a professional eater?!

In the end, when you are burning five figures worth of calories a day, you are allowed to eat whatever you want. When you are winning gold medal after gold medal, you can top your three chocolate-chip pancakes with bacon grease, if that's your thing. 

Me, I just burned 35 calories writing this article. I guess I'm allowed to eat a piece of lettuce.