Athletes & Sports
6 famous athlete diets, fact-checked
Elite athletes' diets get turned into internet legend fast. Here's what's actually documented, sourced back to the original reporting.
Lionel Messi: cutting sugar and refined flour
Since 2014, Messi has worked with Italian sports physician Giuliano Poser, who had him cut refined sugar, limit refined flour and certain dairy, and build meals around water, extra-virgin olive oil, whole grains, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. Messi reportedly lost about 3.5kg and had fewer digestion-related issues after the change.[3]
Cristiano Ronaldo: six small meals a day
Ronaldo eats roughly six small meals every 2-4 hours built around lean protein (chicken, sea bass, swordfish, tuna), fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and consistent hydration, while avoiding refined sugar, dairy, and processed food. The stated goal is steady energy and blood sugar rather than large infrequent meals.[4]
Michael Phelps: the 12,000-calorie diet that wasn't
The famous claim that Phelps ate 12,000 calories a day is false — it came from a reporter's back-of-envelope math on a casually described meal plan. Phelps has said in his own autobiography the real number was closer to 8,000-10,000 calories on his heaviest training days, still enormous, but roughly 25% less than the myth.[5]
Usain Bolt: 1,000 chicken nuggets in Beijing
This one is true. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bolt ate almost nothing but McDonald's chicken nuggets — about 100 a day for 10 days — after a local meal upset his stomach and he decided not to risk anything unfamiliar before his races. He still broke three world records that Games. By the time he returned to Beijing in 2015, food options had improved and he didn't need to repeat it.[6]
Novak Djokovic: gluten-free and plant-based
Djokovic went gluten-free in 2010 after a Serbian nutritionist diagnosed a gluten sensitivity, and later moved to a fully plant-based diet built around vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and legumes. He credits the change with his run of Grand Slam success, though the specific health claims (like curing his allergies) are self-reported and haven't been independently verified.[7] See our deep dive on elimination diets and performance for what controlled research actually finds.
Simone Biles: no strict tracking
Biles deliberately avoids rigid meal tracking, calling it a risk factor for disordered eating given how much time she spends in the gym. She eats intuitively — oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, anything from pizza to salmon for lunch, fish with vegetables and rice for dinner, and a protein shake post-workout.[8]
The pattern across all six: what works is highly individual, and a diet succeeding alongside an elite athlete doesn't prove the diet caused the success — genetics, training volume, and years of development matter enormously too. Use these as examples of different valid approaches, not templates to copy exactly.