Michael Phelps' Diet

Unless you've been living under a rock this past week you've probably been following or have at least heard about Michael Phelps' history making run at the Beijing Olympic games. He won eight gold medals and set seven world records, establishing himself as the greatest medal-winner at a single Games in the 112-year history of the modern Olympics. Combined with his six golds and two bronzes from previous Games and the fact that he plans to compete again both four and eight years from now, it's a pretty good bet that he will some day be known as an Olympic legend.

Even more prolific than his penchant for winning gold however is his appetite: the 23-year-old consumes a staggering 12,000 calories a day, over five times what an average adult male should be getting. Check out this menu from a typical training day:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

I'm a fairly slow eater myself but even if I wasn't I don't think I could find the time to put all of that away every day. And I imagine that he must have many days just like the one below (you can see that the Emmy's are well deserved):