Track Star Lolo Jones Eats 9,000 Calories Daily to Beef Up for Bobsledding
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Harry How/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Track star Lolo Jones said she’s eating 9,000 calories a day to beef up for bobsledding.
In an interview with USA Today Sports, the 31-year-old Olympic hurdler and bobsled hopeful said she’s her “heaviest ever,” at 157 pounds.
“It took so much work,” she told the paper. “I’m three pounds away from my ultimate goal.”
Jones said her new diet includes two 1,365-calorie protein shakes and late-night trips to McDonalds for bacon double cheeseburgers. But she’s far from flabby, insisting the weight went straight to her muscles.
“I’m pumped about this muscle weight,” said Jones, who weighed about 133 pounds during the London Olympics, where she came fourth in the 100-meter hurdles. “My abs are still there. I’m still cut, just super solid.”
The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, are still four months away, but women’s team trials start on Oct. 12 in Lake Placid, N.Y. Jones said she initially hoped to make it to 170 pounds, but was told the extra weight would end her track career.
“Pilots don’t like these skinny brakemen so they feel like they’re pushing more weight than they have to,” she said, adding that the mantra in bobsledding is “mass pushes mass.”
Jones isn’t the first Olympian to make headlines for calorie consumption. Swimming sensation Michael Phelps was widely reported to have eaten 12,000 calories a day leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing — though he says that’s a myth.
“I don’t count calories,” he said in an interview with Details magazine. “Whether it’s Sour Patch Kids or Reese’s or a bag of chips, if I feel like eating it, I’m going to eat it.”
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