10,000 Calorie Challenge

There are things every man should do in life, things like being able to survive in the wild, throw a punch, tell someone you love them and, of course, eat 10,000 calories in 24 hours. I decided that I was best suited to the last of these options and so I embarked on my 10,000 calorie challenge.

I was ably assisted by my sidekick, Sarah. I say I was assisted, I mean mocked. Assistance had been offered under the guise of moral support. Still, an entire day of mockery would prove to be more enjoyable than a day eating alone would have been.

My day started with a run, partly to add a few kilometres to my 1000 km challenge and partly because I knew I was going to feel disgustingly fat a little later on. The second mission was to Krispy Kremes to pick up twenty-four doughnuts. We chose twelve filled doughnuts and twelve glazed ring doughnuts. That gave us a good amount of calories to start with.

I blitzed 1720 calories in the first 17 minutes. It all seemed a little too easy. I did, however, already need a break. A brisk walk and stop at the pub for an inexplicable glass of diet coke later, and it was time to watch a movie and keep eating. The chocolate brownie milk didn’t really mix well with what I had already eaten, so I munched on an entire packet of Oreos to soak up the milk. I was over 40% of the way to my target, but time seemed to be passing more quickly than my stomach was digesting.

After the movie we decided that a switch to more savoury foodstuffs would be fitting. We wobbled off to Tesco where I decided that cheap tins of energy drink would be a most excellent idea; it wasn’t. We also raided Tesco for a couple of large pizzas and a few 150 gram bags of crisps. I couldn’t face the chocolate aisle after the doughnuts. My dessert stomach was full; I needed to switch to my savoury stomach.

My mental abilities at this point were a little bit odd. I drank metallic energy liquid as I burbled away at my sidekick. I may as well have been drunk at this point. My sidekick had been keeping up quite well, if you weight adjusted her calorie intake; she is a very little person after all.

The pizza with the third movie of the day was an excellent choice, as were the crisps. Whereas the Sarah was extremely close to her target of 5000 calories, I was still miles away from mine. I was about two-thirds of the way to my target. My sidekick only had 500 calories left to go and seemed to be coping very well with all the food; this felt immensely unfair.

The second large pizza went into the oven, and out came the Irn Bru. It was ten to nine in the evening, and I had to get a move on if I wanted to hit 10,000 calories. The second pizza was soon consumed and with some misplaced optimism I started cooking two dessert pizzas.

I can’t really remember much of the next three hours. I sort of phased in and out of existence in some sort of depraved state of gluttony. My sidekick retired home at a rather respectable 6438 calories and may have been mocking me further, but I was now too far gone to notice. I had achieved over 9000 calories, but I was beaten for the night.

I awoke at 4.30 am with a heart rate of 92 and more stomach acid than my stomach knew what to do with. I felt distinctly unpleasant and a couple of swigs of chocolate milk did nothing to alleviate my symptoms. I rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep.
Morning came and I scoffed my remaining two doughnuts, which was an easy win, the chocolate milk quickly followed. I had to sip that last pint of Irn Bru very slowly, but I finally passed the 10,000 calorie mark 23 hours and 38 minutes after I had started. This was a success that I am not keen to repeat. I felt rather delicate for the rest of the day and couldn’t even face my celebratory ice-cream until 36 hours after the challenge was complete.