The World's Strongest Man said putting on 30 pounds in a week was 'easy' while visiting the US because restaurant portions were so big

• The World's Strongest Man put on 30 pounds in a week while in America for the 2022 competition, he said.
• Tom Stoltman, who is from the UK, told Insider it was "easy" because American portion sizes were so big.

World's Strongest Man Tom Stoltman put on 14 kilograms (30 pounds) in a week while in the US for the 2022 World's Strongest Man competition, he told Insider.

The 28-year-old two-time World's Strongest Man champion said it was easy to gain so much weight in such a short amount of time because the portions at restaurants where he ate in the US were so much bigger than in the UK, where he's from.

The 2022 World's Strongest Man competition took place in Sacramento, California, from May 24-29, and Stoltman, from Scotland, claimed the title for the second year running.

At 6'8" and around 180 kilograms (397 pounds) normally, Stoltman usually eats 8,000 calories day on average to maintain his strength and energy levels.

Over the week of the competition, however, he ate up to 15,000 calories daily to give him extra energy to compete.

Stoltman says he eats more calories without trying in the US

During the World's Strongest Man competition, Stoltman's diet consisted of pancakes with strawberries, bananas, and honey at IHOP for breakfast, any snack he fancied, three burgers and fries over the afternoon, pasta for dinner, and chocolate cake for dessert, as Insider's Jake Johnson previously reported.

Stoltman used the example of Five Guys to illustrate how big the meals he had in the US were, telling Insider that he thought the chain's portions in the US were twice the size of those in the UK. He said that he struggles to finish the American meals.

At Five Guys in the US, a cheeseburger with BBQ sauce and ketchup, plus a chocolate milkshake, for example, contains 1,721 calories, according to the company website. The same meal in the UK comes in at 1,369 calories.

This means that Stoltman consumed more calories without eating more meals.

"You're basically getting two meals in one," Stoltman said. If he eats six meals a day in the US, he believes it's the same amount of food as 10 or 11 in the UK.

"People think it can't be right that I'm eating 12,000 or more calories, but when you go to America it's easy," he said.

Stoltman eats so much while competing to fuel his performance

Stoltman described gaining so much weight so fast as "one of the worst feelings."

He enjoys eating the food for the first few days, but then it becomes less fun and he gets "meat sweats," he said.

The Strongman has put on a similar amount of weight before, which made him feel "lethargic" and like he'd smoked 50-100 cigarettes, but this time it wasn't so bad, he said.

"Being 180 kilos is already heavy but it's always seemed to work in my advantage," he said, referring to his performance.

The weight gain isn't intentional though. The increased food consumption is designed to boost Stoltman's performance and give him plenty of energy for the six-day competition. When competing, the athlete's calorie-burn increases through his high activity levels.

"You're competing for seven or eight-hour days," he said, adding that World's Strongest Man is "so intense."

Even though Stoltman's diet includes processed foods such as burgers, fries, and pancakes, all his meals are planned by a nutritionist and designed to give him energy when he needs it most.

Stoltman lost weight after he lowered his calories to 8,000 a day

Burgers are one of Stoltman's favorite foods, but after his week in America, he said he didn't want one for a month.

An average day of eating currently looks like:

• Eight eggs (cooked any way) with four pieces of sourdough bread and lots of mushrooms
• Protein shake with three scoops of protein powder and two punnets of fruit, such as 20-30 strawberries and a banana
• A "cheat meal" like a burger or lasagne (before training)
• Protein shake as above plus two donuts
• 300 grams of any meat with 250 grams of rice, noodles, or a large potato, plus vegetables
• Protein shake

Stoltman naturally loses weight when he returns to his normal way of eating, but his day-to-day diet often includes a burger. 90% of his diet is healthy, and 10% is junk food, he said.