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"The U.S. Olympic swimmer told ESPN that he eats roughly 8,000-10,000 calories a day"
https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080813/the-olympic-diet-of-michael-phelpsSo that's 4000 cal that's just disappeared into the internet...
"Bonci estimates that to support his 6-foot-4-inch, approximately 190-pound frame, Phelps' rigorous training regime requires roughly 1,000 calories per hour while he is racing or training; she suggests he probably eats closer to 6,000 calories per day."
As someone who has actually measured and consumed this amount of calories I'm calling bullshit on this one. Maybe one day he did but there's no fucking way it's regular and almost certainly not the foods he says he eats. For me to consume ~13000 calories I was awake and racing a bike for 24hr and eating almost all carbohydrates in mostly easily digestible liquid, gel (and some bars) form.
If you add fat and protein into that, as he claims, digestion slows right down and it would be heading towards spew time.
hippy-
I spotted the corrected 8-10k figure with a better google search.
My point was that your sporting activity can require huge calorie intake.A pretty well known way of adding calories (for bodybuilders anyway) is 1 gallon of full fat milk on top of your normal food each day, for approx. 2400 calories.
Being mildly lactose intolerant that makes me somewhat queazy just thinking about it. -
I've also read about enhanced calorie burn in swimming due to higher thermal conductivity in water. With Olympic swimming pools being cooler (down to 22 degrees) the amount of calories required to maintain body temperature alone is considerably increased, particularly, if you are in the pool for many hours a day.
Isn't having an robust and efficient digestive system one of the most useful things to have as an endurance athlete?
Acliff
Simply speaking yes.
For example, Michael Phelps' diet on a full days training (12000 calories):
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelette. One bowl of grain. Three slices of French toast topped. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread, plus energy drinks that supply him with another 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta, an entire pizza and even more energy drinks.
It gets a bit more complicated as there is more at play with swimming (due to increased metabolic stress from loss of body heat to water).
If you're swimming 8 miles a day, you can eat a lot of shit.