Can you eat like Michael Phelps?

It's been almost two weeks since American swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, but where swimming is concerned, his name will be hard to forget. It would be interesting to learn the kind of food the "human fish" consumes daily to keep up with the level of energy his skills in the water require.

Apparently, Michael needs at least 10,000 to 12,000 calories a day; the average adult needs at least 2,000 to survive. Check out his typical menu for an entire day:

Breakfast: three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onion, and mayonnaise; two cups of coffee; a five-egg omelet; a bowl of grits; three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar; three chocolate-chip pancakes
Lunch: a pound of enriched pasta, two ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread, energy drinks with 1,000 calories
Dinner: another pound of pasta, a whole pizza, more energy drinks

He enumerates food he loves to eat in this video.


While it makes sense that an athlete can burn massive amounts of calories in his daily workout, it's still quite disturbing that Michael's diet consists of food that may clog arteries and are therefore harmful to the heart. Consider all those fried food, for example--and most of them are eggs! Still, sports medicine doctors and nutritionists agree that you can still eat whatever you want if you are Michael Phelps or at least need as much calories as he does to keep up with the rate at which he burns them.