Don’t try this at home

Swimmer Michael Phelps, who won five gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, has a unique diet — 12,000 calories a day, according to the New York Post.

The following is his typical menu. He eats it all, not just some of it.

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

Mark Klion, a sports medicine doctor and orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York said Phelps has to eat enough to replenish the calories he burns in his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week exercise regimen.

“If he doesn’t (eat that much),” Klion said, his “body won’t recover, the muscles will not recover, there will not be adequate energy stored for him to compete in his next event.”

But are all those eggs and ham and cheese good for him?

“I think for him, because of his caloric demands, he can probably eat whatever he wants to,” Klion said. “If you’ve got to eat that much, it better be enjoyable.”