Yahoo Bullshitters

Ok,

I have had literally about 10 people come up to me the past couple of days commenting on me how incredible it is that Phelps consumes 12,000 calories per day. Let me think about this....


Phelps in his "high weeks" has been reported to swim 80 kilometers per week. So lets assume 12 kilometers per day, which is 84 kilometers per week.

Presumably at the slowest, Michael may knock off an average 4000 in about an hour. I routinely swim 4k in 75 minutes, and that's the whole workout, including rests between intervals. Yeah...and I swim 1:35-40 per 100 meter, not 60-65 seconds as many or most world class swimmers do (ave in workouts, not racing).

So, in an hour of intense swimming, the maximum calories burned is around 2000. This is an extreme high number and I am assuming that in an hour, the swimmer is swimming at a very high effort. So, for 12k per day, maximum time of swimming is probably around 3:30 at the most, which would be 7000 calories. This is probably the absolute maximum and assumes very high, race like efforts for the entire 12k of swimming.

Basic metabolic rate of most people varies, 1200-2200 calories per day. So lets go with the high end of 2000 calories. The higher your fitness, the lower your metabolic rate typically, and is related to resting heart rate. In actuality, Phelps probably only burns, as a baseline, 1500 cal per day at the most (resting, non-workout periods).

But we can assume absolute maximums here. With this presumption I think the absolute maximum of 8500 calories in a day may be possible, and that's assuming extremely high efforts during every workout.

So, 12000 calories consumed per day would be more than a half of a pound of weight gain per day, and of course this is not the case. So, yeah, more media/yahoo.com bullshit and failing to have any intelligent thought going into their stories.

Come on....there are world class triathletes working out 40-50 hours per week, nearly double the hours of Phelps, and dont come anywhere near 12000 calories per day of food intake!
Even us lolely age groupers...my 42 hr week last year, I took in about 5000 calories per day maximum. Yeah, its total bullshit.

Another comment I've been getting, "wow..do you see all the bacon and crap Phelps eats?" I assume more media hype to get people to take an interest, and think that world class athletes like Phelps are like the average person, and I presume a poor attempt to make it seem that these athletes have zero knowledge of nutrition and healthy eating.

I can name of many examples of thin, endurance runners, some of which are world class, that have had heart attacks and/or cardiac stents placed later in life because of atherosclerotic disease.

So, if you dont eat healthy, very low saturated fats (bacon, butter, whole dairy, ground beef, etc)
it doesnt matter how thin you are...you are still suseptable to heart disease and other related problems that come with atherosclerosis.