Swimming star Michael Phelps eats enough for five, but you should not.
Seven Olympic golds, possibly eight, equals to — take a breath, it takes time to calculate this — breakfast (three jumbo fried-egg sandwiches, three chocolate-chip pancakes, a five-egg omelette, three sugar-coated slices of French toast...), lunch (half a kilogram of enriched pasta, two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches on white bread smothered with mayonnaise, washed down with energy drinks) and dinner (another half-kilogram of pasta, followed by a large pizza and more energy drinks). Burp! That is about 12,000 calories a day, and it keeps Michael Phelps well ahead of the average Olympic swimmer.
It’s surprising that none of his fellow athletes have protested that competing against this man is unfair. His metabolism complements his physique, which is also extraordinary. Top trainers have likened him to a turbo-charged racing engine that is just tuned to guzzle fuel to deliver pure horsepower. Or, as someone quipped dryly, he must be a mutant — one of the X-men!
When details of this “obscene mountain of food enough to feed five average men daily”, was made public, it came with a clear warning — do not try this at home. But the Phelps phenomenon has once again brought into focus the enormous potential of the human body.
It is time you did an audit of your everyday diet, because the delicate work of maintaining energy reserves in the body is not restricted only to athletes. A quick reference guide would be the World Health Organisation’s guide to a healthy diet. One of the basics it calls for is a minimum of five different types of fruits and vegetables in a day. Put your hand up if you follow that.
A popular myth, that a healthy diet is akin to detox food, is put in its place by the US government’s recommendations in its food pyramid. You do need fat in your diet, and that is reinforced by a study which concluded that there should be three to five servings of fat every day, coupled with 75 calories of sweets.
The best person to advise you on your diet is your doctor, as a diet must always be refined to the individual’s needs. One thing he will definitely advise is plenty of fibre. Looking at Phelps’s diet, nutritionists have been exclaiming: “It’s plainly not affecting his performance, but many people would be constipated on a diet like that.”
