Watched a special about a documentary of a kid who quit college to become a professional competition eater - yes that's a thing. I swear I am not joking.

The kid trains like an Olympic athlete before a comp, he does work out at the gym as well but nothing special.

The calories he eats in training in a single meal is absolutely off the scale of anything I would consider humanly possible and he does it regularly.

He is a slim guy below the average American weight for age/size etc.

The other pro eaters shown at comps none seemed obese. I assumed they throw up all the calories before digestion but nope.

Gross topic but as a guy who controls his diet this seems to go against the science of nutrition, metabolic pathways etc.

The calories in - calories burned does not seem to apply.

If you haven't seen these guys eat please don't think this is a joke.

 

Like this one?

 

I suspect most of them vomit after competitions.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Roman incident

 

Disgusting thing.

 

Disgusting thing.

Sometimes you have to scratch your head to understand why people would do such a thing. People have been known to die from competitions (okay maybe only 1 person), but vomiting after competitions has the same liabilities as someone with bulimia.

 

This "professional" stuff is all new to me. I can relate what my roommate ("RF") and I did in college on $5.00 per week for food. Basically, we had one meal a day, which was usually a lot of spaghetti. Breakfast, if we had it, was cereal and milk. No lunch -- too expensive. That was it. We even had money left over for an occasional party.

We got used to eating large meals. When you see a non-professional gobbling at an eating contest, you know they don't know how to do it. You eat at a steady pace. My evidence? RF and I entered a pancake eating contest at an local IHOP. Unfortunately, we were each paired with a young lady from the local women's college. RF got one who wanted to win; I got one who wanted to impress me with her daintiness. The result: On an individual basis, I won; on a team basis RF won. We remained very good friends and roommates.

The key is not to sprint the first 200 yards of a 2 mile race, but to pace yourself. Neither RF nor I were in the least fat. We were simply used to eating a very large meal. Of course, I suspect professionals practice bulimia after contests, much like the Romans and Nazi's did. We never did that . Food was good.

 

There was a guy who had a show on the food channel that did it for a few years until his weight overcame him and he quit doing it and had others on his show doing it. It is a young person "sport".

 

I wonder if they get the feeling "they really made it" when they get their first spot on the pro-circuit.