November 4, 2013

Nature over nurture: Usain Bolt's gold medal diet

From The Independent:
Usain Bolt reveals he devoured 1,000 Chicken McNuggets during the 2008 Beijing Olympics 
It didn't do him any harm..he smashed three world records 
The Jamaican revealed in his soon-to-be released autobiography, Faster than Lightning, his passion started with a box of 20, yes 20, of the golden chicken treats, but with his training going into overdrive, he soon needed far more, up to 100 a day, and even turned to an apple pie to take the edge off. 
“At first I ate a box of 20 for lunch, then another for dinner,” he wrote. “The next day I had two boxes for breakfast, one for lunch and then another couple in the evening. I even grabbed some fries and an apple pie to go with it.” 

Of course, the Jamaican Milkshakes you ingest through a hypodermic needle don't slow you down, either.

By the way, my reading of David Wallechinsky's endlessly informative Complete Book of the Olympics suggests that nobody gets into severe auto crashes more than Olympic gold medalists. Hopefully, modern high end German safety technology will help Usain walk away from his next several wrecks as well.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

By the way, my reading of David Wallechinsky's endlessly informative Complete Book of the Olympics suggests that nobody gets into severe in auto crashes more than Olympic gold medalists. Hopefully, modern high end German safety technology will help Usain survive his next several wrecks.

Could that be due to doping?

Anonymous said...

What about Tom Wolfe's test pilots?

And actually, those chicken mcnuggets really aren't too bad for you: no carbs, minimal fat, just straight protein and salt.

albert magnus said...

People freaked out about the rumors that Michael Phelps ate 12,000 calories of pizza and hamburgers every day while training. I always was skeptical (12,000 seems like a lot), but I guess if it works for Bolt.

Orthodox said...

I can't remember which drug it was, but one of the ones weightlifters take makes them very hungry. I read about a guys taking it for the first time and within 30 minutes he was sweating and starving, though he had just eaten a meal. He said if you hear about weightlifters who eat at McDonald's several times a day and don't get fat, it's because they're juicing.

Olympic athletes probably burn calories at a similar rate during training.

jody said...

it never hurts to supplement your diet with vitamin S.

DYork said...

By the way, my reading of David Wallechinsky's endlessly informative Complete Book of the Olympics suggests that nobody gets into severe auto crashes more than Olympic gold medalists.

The higher than average motorcycle death rates for Afghanistan/Iraq combat vets lead to mandatory motorcycle training courses for military riders.

If you can avoid death in combat whats a little slip up on a US road at 100mph.

Plus humans have not evolved to place speed limits on their behavior. Sometimes traumatic blunt force impact is required.

Same with diet. Its new in human history to reach out the car window and be handed a massive amount of carbs/protein/fat in a low fiber package.

Historically for humans to say no to all that food would have been madness. Eat now or starve later.

Gold medalists probably have more ego/arrogance on average, before and after winning.

That can lead to problems - accidents, gambling "addictions", entitlement issues etc.

Steve Johnson said...

And actually, those chicken mcnuggets really aren't too bad for you: no carbs, minimal fat, just straight protein and salt.

Wrong on all three counts.

4 pieces have 12 grams of fat (which is horrible industrial seed oil fat from the frying oil), 11 grams of carbs (no sugar at least) and only 10 grams of protein.

40 per day is only 100 grams of protein.

Yeah, better be on steroids if you want to look like Usain Bolt on the Chicken McNugget diet.

Anonymous said...

And actually, those chicken mcnuggets really aren't too bad for you: no carbs, minimal fat, just straight protein and salt.

Chicken nuggets are BREADed chunks of chicken meat. They have lots of carbs.

Anonymous said...

Blacks love chicken. Nature over nurture indeed.

Anonymous said...

Gladwell was wrong: it's not the 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 McNuggets in 10 days that makes one an Olympian...

Anonymous said...

People freaked out about the rumors that Michael Phelps ate 12,000 calories of pizza and hamburgers every day while training. I always was skeptical (12,000 seems like a lot)

You'd be surprised how many calories you burn just sitting around, immersing your whole body in 75 degree water all day, much less doing Olympic-level training.

Anonymous said...

Also keep in mind that during training, Phelps would swim 60 miles per DAY. PER DAY. 60 MILES each and every single day in a pool.
That amount of anerobic/aerobic training is going to burn off a training RDA of 12K calories very easily, which is why he's in great shape.
Now obviously if he continues to eat 12,000 calories in the off season he won't look like he did at Beijing and London.

Steve Sailer said...

More like 60 miles per _week_ at most.

jody said...

6 miles per day maybe.

Auntie Analogue said...


What! No Twinkies for dessert?!

Jody said...

http://blogs.discovery.com/dfh-sara-novak/2012/07/a-closer-look-at-michael-phelps-daily-workout.html

8 miles per day over 6 days = 48 miles / week

Jody said...

http://blogs.discovery.com/dfh-sara-novak/2012/07/a-closer-look-at-michael-phelps-daily-workout.html

8 miles / day X 6 days = 48 miles / week.

(Oddly enough, a different Jody.)

Anonymous said...

That amount of anerobic/aerobic training is going to burn off a training RDA of 12K calories very easily, which is why he's in great shape.

I don't know that he's in great shape health wise. Lots of heavy training and endurance type athletes like swimmers, cyclists, runners, that train everyday and eat huge amounts of calories put their bodies in a pre-diabetic and chronically high cortisol state.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of people on roids. Clay Mathews. Jordy Nelson. Steve ever going to write an article on these white boys?

Jonathan Silber said...

Bolt eats off the Dollar Menu but drives off the Hundred Thousand Dollar Menu.

Jonathan Silber said...

Gladwell was wrong: it's not the 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 McNuggets in 10 days that makes one an Olympian...

Then I'm not the Biggest McLoser after all: I've just been Going for the Gold without knowing it.

Anonymous said...

Morgan Spurlock could not be reached for comment.

Anonymous said...

According to StuffBlackPeopleDontLike, Black people love eating chicken.

Anonymous said...

Blacks love chicken. Nature over nurture indeed.

Honestly, who doesn't love fried chicken? Blacks are just more honest about it.

2Degrees said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2399695/Usain-Bolt-warned-banned-Rio-2016-unless-Jamaica-sort-drug-testing.html

The DM has run lots of stories like this one. Its readership is usually un-PC, but when it comes to sport, they suddenly get with the programme. I don't know why.

Anonymous said...

As someone pointed out over at Vox Day, Even viruses know that race exists!

Anonymous said...

Sorry for going OT (well, it's sports related,) but remember Kwame Harris, NFL lineman who announced after his NFL days were over that he's gay? He was arrested for a domestic dispute with his partner that made news some time ago.

Reading the opening to today's article about his conviction left me laughing and shaking my head:

"Former 49ers and Raiders lineman Kwame Harris was convicted Monday of misdemeanor domestic violence and battery for beating his ex-boyfriend during an argument initially sparked by a dispute over table manners."

Aha. What can you say? NFL. Gay. Violent. Argument over....TABLE MANNERS!!!

And gay men say that other than their sexual tastes they are just_like_straight_men. Oh, the hilarity of it all. Next, they'll get into a domestic dispute over the flower arrangement. I can't help it. It's funny.

On a serious note, the emotional incongruities of many gay people (in Harris' case, for instance...having a strong mix of male aggressiveness and female sensitivities) has to be hard to reconcile at times.)

Anonymous said...

forgot to add the link:

http://www.insidebayarea.com/raiders/ci_24453338/former-49ers-and-raiders-lineman-kwame-harris-convicted

Matthew said...

"And actually, those chicken mcnuggets really aren't too bad for you: no carbs, minimal fat, just straight protein and salt."

Not minimal fat. A few years ago McD's switched to all white meat, so they're better than they used to be. But still...

100 Chicken McNuggets have:
- 4750 calories
- 300g of fat
- 50g of saturated fat
- 625mg cholesterol
- 9000mg of sodium
- 300g of carbs
- 25g of fiber
- only 225g of protein (which seems pretty low for the number of calories you're consuming).

Note that this does not account for any of the sauces that come with them.

So, yeah, it was the Jamaican milkshakes.

Matthew said...

"Also keep in mind that during training, Phelps would swim 60 miles per DAY."

Bullshit. You ever swim a mile non-stop? I have, several times, in a pool. It took me at least 40 minutes. I realize I'm not nearly as fast as Michael Phelps, but no one is going to swim 60 miles in a day, if it's even possible. Even if he swam twice as fast as me it'd take him 1200 minutes, or 20 hours.

Besides, Phelps was training for sprint events. Miles and miles of non-stop swimming is not the way to do that.

ysv_rao said...


Honestly, who doesn't love fried chicken? Blacks are just more honest about it."

I never really understood how acknowledging that blacks liking a delicious item such as fried chicken or watermelon is a hateful slur.

If they like it ,they like it. I think it is white liberals and professional "blacks" such as the light skinned Michael Eric Dyson(why are all these guys light skinned) who are perpetually offended on their behalf

Anyway once you attain very high fitness levels you can eat pretty much any damn thing you want as your metabolism works overtime

I envied quite a few black guys who were not particulary fitness junkies who could eat and eat and still remain lean and ripped
Damn them

Meanwhile I was doing 6 miles to work off 3 donuts

Anonymous said...

http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/05/obama-denies-you-can-keep-it-videotaped-promises/

Well, he can SHOVE it.

Svigor said...

Honestly, who doesn't love fried chicken? Blacks are just less able to forgo it.

FTFY.

Drunk Idiot said...

Steroids are well known for revving the metabolism into overdrive. Then again, steroids allow the user to train harder and more often, with less rest in between sessions. And the kind of training Olympic that sprinters do burns staggering amounts of calories even without the synthetic help.

Anonymous said...

I would love to see phys-ed teachers DRAFTED, at gunpoint, into media-saturated athletic competions. Put it all on satellite TV and watch how those 10K-hour-educrats show off their weakness, clumsiness, shortness of breath, and of course hypocrisy.

Anonymous said...

Charles Barkley used to talk about how he hated vegetables and never ate them

yerwrong said...

This story is a variant on "lady who smoked a pack a day and drank bourbon every night lives to be 108." Olympians have great DNA, train like crazy, and so they can perform well no matter how crappy their diet.

Anonymous said...

I had been doing a little research on Tour de France winners to find out how they died.Specifically heart attacks. None that I could see died that way. However four seem to have died as a result of car crashes and three were murdered. Four crash deaths out of 32 deaths.

Anonymous said...

Well with the most anabolic steroid being insulin, and it being virtually undetectable.

We all know how insulin can cause you to get extremely hungry as well as keep you lean.

You could die from an insulin overdose and the autopsy couldn't pin point it.

epidemiological comment said...

Lots of chicken, no vegetables. Some chicken is gonna be undercooked, and even well cooked chicken, in over-abundance, is bad news for any creature not evolved to eat nothing but chicken. Your GI tract will not be happy, not to mention every other part of your body that works with the GI tract. And Olympians are not immune, at least not after the age of 25 or 27 or so.

Anonymous said...

The truth is that Obama is intellectually a shallow man - once you get beyond the simplistic leftist rhetoric of the collage classroom there is little there but self promotion. He does not consulate with others because he can’t hold his own intellectually, he can‘t process what he is being told. The give and take of leadership is missing. He must talk down to people because he fears he can not keep up with them.

Unquestionably he is a gifted speaker who can easily overwhelm a crowd with victimization screeds. He does that most days of the week with a willing media trumpeting his pseudo goodness. The big problem is that running any group, requires more then great rhetoric - it requires the ability to take in information and create viable workable solutions. His answers to problems are pie in the sky collage professor solutions that can be easily sold to the uninformed. It appears the every political decision is calculated to benefit him personally. They all come with a victim message that he can sell with the help of the media.

Clearly Obama is a 100% self-centered man. The circle around him is small and fearful. He demands loyalty well beyond what is healthy for any politician in a free society. His appointments are not strong people. His brain trust are un American Sal Alinsky types. He surrounds himself with women who adore him and protect him.

Obama is a pumped up liberal educated lightweight!

p.s. You cannot understand America’s political scene without calculating in the propaganda role of the elite leftist MSM. If the media were honest, Obama would NOT be in his position today.