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You'd Have To Be A Monster To Tackle Michael Phelps' 12,000 Calorie Olympic Diet

You'd Have To Be A Monster To Tackle Michael Phelps' 12,000 Calorie Olympic Diet

Want to win 21 gold medals? Here's what you need to start eating.

Joe Baiamonte

Joe Baiamonte

Featured Image Credit: PA

After winning his NINETEENTH Olympic gold medal on Sunday night, a gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay, Michael Phelps went back to his hotel room and ate A POUND OF SPAGHETTI. That's enough pasta to feed a family of four. And the man who many consider to be the greatest Olympian of all time doesn't even like spaghetti (I know, I'm not sure how that's possible, either).

The process of enduring this extraordinary overload of carbohydrates was done in order to replenish the energy Phelps had exerted in winning his 23rd Olympic medal. The meal was gorged upon at 3am, with the 31-year-old needed back in the pool at 8am for the 200m Butterfly preliminaries. Speaking to the Associated Press, Phelps said,

I tried to do as much as I could, get my lactate cleared, had a massage, had an ice bath, eat. I think I had a pound of spaghetti and I am not a spaghetti fan, I forced myself to eat it.

While the idea of eating an entire pound of a food you don't even like may seem fucking miserable, it's a process that clearly works for Phelps, as he added another two gold medals to his collection, last night. In fact, having a daily spaghetti intake that would feed Tony Soprano a fortnight is only the tip of the iceberg in Phelps' monstrous 12,000 calorie-a-day diet when in full-on Olympic beast mode.

Phelps
Phelps

Credit: He'll even try and eat gold. PA

For context, the average recommended daily calorie intake for an adult male is 2,500 calories. I don't know about you, but after 2,500 calories I can seldom be arsed to walk up the stairs to bed at night, let alone devour another 9,500 and follow that up with a fucking massive swim.

In 2008, Phelps' Olympic diet was published by various media outlets and it reads less like the food intake of a giant Olympian and more like the menu you create for yourself on a Sunday after pouring 14 Red Stripes down your throat on a Saturday night.

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.

No dessert after his tea, though. The fucking lightweight.

This article originally appeared on TheSPORTbible.

Featured Image Credit:

Topics: olympics

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