Here we go then: The Michael Phelps Diet for Health, Happiness and More Olympic Gold Medals Than Anyone Else Ever. We’ll ignore, momentarily, the fact that the best swimmer the world has seen stands 1.93m tall, has a wingspan — fingertip to fingertip — of 2m, and weighs in at 87kg. We’ll ignore also the fact that he spends most of his life in a pool, swimming at least 80km a week very fast indeed, and the rest of it in a gym. We’ll ignore, finally, the fact that I am not quite as big as him, and do not, most days, get quite as much exercise.
I am going to see what it is like to eat what Michael Phelps eats in a day.
“It just smells so horrible,” says the photographer, helpfully, as we survey the table before us. On it are a large bowl of porridge; three doorstep-sized sandwiches of white bread, butter, fried egg, fried onion, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise; a five-egg omelet tastefully garnished with parsley; three slices of French toast liberally sprinkled with sugar; three pancakes topped with chocolate chips; and two large cups of coffee. That’s breakfast. Yummy.
Next to it is lunch, which consists of 454g (that’s a very large bowl) of pasta with tomato sauce; two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches with more lettuce, tomato and don’t forget the mayo; plus four bottles of a proprietary high-energy sports drink that always makes me burp. For dinner, it’s another 454g of pasta, a large cheese-and-tomato pizza, and another four bottles of the same proprietary high-energy sports drink that always makes me burp. “You poor thing,” says the photographer, generously. “I so don’t envy you.”
So we kick off with the porridge, which is the nearest we could get to the large helping of grits the 23-year-old reportedly consumes. It wasn’t bad, actually, a reasonably breakfasty kind of thing, and really rather comforting given the massive scale of the task ahead. I manage, I’d imagine, a normal-sized kind of a portion: 10 good spoonfuls. The fried egg, fried onion, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches are more of a challenge. It’s the mayo, I think; somehow, you don’t quite expect to be scoffing down mayo first thing in the morning. It’s greasy, and it smells.
I start to feel slightly queasy. But I struggle through half an egg sandwich — one-sixth of what Phelps manages — and push on to the five-egg omelet. Not bad either: under normal circumstances I might quite have enjoyed this. It was nice and fluffy on the outside and satisfyingly runny in the middle. Most importantly, it did not contain mayonnaise. Half the omelet consumed, and it was time for the French toast. I can’t remember the last time I ate French toast and I seem to have forgotten it was made with eggs. There are, I begin to think, rather a lot of eggs in this meal. I feel slightly more queasy.
Plus, I’m now chewing a lot. You know that feeling, when you have to chew an awful lot or you know you’ll never get it down? One mouthful at a time. Slowly. Don’t think eggs. Or mayonnaise. Which, obviously, contains eggs. And there are still the choc-chip pancakes to come. I force down one-and-a-half of those, very slowly, with the help of both mugs of coffee. I feel dreadful. Gross, bloated, uncomfortable, sick. The photographer, bless, makes little motherly clucking noises as I cram a napkin urgently to my mouth, breathing deeply. “You don’t look very well,” she observes. “Some water? A break?”
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