home Thyroid The crazy diet of Olympic champion Michael Phelps. Diet from Phelps: pasta, pizza, mayonnaise, sugar, energy drinks Michael Phelps diet

The crazy diet of Olympic champion Michael Phelps. Diet from Phelps: pasta, pizza, mayonnaise, sugar, energy drinks Michael Phelps diet

Before the 2008 competition in Beijing, Phelps said he was consuming about 12,000 calories a day, or 4,000 calories per meal. True, he later admitted that he exaggerated a little, but he really ate a lot.

Athlete's day began with egg sandwiches, which included just about every classic topping, from several types of cheese and fried onions to mayonnaise. Then he moved on to pancakes with chocolate, French toast, cereals, and a five-egg omelette to replenish his protein stores.

Michael's lunch consisted of several sandwiches with cheese and ham, some kind of energy drink and a plate of pasta (about 500 g).

For dinner, he could well have eaten a whole pizza and added another pound of pasta.

At the 2008 Olympics, Phelps' diet gave him enough strength to win eight gold medals. In Rio, he slowed down a little, but the volumes are still impressive. Now his breakfast consists of a cup of coffee, fruit, a large bowl of oatmeal, and a large ham and cheese omelette. For lunch, he might have a large meatball sandwich (Joe Tribbiani's favorite sandwich from Friends), and for dinner, leave out some grains, lean meats, and vegetables.

Workout

Swimming doesn't burn as many calories as running, for example, but with his workout schedule, Phelps can easily afford to eat as much as he wants. He trains 5-6 hours almost every day. In the peak phases of his training, he swims in the pool for 80 km a week. Sometimes he does two workouts in one day. Michael does not just swim, but performs special exercises and uses additional equipment - bowls, training paddles and swimming boards. Exercises with them give a load on the buttocks, legs, abdominal muscles and upper body.

Strength training was added to training in the pool three times a week (on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). True, Phelps prefers bodyweight exercises such as pull-ups and. They allow you to develop muscle strength and endurance, while not making it big and clumsy, like exercises with additional weight (pectoral press, deadlift, and so on).

To finally understand the diet of Michael Phelps, we asked Vadim Krylov, an endocrinologist, nutritionist and author of the Wright Diets step-by-step instructions for proper nutrition, to comment on the non-standard choice of dishes for an athlete and the impact of such a diet on the body of an ordinary person.

Vadim Krylov

endocrinologist, nutritionist and author of the Wright Diet step-by-step instructions for proper nutrition

I have worked with many Russian Olympic champions and still work with some of them.

Let's start with simple things. First of all, let's figure out why we eat. We eat in order to live. Food is a source of energy and building material for our body. If we consume more energy than we spend, we gain weight, if less, we reduce it.

Look at the diet of Michael Phelps. What immediately catches your eye? Most of the diet is carbohydrates, a combination of "fast" (sweetened energy drinks, sugar) and "slow" (cereals, pasta, bread) carbohydrates throughout the day. This is not surprising, since swimming is one of the most energy-intensive sports, and carbohydrates are the fuel for our body, like gasoline for a car. In percentage terms, there is not so much protein in the American diet, and the athlete does not really need to gain weight. Given the overload, Phelps' diet is quite suitable for him, but here it would be nice for him to take care of his future, about what will happen after he "hangs his swimming goggles on a nail." You can get the required amount of fat in another way, so that the vessels do not become clogged with atherosclerotic plaques and the risk of cancer does not increase.

Is this diet right for you and me? Firstly, we are not Olympic champions, and we will not use such a huge amount of energy even for several days, despite the fact that we will train 3-4 times a week. Secondly, you still need to think about the future and not use unnecessary products. What is worth learning from the greats? The will to win and a focus on results. So eat right and enjoy life!

Michael Phelps differs from the rest of humanity not only in his phenomenal sports results (yesterday he became the NINETEEN TIME Olympic champion), but also in his mind-blowing diet. Is it normal to consume so many calories per day? Understanding Artyom Sokolov.

Michael Phelps's diet, which in terms of calories per day is more likely designed for three adult men, does not actually contain some gigantic amount of healthy foods - there is bread, and mayonnaise, and even energy drinks. At the same time, Phelps trains six times a week for five hours a day, and at the Beijing Olympics (this is 2008), Phelps had to participate in 17 heats for 9 days.

The Olympic Champion Lunch consists of:

Phelps' Dinner is:

I have worked with many Russian Olympic champions and still work with some of them.

The diet of one of the most famous swimmers, Michael Phelps, has long been a legend. To an ordinary person, the amount of calories he consumes may seem monstrous, and his daily allowance can be stretched for a whole week.

diet

Michael's lunch consisted of several sandwiches with cheese and ham, some kind of energy drink and a plate of pasta (about 500 g).

For dinner, he could well have eaten a whole pizza and added another pound of pasta.

Strength training was added to training in the pool three times a week (on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). True, Phelps prefers bodyweight exercises such as pull-ups and push-ups. They allow you to develop muscle strength and endurance, while not making it big and clumsy, like exercises with additional weight (pectoral press, deadlift, and so on).

By the way, Michael has an Instagram profile, so subscribe. 🙂

Michael Phelps is known not only for his sporting achievements, but also for his athlete-specific approach to nutrition. After publishing the approximate daily diet of an athlete in 2012, he became the hero of many jokes on the Internet. Fans and just idle netizens have launched a real competition in eating a set of dishes, similar to the nutrition of a swimmer, describing their impressions of eating such a huge amount of food.

The fame of Michael Phelps and Russian-speaking sports nutrition consultants did not pass by, his unusual nutrition system found a wide response on the Internet:

So, the daily diet of Michael Phelps looks something like this:

Breakfast. Three hot sandwiches with egg, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise; three pancakes with chocolate; omelette of five eggs; three French toasts covered in sugar; a bowl of corn porridge; two cups of coffee;
Dinner. Half a kilo of pasta with gravy; two large white bread sandwiches with ham, cheese and mayonnaise; a couple of cans of energy drinks;
Dinner. Another half a kilo of pasta with carbonara sauce; a big pizza and a couple more cans of energy drinks.

When asked what kind of daily regimen an athlete observes in order to spend such a number of calories, Michael replied: “I eat, sleep and swim. That's my whole routine."

However, many, including sports nutrition experts, believe that the champion is cunning. Even with loads in cold water for 5-6 hours, it is difficult to burn such a number of calories. Although there are defenders of Phelps's veracity.

“He will not always be 23. If he eats like this every day, then in the long term he will have to see a cardiologist regularly,” writes sports nutritionist B. Levin in his article.

“However, the fact of consumption and consumption of such an amount of energy does not surprise me in itself. I have worked with hundreds of world class athletes and the main problem swimmers and runners face is glycogen depletion as a result of a lack of carbohydrates. 9 out of 10 athletes I have worked with could improve their records by increasing their carbohydrate intake. Considering Phelps' possible metabolic and grueling workouts, I advise him to continue to maintain an energy regime that is comfortable for him, however, it is still better to replace some meals with healthier ones, add vegetables and fruits.

In addition, it should be noted a large number of "fast" carbohydrates (pasta, pizza, etc.) in Michael's diet. They break down quickly and give the swimmer an instant burst of energy. It seems that the champion himself understands this. Asked by reporters how he intends to continue his winning streak, Phelps replied: "You just need to stock up on enough energy, grit your teeth and do everything that depends on me."

Constant replenishment of carbohydrates between workouts also helps to avoid what athletes call "hitting the wall" - after a grueling long series of exercises, when all the glycogen stores are used up, the body begins to intensively look for energy stores in lipids, which causes a rapid decline in productivity.

Does the Michael Phelps diet work for the average person?

Of course, this power system is from the category of "Do not repeat this at home." It must be remembered that Michael Phelps is not just a guy with a strong physique - 193 cm and 87 kg. He has an extremely fast metabolism, in addition, he trains extremely intensively every day. As the director of the American Sports Nutrition Association, Jeff Kotterman, noted: “Thanks to his strong muscles and the metabolism of a swimmer, Phelps expends more energy lying in bed than many people with intensive walking. The layman from such overeating would swim in fat in a couple of weeks.

Elena Isinbayeva, Michael Phelps

Athletes pay special attention not only to their physical training, but also to nutrition, especially before the Olympics. Depending on a particular discipline, athletes adhere to a different diet: someone limits themselves in calories, while others eat everything they see (so much so that even the jaw hurts). SPLETNIK.RU chose the most interesting and varied diets of Olympic athletes. We read, we envy or we sympathize.

Alexandra Raisman, artistic gymnastics (22 years old)

American gymnast Alexandra Raisman won two silver medals and one gold at the Rio Olympics. To achieve such results, the athlete trains six days a week, and in order to have the strength to perform difficult numbers, she has to monitor her diet.

The gymnast gets up at seven in the morning and immediately drinks a glass of warm water with lemon. A typical athlete's breakfast consists of a bowl of cereal with skim milk, two wheat toasts, and sometimes she eats jelly for dessert. Carbohydrates are great for energizing in the morning, and due to physical activity, all the “fuel” is quickly burned. At 8:30, Alexandra is already in a hurry to train, she works out in the gym until 12:15.

At 13:00 lunch is scheduled, in the afternoon the emphasis in the diet is on proteins and complex carbohydrates - grilled chicken breasts, brown rice and vegetables:

My diet is rich in vegetables, chicken and fish. I always try to stay away from white bread and from all the goodies,

The gymnast confesses.

After lunch and training, the girl can take a nap for a couple of hours. When she wakes up, she snacks - frequent meals are important to maintain metabolic activity. In between meals, Raisman can indulge in Greek yogurt with cereal and a banana.

For dinner, the girl prefers grilled chicken or salmon and vegetables (she especially likes broccoli and carrots). After a hard day, the gymnast prefers to lie in bed and watch her favorite TV series The Vampire Diaries - no nighttime raids on the fridge!

Alexandra Raisman

Other gymnasts adhere to a similar diet with only some differences, for example, Gabrielle Douglas, who won a gold medal for the USA at these Games. Gabrielle has a classic breakfast of oatmeal and a banana, for lunch - chicken breast, asparagus and a dessert of a handful of almonds and a piece of chocolate, and for dinner - grilled salmon, some pasta and green peas fried with garlic. Sometimes in the evening, a girl allows herself homemade sweet gingerbread, well, the classic six hours of training a day.

Gabriel Douglas

Michael Phelps, swimming (age 31)

Fat on the body of Michael Phelps will not be detected even by Sherlock Holmes, and this despite the fact that the athlete consumes 12 thousand kilocalories per day! In principle, such "gluttony" can be justified by the fact that Phelps's height is 193 centimeters, and he trains six days a week for five hours, so his body needs high-calorie "fuel". The athlete's diet, if such a diet can even be called that, consists of a huge list of goodies.

The swimmer's breakfast includes three scrambled eggs, cheese sandwiches, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise - and that's just the start. Phelps then “polishes” the two cups of coffee eaten with three slices of French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar, and the swimmer fills the remaining place in the stomach with chocolate chip pancakes.

Lunch is no less hearty: pasta with tomato sauce, two large white bread sandwiches with mayonnaise, ham and cheese, and energy drinks. For dinner, Michael again eats pasta, a whole pizza, and drinks a few more energy drinks.

Nutritionists explain Michael's enviable menu by the fact that the athlete has an excellent metabolism, and during training all kilocalories are burned, because swimming is one of the most energy-intensive sports. If you think about it, there is nothing phenomenal in such an athlete’s diet: with Phelps’s parameters, his daily kilocalorie intake is about five thousand, and training burns about another 5-7 thousand, depending on the intensity.

Michael Phelps

By the way, another athlete of the American swimming team, Ryan Lochte, is not far behind Michael - his menu includes products for 8000 kilocalories.

When I first became a professional swimmer, I ate peanut butter, jelly, sandwiches. I just kept eating, but now I've stopped. My jaw was tired from eating, it began to cramp. But due to the fact that I ate a lot for 12 years, now if I don't eat, it seems to me that something is wrong,

The athlete is recognized.

Ryan chooses almost the same dishes as Phelps, however, Lochte adds a little more vegetables and fruits to his menu.

Ryan Lochte

By the way, swimmers in general can afford almost everything: burgers, french fries, sweet coffee drinks, soda. Sports nutritionists even insist that nutritious and high-calorie foods are better for future champions than newfangled superfoods and vegetable smoothies. One of the sponsors of the Olympic Games, McDonald's, is located in the Olympic Village and feeds the participants of the competition for free.

Athletes from all over the world can be seen munching on a free meal in the cafeteria at 4am. One can easily take 27 cheeseburgers, 40 nuggets, 12 scoops of ice cream and Diet Coke,

Australian swimmer Melanie Schlanger

Usain Bolt, track and field (age 29)

The undefeated Usain Bolt followed a rather monotonous diet before the Beijing Olympics: he ate 100 nuggets a day for 100 days in a row (940 kilocalories in a package of 20 pieces).

At first I ate 20 for lunch and for lunch, then two packs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All this with French fries, and in the evening there is also an apple pie,

The athlete spoke.

During the day, the Jamaican track and field athlete eats to stay active during training, but at night before going to bed, he sweeps all the food in his path.

The coach advises to lean on vegetables ... Sometimes I eat broccoli, but I'm not a fan of such food,

Bolt said. No wonder: the taste of broccoli is much inferior to nuggets. When an athlete is not preparing for the Olympics, he eats quite normally: for breakfast he eats an egg sandwich, for lunch - pasta and corned beef, for dinner - Jamaican beef patties and fried chicken, and Usain snacks on fruit.

Usain Bolt

South African runner Wade van Niekerk from Cape Town won gold in the 400 meters a few days ago and set a new world record. The athlete's diet is very different from Usain Bolt's diet. The main part (60 percent) of his diet is proteins - chicken breast, fish, beef. He also consumes fruits and vegetables (30 percent of the daily diet) - bananas, raspberries, blueberries, pomegranates, pineapple, broccoli, spinach. The other 10 percent are fats: peanut butter, almond butter, avocado.

Jordan Burrows, wrestling (age 28)

Athletes who go in for gymnastics and sports where the weight category matters are most often forced to adhere to a more ascetic diet and you will not see them in line at McDonald's in the Olympic Village. Such athletes have to keep themselves in shape during the competition, so as not to suddenly move to another weight category. For example, Olympic champion Jordan Burrows eats 1200-1500 kilocalories per day (for comparison, the calorie intake for a man of this weight is three thousand).

To pass the threshold during the weigh-in, wrestlers resort to various tricks: they drink diuretics, sweat in saunas.

Jordan's diet during the Games can be called exemplary: for breakfast - fresh juice from ginger, turmeric, cabbage and beetroot, for lunch - vegetable soup, and for dinner - chicken breast or a small burger, the same fresh juice before bedtime. However, when Burrows is not competing, he allows himself pizza, milkshakes, spaghetti, chicken wings, and other not-so-healthy foods. In normal times, a wrestler weighs an average of six kilograms more than his weight class allows.

Jordan Burrows

Some athletes are accompanied to meals in the Olympic Village by coaches or nutritionists who do not allow them to overeat, and sometimes they themselves collect a tray for their charges.

24-year-old Turkish taekwondo player Nur Tatar is also forced to limit herself in nutrition: no more than 1,500 kilocalories in preparation for the competition (Nur performs in weight up to 67 kilograms). Her breakfast consists of a boiled egg, toast, a piece of cheese, a few olives and freshly squeezed juice, for lunch - a portion of pasta with cheese and a green salad, and Nur has dinner with diet beef cutlets with a vegetable side dish, a snack - an apple.

Nur Tatar

Elena Isinbayeva, athletics (34 years old)

The Olympic pole vaulter has been on a pre-competition diet for many years, and she doesn’t relax in her free time from training. This year, due to a doping scandal, Elena and other Russian athletes were suspended from the Olympics, but it is unlikely that Elena gives herself some relief and breaks her diet.

Isinbayeva adheres to "separate nutrition" and eats four times a day. For breakfast, the athlete usually has oatmeal, a sandwich with butter and fruit juice, and for dessert, fruit juice from grapefruit with orange. At lunch, an athlete always eats meat or fish with vegetables and drinks it with a glass of tomato juice. Elena's dinner turns out to be rather meager - yogurt, kefir or cottage cheese.

After six in the evening, Elena does not eat, but during the day she can afford tea with a small piece of chocolate. Elena does not allow herself other indulgences: according to the athlete, tempted by one pancake, she puts on sneakers and goes for an hour run.

Yelena Isinbayeva

The nutrition of another Russian athlete - swimmer Yulia Efimova - at some point was even more strict than that of Isinbayeva. Yulia's diet was handled by the famous specialist surgeon, chiropractor Homayun Garavi, who made up a rather strict diet for her. The athlete had to give up flour products, sugar (almost completely), and eat mainly meat and vegetables.

Sugar is the silent killer. If you want to get problems with the body - eat sugar. White rice is not very good, pasta, pizza are poison for our body,

Garavi thinks.

The most difficult thing for Yulia was to give up her favorite chocolate cakes, but along with the restrictions, the result also comes: the athlete’s health has improved, her stamina has increased, and skin problems have disappeared.

Julia Efimova

Obviously, athlete diets are not suitable for a person with a normal lifestyle, so you should not lean on nuggets to run like Usain Bolt or overeat before a swim like Michael Phelps, after all, after pizza, pasta and ice cream, you can generally go to the bottom.

After the American swimmer Michael Phelps triumphed at the Beijing and London Olympics, the media write a lot about him. Journalists want to know how he lives, how he trains, and most importantly, what and how much he eats in order to be a champion.

The truth about Michael Phelps' nutrition shocked many. And to call it a diet, somehow the tongue does not turn. It turns out that a champion swimmer eats over 12,000 calories a day!!! Of course, looking at his appearance, this is very difficult to admit. But you also need to consider that Phelps spends more than six hours every day in the pool, all the time training.

So, let's talk about the athlete's daily menu.

For breakfast, he eats three sandwiches with scrambled eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. In addition, Phelps eats a five-egg omelette and a bowl of cereal. The swimmer drinks two cups of coffee. And for the morning dessert - three French toasts with powdered sugar and three pancakes sprinkled with grated chocolate.

Lunch consists of 450 grams of pasta or pasta, two large sandwiches of white bread with ham and cheese, with mayonnaise. The drink for the Olympic champion is an energy drink that contains 1,000 calories.

Dinner at Michael Phelps is rather modest - only 450 grams of pasta or pasta and pizza. The athlete drinks this case with two energy drinks.

Doctors explain such a large amount of food consumed by an athlete by the rapid burning of all calories. After all, Michael Phelps betrays his body every day to huge physical exertion and burns about a thousand calories per hour.

However, some scientists argue that the Olympic champion is unique, because even cyclists consume 8-10 thousand calories a day, and Phelps - as much as 12 thousand! The amount of food that an athlete consumes could feed five healthy adult men.

But even if you are a big fan or admirer of Michael Phelps, then you do not need to imitate him in the "diet". After all, each organism is unique in its own way, and the Olympic champion went to this for years of training and compiling his diet.

In other words, athletes need a diet that is rich in carbohydrates and fats. Thanks to it, the necessary energy for the competition is provided. The diet of every future or current champion is planned over many years. It is important to choose a diet so that you get enough calories and spend them during your workout. Thus, most athletes do not feel heaviness after eating. What's more, Phelps gets several thousand calories a day from energy drinks and shakes, which are easy on the stomach and energize.

In addition to the nutrition itself, it is also important to properly plan meals. Then the body will receive calories and nutrients in a timely manner and there will never be a feeling of heaviness or a feeling of hunger.

A simple person who is only indirectly related to sports needs to eat according to general principles and absorb about 2000 calories per day. When doing this, consider gender, age, weight and level of physical activity.

Michael Phelps is a unique man in the history of sports. When they say that you need to look up to the champions, this does not mean at all that you need to follow their nutritional principles. Each person is unique in their own way, thanks to which you can look and feel great. The ideal diet should be tailored just for you, given your lifestyle. The Phelps Diet is just a great example of how a person feels great about maintaining a balance between nutrition and training.

Especially for- Maryana Surma

Metabolism in action: Michael Phelps rushes to another Olympic gold

American Michael Phelps, who literally blew up the Beijing Olympics with a series of sensational victories, is aiming for new medals. And BBC columnist Michael Hirst at this time is wondering what the super champion eats.

If the common phrase We are what we eat has a right to exist, then the menu below makes sense for those who want to become the most successful Olympian in history.

For breakfast: three sandwiches with scrambled eggs, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise. Behind them are three pancakes with chocolate chips, a five-egg omelet, three French breads with sugar, and a bowl of oatmeal. And all this is washed down with two cups of coffee.

For lunch: half a kilo of pasta, two large sandwiches with cheese and ham on white bread with mayonnaise - and the so-called energy drinks.

For dinner: another half a kilo of pasta, optionally with carbonara sauce, then a large pizza and more energy drinks.

This whole combination is not very similar to diet food: it, by the way, has a total of 10 thousand kilocalories. That would have been enough to feed five average men a day.

But it's the menu that swimmer Michael Phelps, who won six gold medals at the 2004 Athens Games and is aiming for another eight at this year's Beijing Games, is said to be approved as the daily diet of swimmer Michael Phelps.

"Eat, sleep and swim, that's all I can do," he said after winning his 11th Olympic gold medal.

Judging by how much he eats and how much he swims, this is not so surprising.

Vegetables fruits

And although the 23-year-old athlete burns all these calories for five hours every day, his method of eating still seems, to put it mildly, unusual. Is he following some trendy nutritionist's program?

Barbara Levin, a nutritionist who has been advising athletes around the world for nearly two decades, thinks the answer to that question is no. "From a health point of view, if he eats this way for a long time, he will probably have to see a cardiologist regularly," she told the BBC.

But while emphasizing that the number of calories a 193-centimeter swimmer consumes doesn't quite fit the notion of a healthy diet, the expert still believes that Phelps' diet may make some sense.

"I've worked with over a thousand endurance athletes - swimmers and runners - and one of the most common problems they have is glycogen breakdown, which is the result of not getting enough carbohydrates," explains Levine. "In nine out of 10 cases, an athlete doesn't achieve what they are capable of because they don't get enough carbohydrates, which the muscles need as fuel."

A little arithmetic

Phelps won his sixth gold medal in Beijing last Friday in the 200m medley. And on Saturday, his goal will be to win the 100 meters - and then he will repeat the record of his compatriot Mark Spitz, who won eight gold medals during one Olympics.

And if the American team wins Sunday's 4x100m relay, then Phelps will beat Spitz's achievement.

But the process of chasing this record is a crazy series of training, qualifications, semi-finals and finals. Between his 10th gold (200m butterfly), which made him the most successful Olympian in history, and 11th (4x200m relay), Phelps had only an hour to recover.

With such a rhythm, restoring the level of carbohydrates in the body is extremely important, says Barbara Levin. The bread and pasta that Phelps is so fond of are rich in carbohydrates, and they are quickly absorbed by the body, which gives the swimmer a much-needed energy boost.

A swimmer who weighs about 85 kg understands this. When asked what he needed to continue his sensational gold medal quest, he answered very simply: "More calories and the fastest possible recovery."

Maintaining carb levels between swims, says nutritionist Levine, is also important in the name of avoiding what athletes call "hitting a wall." This is the moment during an endurance race when the body uses up all of its carbohydrate fuel (also known as muscle glycogen) and switches to a much less energy efficient fat burning process.

Fat accumulation

The Phelps Diet is not for everyone. Due to the structure of his body, which has a very large muscle mass, the swimmer's metabolism (the process of converting food into energy) far exceeds that of the average man, emphasizes Jeff Kotterman, director of the US National Sports Nutrition Association.

"It's a combination of peak workloads and the fact that he has an incredible metabolism: he burns more calories sitting at a table than many people while walking," Kotterman says in an interview with the BBC.

He estimates that Phelps, who has about 8% body fat, burns about a thousand calories an hour while exercising in the pool - while the average person spends from 170 to 240 calories for a similar exercise - such as brisk walking. .

Therefore, trying to follow the Phelps method of eating (consuming up to 12 thousand kilocalories per day) of another person will lead to completely different results.

One pound (about 450 g) of fat contains about 3.5 thousand calories, so the average person, following such a diet, can gain almost three pounds of fat per day.

But Michael Phelps — who already has victories in the 400m medley, 200m freestyle, 200m butterfly, 4x100 and 4x200 relays, and world-record 200m medley — is clearly no average person.