“It was just frustrating” – When Michael Phelps opened up about his infamous diet 

Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer in history and the most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals, including 23 golds. The 37-year-old was one of the fittest athletes competing at the top of his game for around two decades.

Phelps announced his retirement from competitive swimming in 2016. He has since ventured into golf. Phelps, though, has maintained his fitness to date. However, not many know that there was a time when the swimmer used to devour a large amount of food on a daily basis.

As a swimmer, Phelps shed a lot of weight in training and was forced to eat a lot. However, Phelps once revealed his wild diet and left many in awe. While the daily caloric intake for most people is up to 3,000 calories a day, Phelps said that he used to consume around 12,000 calories every single day while training.

Michael Phelps' insane diet

In an interview in October of 2017, Phelps opened up about his infamous diet. The athlete, while talking about his post-retirement life, revealed that he wasn’t a fan of his eating habits during his career.

The Baltimore native revealed that his diet of 8,000 to 12,000 calories was frustrating as he was forced to eat, which made it feel like a ritual. He added that he likes his current and ‘normal’ diet more.

Opening up about his diet to Business Insider, Michael Phelps said:

“It was just frustrating to constantly shove calories down your system. For so long, that’s what it was, a job… It’s not 8,000-10,000 calories like it once was. I would say, ‘the normal diet.’ I don’t know what that is, but I would say it’s more typical.”

Interestingly, Spoon University once broke down Michael Phelps’ diet for people to guess the amount of work he put in to ‘eat’. According to the report, the swimmer’s daily diet would scare most people. Here is the diet plan Phelps followed during his training days:

Breakfast:

• Three fried egg sandwiches with tomatoes, fried onions, mayo, lettuce, and cheese
• Five egg omelets
• One bowl of grits
• Three slices of French toast dusted with powdered sugar
• Three chocolate chip pancakes
• Two cups of coffee

Lunch:

• A pound of enriched pasta
• Two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread
• 1,000 calories of energy drinks

Dinner:

• Another pound of pasta
• One 8-inch pizza
• Several energy drinks

In a different interview with Mashable, Michael Phelps later revealed that he changed up his eating habits in his last year of competitive swimming. He said:

“In 2016, I took a different approach because I was older and my body was a little different than what it was in the past. So I looked at it as my body being a high-performance car. And you’re not going to put low grade… you’re going to put the best gasoline into that car to make sure it runs as smooth as possible.”

Michael Phelps is now a frequent golfer and continues to train. It's safe to say that Phelps’ heavy diet has not done much damage to his body so far.