I’ll Have What Lolo Jones Is Having

Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones says she was eating 9,000 calories a day for a chance to participate in the 2014 Winter Games, as Team USA’s brakewoman (she’s already got a world championship in her new sport):

Last year, during her inaugural bobsled season, the 31-year-old struggled to put on weight. So you can imagine her excitement during a recent commercial shoot when she slipped into her Team USA bobsled suit only to have it rip down the middle of her torso. While many would have reacted with horror, Jones smiled.

“Yeah, that hasn’t happened to me before,” Jones admitted Monday at the U.S. Olympic media summit. “They had to sew me back in. It was crazy. I was like, ‘Get me a scale.’ I was happy.”

Happy because the wardrobe malfunction meant Jones was inching closer to her target weight of 162 pounds that she hopes to reach in the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics. Jones, who weighed 135 pounds when she finished fourth in the 100-meter hurdles in the 2012 London Games, struggled to eclipse 150 pounds last season.

After dropping down to 138 to run hurdles this past spring and summer, she’s ecstatic that she’s already up to 158.5 pounds before the 2013 bobsled season has even begun. (Her diet included plenty of bacon double cheeseburgers and consuming 9,000 calories per day.)

I’m reminded of Michael Phelps’ infamous 12,000-calorie diet from 2008, and the “Michael Phelps Diet Challenge” videos that followed, which are not recommended this early in the morning, or ever, really. Nine-thousand, though: Where would one even start? I’m gonna start with a bagel. [ESPN]