Olympic athletes are high-powered machines that push the human body to the limits of performance. To fuel that extreme athleticism they must fuel their bodies constantly. For U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte that means consuming 6,000-8,000 calories each and every day.
Lochte has won 12 Olympic medals over his impressive career (six gold, three silver, three bronze), which includes one gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio when he helped win the Men’s 4x200m freestyle relay. So he apparently knows what he is doing by shoveling that much foodstuffs down his throat.
Lochte’s culinary tastes range from pancakes to avocado toast to fettuccini alfredo to Kind bars to tofu sausage to ice cream. Then there is the Lochte family tradition of having pizza and wings every Friday night since he was a young boy, which he still practices to this day despite being an all-world athlete.
To give you an idea as to how much and how often that Ryan is gorging:
“When I first started [professionally swimming], I was eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and now I’ve stopped. I was just constantly eating, and I was getting tired of eating. My jaw was getting sore. But I guess I’ve been doing it for so long—I’ve been doing it for 12 years—that it’s eerie now. If I’m not eating, then something is wrong.”
His jaw gets sore from constantly chewing food. #Goals
I’m not sure if Ryan Lochte is a competitive swimmer or a competitive eater.
But it doesn’t hurt that Lochte has his own personal chef, Glenn Lyman, who used to be Lebron James’s personal chef.
From Bon Appetit:
About a week before a competition, he carbo-loads. A week of spaghetti, fettuccine Alfredo (“chicken alfredo is my favorite”), any and all carbs, plus chicken, steak, proteins “like that.”
Then, two or three hours before a race, he’ll have another full meal. No energy drinks, just a caffeine pill after that morning coffee, which replaced his soda habit (“because my weakness is soda.”) If he’s hungry in between events, a peanut butter Kind bar is always in his bag.
He’s been really getting into health trends, too. The other day, he had spiralized pasta, or as Lochte put it: “Instead of regular pasta, I had this cucumber pasta.”
Did he like it?!? “I was just like, oooh, when I saw it I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m probably going to vomit from this. This doesn’t look good. Where’s my other pasta?’” It was definitely good, he told me. “I would have it again, but I would want a big old steak next to it or something. I need something else than that.”
To replace his soda addiction, “ I’ve been drinking water with … You know those little drops?” We work out that he means the lemonade flavored MiO drops.
Here’s the typical crazy diet that Lochte eats every day.
CAUTION: If you try this diet at home you put yourself at high risk that you will vomit before you even get to lunch or if you keep it down there is a danger that you will be one of those people who become so obese that your family will have to knock down a wall to rescue you from your couch.
Breakfast:
- 6 eggs, scrambled: 597 calories
- —with ham, 1 slice: 46 calories
- —with spinach, 1 cup: 41 calories
- —with diced tomatoes, 1/2 cup: 25 calories
- Hash browns, 1 cup: 413 calories
- Pancakes, plain, 2: 298 calories
- Oatmeal, plain, 1 cup: 166 calories
- 1 banana: 105 calories
Total: 1,691 calories
Snack:
- Avocado toast
- — with 1/2 an avocado: 145 calories
- —with whole-wheat bread slice: 69 calories
- —with spinach, 5 leaves: 12 calories
- —with 1 egg: 91 calories
- —with hot sauce: 1 calorie
- —with tofu sausage: 120 calories
Total: 438 calories
Lunch:
- Fettuccine alfredo: 950 calories
- —with chicken: 282 calories
- Water with lemon-flavored MiO drops: 0 calories
Total: 1,232 calories
Snack:
- Peanut butter Kind bar: 200 calories
Total: 200 calories
Dinner:
- Lochte confessed he downs pizza, chicken wings, and Mountain Dew every Friday.
- Domino’s pizza, cheese, 3 slices: 870 calories
- Domino’s BBQ wings, 4: 960 calories
- —with blue cheese: 240 calories
- Mountain Dew, 2 12-ounce servings: 340 calories
Total: 2,410 calories
Dessert:
- Mint chocolate chip ice cream, 1 cup: 300 calories
Total: 300 calories
So that gives us a total of a only 6271, but Lochte said that he sometimes has an “extra” meal before a big race. And after a huge event like the Olympics, he will indulge in a huge steak and a large glass(es) of wine.
“I’m going to a steakhouse and I’m getting a big, fat steak,” Lochte said. “I love filets. Anything, really. The bigger the better. It’s going down one tube, so I’m okay with that. I’m eating French fries, I love sweet potatoes, cooked vegetables, broccoli.”
Forget the wine, Ryan has exquisite taste in tequila.
Of course, Lochte has a far way to go to get to Michael Phelp’s insane 12,000 calorie diet.
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