20,000 calories a day. can you even eat that much?

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Crothcipt

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Last night the guy that made my subway sub said he ate 20,000 cal. a day. I gave him 3 or 4 outs on it being a mistake thinking he ment 2,000. He explained to me that he has had extensive leg, and joint surgeries so he exercised a lot, running 16 miles a day. I can see him needing more calories a day, but 10x more. I'm asking if there is any validity to this?
 
When you think that Michael Phelps during heavy training was consuming 12000 calories a day, to have two thirds more than that seems incredible.

I would absolutely (just for 1 day) love to give it a try though!
 
An average size male will burn about 3000 calories running a marathon - 10 miles more than his stated daily run. He either has a lack of understanding of his intake or is engaging in hyperbole.
 
I was eating between 30000-50000 calories a week at one point and it was a disgusting amount of food... the thought of 20000 in a day is just crazy to me
 
He is mistaken, and badly so.
I am an avid runner, running 60-100 miles a week in heavy training periods.
In addition I work as a technician for 40-50 hours a week doing rather heavy jobs on a regular basis.
With that activity level I will use 4-6000 cals a day on average.
And that is more than average as I am 6'5" and weighs about 220lbs.

Edit:
A sumo wrestler will get up to those numbers when bulking up from what I understand.
Those guys are not using anything near that though, so that kind of numbers are just to reach the impressive size they actually do.
 
Just to bring up how much 20k of calories is. 20 lbs. of hamburger is pretty much around 20k. That equals out to 80 quarter pounders from Mickie Dees. Also taking into account that 20 hrs a day is spent awake, that makes 1k a hour.
 
I would guess it's not even possible to process 20k Cal per day, just from a pure digestive perspective.
 
When you consider that there's regular chocolate brownie portions out there with 1300 calories, it does seem possible.
 
I weighed 360 pounds in my best days and I am a scientist, and I say, with authority; "Nonsense!, on several levels." Nobody could survive on 20,000 calories for any amount of time. Why not? Well, the unit you are thinking about actually is kilocalories, and he would eat 20kcal when the recommendations are somewhere between 2100 and 2700kcal per day, more if he really runs like a maniac. And 20,000kcal is just as impossible because there is no way he could metabolize that much during one day unless he is on fire.

Stefan
 
I google 20,000 calories per day. The only person I could find that does it, is actually the fattest man in the world. He has a 6ft waist.
 
It seems unlikely to me. I had to do a week of recording one summer during college and I was around 8500, but I was engaged in some sort of physical activity about 6- 7 hours a day. If I remember correctly about 1500 of those were beer too.

One of my friends eats considerably more than that but still no where near 20000. And he is the most active person I have ever met. (The only time I ever saw him fatigued was after running a marathon then hiking about 2000 vertical with skis on his back)
 
I'm glad to see someone else eats 37 big macs a day in order to get to their 20,000 calories....

-Chuck
 
When you think that Michael Phelps during heavy training was consuming 12000 calories a day, to have two thirds more than that seems incredible.

I would absolutely (just for 1 day) love to give it a try though!

Deep fried Pizza supper ,bottle of Irn Bru and Tablet for dessert-got to be pretty close.
 
This dude must be inches away from cardiac arrest.

But seriously, what he's been telling you is either a pun or someone caught in a spiral of lies in where he's started to believe his own lies.
 
Ya I think the guy was trying to troll me. Not sure what his end goal is.
 
I found a 20kcal chocolate cake on youtube btw:

[video=youtube;pBJOIvzk-1w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBJOIvzk-1w[/video]
 
"The guy that made my subway sub said..."
 
He could have mistaken kj for kcal, in that case 20kj is around 4.78kcal which would make more sense
 
Yeah I think this guy is blowing wind,
I had a very active metabolism and lifestyle in my 20's and I did go through a period when I ate about 7000 cal a day. I was also working a full time job and coming home to hand forge Damascus for 6 hours a day after my regular shift. Its a disgusting amount of food. 5 regular meals a day plus snacks. For almost 3 times that you would have to eat almost constantly, and it has been stated above, that it would not be feasible for a persons digestion to take care of all that food.
My metabolism has slowed down now and I get the regular 2k plus or minus a few brownies :)
Del
 
He could have mistaken kj for kcal, in that case 20kj is around 4.78kcal which would make more sense

this..or something like this.

i remember in high school health class..2000 calories is really 20,000 calories..or kcal. the food industry thought food labeling would look awful, and decided to cut out a few zeros.
 
he's a kid. He seemed to like me when I went in with my work clothes on. I def. thought he was just mistaken, and maybe the surgeries just (slim) might put him up there.
 
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