Ryan Crouser, the Paris gold medalist, consumes up to 6,000 calories each day and spends $1,000 on food each month. He is far from an outlier among athletes.
Ancient Greek athletes consumed dry figs, wet cheese, and wheat. The best shot putter in history gets his raw power from burritos and pizzas, and he measures his success in both calories and centimeters.
Ryan Crouser is the only three-time Olympic gold medalist in shot put, having won in Paris, Rio, and Tokyo. Despite previous injury issues, his best performance on Saturday at the rainy Stade de France was 22.90 m.
While many athletes struggle to maintain a calorie-controlled diet despite the desire to eat more, Crouser, who is 6 feet 7 inches (201 cm) tall and weighs over 320 pounds (145 kg), has the opposite difficulty. In 2019, the 31-year-old admitted to The New York Times that he no longer enjoys meals. “Each of my meals is half of what the average person eats in a day. And I do this five times. If I feel hungry during the day, it signifies I am not completing my work. So I eat a lot. Before another meal, I’ll stare at it for a while, thinking, ‘This again.'”
Crouser told CNBC that he spends $1,000 a month on food to maintain his daily calorie intake of 5,000 (the average recommended amount for a man his age is 2,500). He has stated that he consumes nine eggs in the form of two breakfast burritos in the morning, with sausage or bacon, cheese, sour cream, and salsa on flour tortillas. A typical lunch may be 12 ounces of rice and a pound of lean ground beef with barbecue sauce, and then he frequently orders “a family of three’s dinner,” such as a large meat pizza washed down with a pint of milk, followed by “another snack before I go to bed.” He once gained 5 pounds from a single dinner of rice, chicken, mac & cheese, and dessert.
“I’m constantly striving to maintain my body weight. Crouser, who was taller and skinnier as a child, admitted to GQ in 2021 that gaining weight has always been difficult for her. “Food is almost like a form of training for me. I eat on a predetermined timetable, so I never go hungry.” In the offseason, he says he targets for 6,000 calories per day because he is “doing more reps and burning more calories while trying to gain more muscle.” I try never to spend longer than three hours without eating. “I am always eating something.”
At international events, he compensates for smaller portion sizes by drinking shakes or eating out more frequently. “I did shed some weight in Rio. He told GQ that most countries’ cuisines are much lower in calories than typical American fare.
Crouser was born in Portland, Oregon, but grew up in nearby Boring and comes from a family of talented hurlers. His father, Mitch, was an alternate on the US discus squad for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; his uncle, Brian, competed in the javelin in 1988 and 1992; another uncle, Dean, was a college shot throw and discus champion; and a cousin, Sam, competed in the javelin in Rio in 2016. Crouser grew interested by throwing mechanics and zealously studied the approach of Ulf Timmermann, an East German glide technique expert who won the 1988 gold medal in Seoul.
Crouser studied economics and finance at the University of Texas, where he trained full-time after earning his master’s degree in 2016. The Indianapolis Colts of the NFL offered him a tryout in 2016, but he decided to stick with shot put and win gold at the world championships in 2022 and 2023.
Crouser has held the indoor and outdoor world records since 2021, when he broke another American’s 31-year-old outdoor record, Randy Barnes. In 2023, he extended his outdoor mark to 23.56 m in a discipline that American men have historically dominated.
Crouser’s friend and another Team USA member, Joe Kovacs, who won silver in Paris for the third time in a row, stands 6 feet tall and weighs over 300 pounds. He eats 12 eggs for breakfast.Skip past the newsletter promotion
They are hardly the only Olympians who follow diets that would result in a referral to a gastroenterologist rather than a spot on the podium. Swimmers demonstrate that champions have an insatiable desire, both literally and symbolically. Ryan Lochte, a former American Olympic champion, confesses to eating pizza and chicken wings every Friday. During his rigorous training, he consumed up to 8,000 calories per day and experienced jaw pain due to excessive chewing.
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all, devoured up to 10,000 calories per day and told NBC he ate “pretty much whatever I feel like”. That includes the following typical order from his favorite breakfast eatery in Baltimore: “Start with three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, and mayonnaise; add one omelette, a bowl of grits, and three slices of french toast with powdered sugar; then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes.”
Usain Bolt said in his autobiography, The Fastest Man Alive, that he won gold in the 100m and 200m while subsisting on a daily diet of a hundred chicken McNuggets, citing concerns about the cuisine in China during the Beijing Olympics. “I’d tried a local Chinese meal, which wasn’t like the ones we eat in the West, and my body didn’t react well,” he said. “So, knowing I could rely on nuggets, I decided that was all I’d eat.” I ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then rinsed them down with bottled water.