What a Sports Star's Diet Looks Like

As sports fans who don't need to stick to a strict diet each and every day, we're often found stuffing our faces—and bellies—with junk food and beer anytime we watch our favorite teams.

And that's fine for us, since we don't have to perform at a high level or face the stiffest competition and best athletes in the world. We can get away with it.

Even those fans who are gym rats and eat a bunch of supplements and lean meals enjoy a cheat day every once in a while.

Pro athletes, though? They're not always so fortunate. Sure, there have been a few examples of players being known to eat fast food and wild out on sweets and still being able to do their jobs well, but that's not the norm.

So what does it take to eat like a sports star? A lot of patience and resolve.

Even when athletes are at the top of their game and presumed to be some of the fittest in their respective sports, they still try to do what they can in order to shed some weight to help shape their bodies even more. 

For instance, just look at the well-noted transformation of Cleveland Cavaliers' superstar LeBron James last summer, who slimmed down by eliminating all carbohydrates from his diet.

In James' case, he was coming off a season in which he didn't win the league MVP award for just the second time in six years, as well as a brutal NBA Finals appearance where the opposing San Antonio Spurs physically wore him and his Miami Heat teammates down.

It's not that James needed to drop the weight, yet he did it to try to prolong his dominance as the best basketball player on the planet upon turning 30 years old this past December.

While King James was cutting out carbs and calories from his diet, though, other athletes have taken a different route in their attempt to stay on top.

Need I remind you that Olympic gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps had one of the most ridiculous diets known to man? He consumed around 12,000 calories daily in order to have enough energy for the amount of training it takes to finish an illustrious career with the most Olympic medals in history with 22.

Working out six days per week for five hours each day, Phelps ate things like three fried-egg sandwiches that were loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and mayonnaise. For a normal person to eat that and then sit around at their desk all day, that's asking a lot. But for a world-class athlete like Phelps, that's just status quo each day as he prepped for competition—and that was just part of breakfast.

His lunch and dinner consisted of pasta, breads and more energy drinks than a college kid trying to cram a semester's worth of information into one night before their final exam.

Of course, in both instances, people ask, Are these types of extreme diets effective and, even more importantly, safe?

One of the perks of being a top-notch athlete is the amount of training tips and education one gets once they achieve superstardom. Athletes are surrounded by some of the top research minds in health, sports science and other specific training methods.

In response to Phelps' diet, sports medicine doctor and orthopedic surgeon Mark Klion told The Wall Street Journal, "I think for him (Phelps), because of his caloric demands, he can probably eat whatever he wants to." He added that, should Phelps not eat as much as he does, "his body won't recover, the muscles won't recover, and there will not be adequate energy stored for him to compete in his next event."

For someone like Phelps, who is eating controlled calories to give his body both energy and recovery, something like that makes sense. But for normal folks like you and me, it's best to stick to 2,500-3,000 calories per day so not to wind up needing a gastric bypass by the age of 45 because we clogged our arteries with a bunch of crap.

To go back to James, even while the two-time NBA champ was going through the diet—which he stuck to for 67 days—there were many in the health world who thought he was crazy for being so strenuous and making such drastic changes, saying that it is way too extreme for a normal person to attempt.

Via Business Insider, Torey Jones Armul, a registered dietitian, nutritionist and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said, "I would discourage any client, professional athlete or not, from following this low-carb diet." Jones Armul added, "To lose weight, increase energy levels and improve performance, your best bet is loading up on fruits and vegetables, choosing whole grains and lean protein and making exercise a habit throughout the week."

In a sense, James' diet was the opposite of someone who preps for a marathon, who would generally carbo-load with pastas and breads to prepare for the strenuous toll the following morning.

Considering James was forced to the sideline for a two-week hiatus from a few, nagging injuries, could some of the problems been attributed to such a physical change? Who knows? One thing's for sure, though: Following the time off—in which he spent time in South Beach with his personal trainer to whip his body back into shape—he has been a force, leading the Cavs to a 24-8 record since his first game back and climbing the Eastern Conference standings in the process.

While James and Phelps are two extreme cases of athletes taking a hard look at what they are and aren't consuming each day, undefeated boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s diet leading up to his highly anticipated fight with Manny Pacquiao might take the cake—or, in Floyd's case, not eat the cake.

As the highest-earning athlete on the planet, Money decided to drop some serious coin on a persona chef to help monitor his diet prior to the the May 2 bout, paying Las Vegas-based chef Chef Q a whopping $1,000 per meal.

For those who aren't quick with math, assuming Mayweather eats four meals per day, his grand total from today until fight night will be $176,000.

With Chef Q telling TMZ that Mayweather's plates consist of, "high-levels of protein with no carbs—turkey, chicken, beef and fish," the fighter is going above and beyond his normal pre-fight routine in order to walk out of the ring a champion once again after fighting Pacquiao.

Is it really worth it for pro athletes to stress so much about what they're putting into their bodies? While some may argue that it's their due diligence to be in top form, the simple answer is that there are different strokes for different folks, with each body reacting differently.

Whether an athlete is looking for the proper energy to compete and recover or the right balance to reshape his body for the long haul of a season, balancing good carbs like whole grains, oats, low-fat yogurt and fresh fruit is the name of the game, with a plan on how much and when to consume them prior to competition.