Sumo-size

A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is astounding when you think that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats, and all of it is done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.

a) ______________________

A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slow down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11 a.m. It also makes them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.

b) ______________________

The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called ‘chankonabe’. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed with extra amounts of everything, and its main aim is providing calories. To complete their meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5 to 10 bowls of rice and lots of beer to fill the empty calories. A healthy sumo wrestler may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.

c) _______________________

After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training: the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their belly.