#NoMatterWhat - A look at Usain Bolt's diet: what fuels the fastest man on the planet?

How does Usain Bolt's diet help him stay ahead of the competition?

Usain Bolt is the fastest man on the planet and his mind-boggling achievements make one wonder how he manages to outdo himself again and again. The only man ever to have held world records in both the 100m and 200m since automatic time measurements came into being, Bolt is clearly head and shoulders above everyone else in the field.

However, the secret to his performances clearly extends beyond what one gets to see on the track. The Jamaican clearly works his socks off in training and focuses a lot on eating right and watching what he eats at all times of the day.

As the wise old saying goes, “you are what you eat”. If we were to take that literally, Usain Bolt’s breakfast, lunch and dinner would probably consist of cheetahs, sailfish and peregrine falcons. Of course, it doesn’t, but the essence of the saying holds true.

As anyone who has ever had a sitting with a gym instructor, or a decent muscle magazine, will tell you – a good diet is what makes or breaks you. It’s the same for anyone, whether it is me or you trying to get a bit healthier or Michael Phelps training to own the pool with his mind-boggling 10,000 calories-a-day diet.

While Bolt’s carefree persona might give you the idea that he doesn’t care about what he eats, that definitely isn’t the case. He doesn’t just wake up and run fast, and neither does he eat junk food and drink beer all day. He would like to – who wouldn’t – but as any top level athlete will tell you, what you want and what you need doesn’t always match up.

Speak to anyone in Jamaica, and they’ll tell you the secret lies in the traditional Jamaican staple of yam. While a bit hyperbolic, there is still something to that.

A high-energy food, yam has been the staple across Sub-Saharan Africa, and consequentially the Caribbean, for a long time, and Bolt grew up on a steady diet that revolved around yam. The super food (177 calories per cup) packs 34 percent of your daily vitamin C requirement (which fights post-workout muscle inflammation), 40 percent of vitamin B6 (a natural energy booster), and 26 percent of daily potassium requirements (a key electrolyte)

As we take a closer look at what the fastest man on the world has as a part of a very strict diet regimen, you will see that he has stuck to traditional Jamaican dishes and foods rather than go with something that is unnatural to him and he isn’t comfortable with.

Bolt isn’t really the ‘get up at the crack of dawn and go for a run’ kind of guy – in his own words “I am supposed to be at the gym at 10, but that's when I get up!”. So it’s straight into the heavy stuff – cooked banana, yellow yam, potato, Ackee (a fruit from the same family as a lychee) and Saltfish (Ackee and Saltfish is a traditional Jamaican dish) and some dumplings.

Lunch is again protein rich with tuna or snapper with whole wheat bread and brown rice. But as any good gym-enthusiast will tell you, meals are not taken in the traditional thrice-a-day manner, but in six-times-a-day phases that keep energy up throughout the day. Hence, this is often supplemented with chicken breast and pasta.

Dinner is generally either chicken and beef mixed with brown rice or peas with pork. The whole thrust of this diet is to keep that vast engine room firing and this combination of foods ensures that each of his six daily meals work within the ideal athlete ratio of 60% protein, 30% carbs and 10% fats.

As ever though, keeping hydrated is essential and Bolt has Gatorade mixed with water to ensure a steady flow of electrolytes through that massive frame of his.

Though he does enjoy the odd meal of Chicken nuggets, he ensures he eats healthy 90% of the time

Contrary to popular opinion then, his quite ridiculous speed is not powered by a Budweiser-Redbull cocktail (his favourite) and a bucketload of chicken nuggets (Oh, that story about him having chicken nuggets before the race that propelled him into a legend? Like a few other athletes he hadn’t taken much of a fancy to the local cuisine and hence he had gone for something that he was totally comfortable with – and was a high source of energy) but by eating healthy (90% of the time according to the great Jamaican) and ensuring he follows the strict diet regimen laid out by his dietician.

As Bolt says, “I could indulge any time I want, but I try to go for long periods, maybe three months, without any fast food. The older you get, the better you have to eat"

Whatever it is eating, the single-minded dedication to it definitely seems to be working.