These Are the Rations of an Olympic Athlete

What does it take to power Olympic athletes through four years of training, eight-hour workouts, and two weeks of competition in the Rio Games?

For swimmer Ryan Lochte, it’s an 8,000-calorie diet that includes spaghetti, fettuccine Alfredo, pancakes, eggs, and soda — while gymnast Aly Raisman puts ketchup on “everything,” and runner Mohamed Farah eats Frosted Flakes for breakfast. And who could forget sprinter Yohan Blake’s 16 bananas per day habit, or gymnast Shawn Johnson’s no-carb rule?

“We hear lots about Michael Phelps’s 12,000 calorie diet, but Olympic nutrition plans are not as simple as a list of foods,” Bob Seebohar, an exercise physiologist and a former sports dietician for the U.S. Olympic Committee, tells Yahoo Beauty. “What athletes eat depends on whether they’re in a certain phase of training or actually competing, their individual physiology, and which sport they play, among other factors. For example, at certain times of the year, the swim teams can eat the football teams under the table.” Olympic nutrition is also incredibly precise. Athletes are monitored by teams of advisers — physicians, nutritionists, dieticians — who use scientific methods to enhance their strength and performance.

Related: How Many Calories do Olympic Athletes Burn While Competing?

“It’s chemistry,” Krista Austin, a former physiologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee, tells Yahoo Beauty. “We observe how athletes’ diets respond to the stress of training with blood analysis, then tweak and fine-tune it depending on their progress and goals.”

There are no rules about what Olympians can eat or drink (and yes, they do drink alcohol on the occasional night out, says Austin), but most eat — unsurprisingly — as cleanly as possible. “That means avoiding processed, packaged food — even sports drinks, gels, and energy bars,” says Seebohar. Another goal: eating to control blood sugar and stabilize energy levels. “To do that, athletes combine fat, protein, and fiber,” says Seebohar, adding that fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds are healthy mainstays of any Olympian diet.

Olympic sports are divided into three broad categories — endurance, strength and power, and aesthetics — and nutrition goals vary for each. “Endurance athletes include long-distance runners who need to be very lean,” says Austin. “Most of the women don’t weigh more than 100 pounds, and the men, 120 pounds.” Because these athletes burn lots of calories, they rely on a low-glycemic diet (consuming carbohydrates that don’t lead to spikes in blood sugar and subsequent energy crashes). Think long-distance runner Shalane Flanagan’s grain-and-veggie lunches or pasta-with-bison-meatballs dinners.

Strength and power athletes include weight lifters, track runners, and sprint swimmers, the latter of which need more body fat to be as buoyant as possible, says Austin. “However, weightlifters often have to be far more calorie conscious and follow a higher protein plan due to needing as much muscle mass as possible.” For example, weightlifter Morghan King recently told Elle that her diet includes kale salads with ground chicken and artichokes, and eggs with sweet potato hash.

“Gymnasts, divers, and synchronized swimmers are classified under aesthetic sports and are generally known for being small or slight in build with low levels of body fat, so the overall caloric intake is lower than one might expect it to be,” says Austin. South Korean gymnast Son Yeon-jae recently shared details of her diet, which makes her life “very hard these days”: a small breakfast and lunch, followed by no dinner, to sustain her seven-hour workouts. “Western gymnasts have longer limbs, so even if we weigh the same, they look slimmer,” Yeon-jae told Korean news outlet the Chosunilbo. “As such, I have to weigh less to look as good.”

Yeon-jae’s diet is definitely not the norm, but the drive for perfection can make some athletes turn to food restriction, according to registered dietician Rasa Troup, a steeplechase runner who represented Lithuania in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “You would be surprised how many athletes eat McDonald’s,” Troup tells Yahoo Beauty, adding that deprivation followed by bingeing was an occasional practice among her former Olympic peers. Troup, who began training for Beijing six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, was consuming at least 3,000 calories per day due to her training schedule and the demands of breastfeeding, which required her to consume more calories than usual. “I never experienced food cravings because I fueled myself with good food and ate pizza when I wanted it,” says Troup.

Others build regular “cheat days” into their diets, a smart move in light of research, which found that regular indulgences keep nutrition goals on track. According to a story published by Parade, gymnast Gabby Douglas loves cinnamon rolls, rower Ellen Tomek eats sour candy, and table tennis player Jimmy Butler eats chips, sour cream, and salsa. To ward off regular food cravings, many Olympians rely on mental reminders or mantras. “We have a saying, ‘Through belief as the principle, order as the basis, winning is the goal!’” says Austin. “When athletes believe in themselves, and have created order to their nutrition program, they typically win — which includes overcoming temptation.”

Coaches like Austin often accompany Olympians to the grocery store and teach them how to plan meals, read food labels, and cook. “I even carted around a portable kitchen during the 2012 London Summer Olympics so I could cook the men’s taekwondo team grilled chicken sandwiches,” says Austin.

Olympians generally pay for their own meals or dine at restaurants, unless they choose to eat in the Olympic Village, a large facility in each host city where athletes eat and sleep. And its cafeteria — half the size of a football field, reports USA Today — serves endless free cuisine.

“In Beijing, we were offered Italian pasta and pizza, Asian stir-fry, Mediterranean food, and McDonald’s,” says Troup. “The quality of the food wasn’t impressive because there were so many people to feed, so the dietitians were rumored to hand out ‘goody bags’ of oatmeal, peanut butter, and trail mix.” Greg Shaw, a nutritionist for the Australian team, recently told USA Today of the Olympic Village, “It is this amazing food environment. Think of it as a food court on steroids.” Something the athletes hopefully know nothing about!

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