If I start eating four to five times as much food as I normally would, will I develop muscles like those of standout Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps? I think he deserves all the attention being paid to his remarkable athletic achievements, but there’s too much focus on Mr. Phelps’ diet. He’s probably overdoing the fried food and cheese, but I’m quite ready to accept the amount of food he eats.
First, he exercises more in a week than many people do in a lifetime. Case in point, going to the pool several times a week, it took me about four months to swim 50 miles. I don’t do that anymore, because over a period of years, I wore out both shoulders swimming laps for exercise. Phelps swims 50 miles in one week, and I understand he does it every week.
Second, he’s not that far removed from his teenage years. As a Boy Scout leader and as a former teenage boy and young man myself, I can tell you from first-hand experience that food seldom spoils the appetite of young, growing or physically active men.
There’s no doubt that Michael Phelps is physically gifted and naturally talented, but let’s not overlook his hard work. His routine makes hard seem too tame a word to use. Very few people work anywhere near that hard at anything. If you or I did and we started out being at least good at it, we might not become the best in the world at what we we’re working on, we might not become the best in world history, but we’d probably become very successful.
