If carb-loading were an Olympic competition, U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps would probably medal there too. His day starts with three cheese-tomato-onion-fried egg sandwiches, an omelet, three powdered-sugar-covered slices of French toast, a bowl of grits and three chocolate chip pancakes to top it off, according to news reports. Swimmer Michael Phelps, who set the men's 200-meter freestyle record at the Olympics, packs in the calories. Phelps told reporters earlier this week, he was instructed to eat between 8,000 and 10,000 calories every day. Other news reports put the total as high as 12,000 calories. This sounds extreme, even to some dietitians. But Olympic athletes' nutritional needs do vary widely according to their sports and body sizes, and swimming for long periods of time will naturally burn a lot of calories, experts told CNN. Phelps' intake is just what his appetite requires, said Nancy Clark, a sports nutritionist in Boston, Massachusetts. "He's a limousine, he's tall. A limousine needs more gas than a Mini Cooper," said Clark, who has worked with Olympic athletes. "Hunger is simply a request for fuel." Different sports need different amounts of fuel, she said. Gymnastics, for example, "doesn't require so much caloric expenditure," she said, and those athletes generally eat less than some others. They also tend to be smaller physically. Shannon Miller, 31, the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history and winner of seven Olympic medals, told CNN Friday that she didn't have any "off-limits" foods while in training. Her breakfast would be two waffles with butter and syrup, and her working parents would order Chinese food or pizza once a week. "I knew I needed to eat in order to have energy, but at the time I really didn't think about it too scientifically," she said. "It was very simple: If I was hungry, I ate." After her medal-winning performance at the 1996 Olympics, Miller attempted a comeback in the 2000 Olympic trials, but got injured. She will perform in the 2008 Tour of Olympic Superstars. She hit puberty immediately after she retired, and her entire body changed, she said. "I went from working out over 40 hours a week to nothing and kept eating the same amount of food!" she said. "It took some time but I figured out an 'everything in moderation approach' that works for me." Still, Miller said she didn't think too much about her eating habits when she was training. She enjoys eating, and had favorite and least favorite foods.
Clark described a typical gymnast's daily menu: a breakfast of cereal, milk and a banana; a lunch of a sandwich and soup; snacks of trail mix, energy bars and fruit; and a dinner of chicken, rice and vegetables. A weight lifter, Clark said, would eat the same kinds of things, but in larger quantities and with more of a focus on protein. Add eggs and yogurt to the gymnast's breakfast, and multiply the portions of all of the meals -- piles of rice, vegetables and two or three pieces of chicken for dinner.