Really.

But unless you are willing to do what Michael Phelps does or something close to it you may not be able to eat exactly like him or quite as much as him.

During a recent interview Michael eluded to a diet for a typical training day that consisted of something like this:

Breakfast: Three fried egg sandwiches made with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions, and mayonnaise; three chocolate-chip pancakes; five-egg omelet; three sugar-coated slices of French toast; bowl of grits; two cups of coffee

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta; two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread; energy drinks

Dinner: One pound of pasta with carbonara sauce; a large pizza; energy drinks

I don't know about you, but I believe that diet would take me all day just to eat, let alone training for 5 hours and then getting my daily activities and chores in as well. It seems unlikely that anyone other than a professional athlete would ever have a need to eat this much food in a single day. But it did make me think about my philosophies on nutrition and eating.

As a trainer, I tell all my clients that my goal is for them to be able to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as they don't do it all the time and they do try and make an attempt at a reasonable portion.

If a person trains for 45 minutes, at a high level of intensity every day, increases the lean muscle mass of the body, lowers overall body fat to single digits for men and low teens for women, then in my book, that person should be able to eat whatever they want.

They are fat burning machines and every single thing that goes into the body is being used as energy. There is no way for the body to store fat because the metabolic rate is so high on that individual that the body has already used up all the fat stores to just accomplish the daily activities.

The problem with this scenario is most people don't train hard enough, long enough and often enough to ever achieve this goal.

However, if you can do all of the above and stay there for just 60 days, then I am confident you can start to nibble on everything in site. I say nibble because you should never over indulge. It just isn't healthy. Eating a 2 lb bag of M & M's in one sitting is never a good idea, even if you are Michael Phelps. But you certainly could get a "normal" size bag and enjoy.

I will save the topic of what a "normal" size is for another newsletter.

For now, imagine this. You have worked so hard, eaten so clean for 3-4 months, lowered your body fat to really impressive numbers, and have made your body a fat burning furnace so much that you need to go to the ice cream store every night for a double scoop of whatever you want.

Great, right?

Well that is exactly where I have taken some of my clients. They are able to live that way and if they don't eat 5-6 times a day they can't keep the weight on. That would be a great problem to have ... Wouldn't it?