Anyone who hits the gym hard knows that diet is a crucial aspect of any fitness routine. The same goes for any athlete, no matter the sport. Fanatics.com did some research on the most popular sports in the United States to find out how many calories the athletes burn in their average training sessions, and how many they use up throughout the week, viewed in MET (Metabolic Equivalent). Then, they put those calories burned in perspective, comparing the number of calories to common foods.
Check out a few of the most mind-blowing stats–like who’s burning enough calories to equal 82 roast beef sandwiches!
Basketball bounced in at the top of Fanatics’ list. Players burned 3,940 through training sessions. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, that’s almost 43 cups of lemonade or 25 ice cream sandwiches. Weekly, they expended 54,392 calories. (That’s more than double what the average active male who consumes about 21,000 calories a week.) Torching 54,392 calories is equal to 181 grilled cheeses or 173 chicken pot pies.
Breakfast, anyone? Rowing is notorious for its early-morning workouts, so it’s only appropriate that rowers burn the equivalent of nearly 108 slices of bacon during a training session—a whopping 3,876 calories. They go through 28,204 weekly, which is enough to go through almost 76 cups of guacamole or 82 roast beef sandwiches.
Wrestling is a technical sport that requires a lot of training. To fuel a workout takes 3,318 calories each training session, the same as almost 12 cups of ice cream or 25 English muffins. Weekly, wrestlers torch 46,443 calories and could eat about 223 cheese quesadillas or 161 hamburgers just to break even.
