10’000 Calorie Challenge Explained + Tips For Completing The 10’000 Calorie Challenge

What Is The 10’000 Calorie Challenge?

The 10’000 calorie challenge is a food calorie challenge where one attempts to eat 10'000 true calories in a single day. This challenge likely got popular because of its prominent success on youtube. The reality is that it's fun to see people stuff their faces with food, so much food that it's sheer abundance is almost unimaginable. When performing the 10'000 calorie challenge, any food of any type is on the table. The general consensus is that food needs to be as accurately tracked as possible. There can be no guestimation factor, if you're going to go for the 10'000 calorie challenge, you NEED to make sure you actually hit your calorie numbers. The best way to do this is to download a calorie tracking app, we recommend MyFitnesspal. 

Why Do The 10’000 Calorie Challenge In The First Place?

The honest truth is that the 10'000 calorie challenge is not the healthiest challenge to endure. Canada health guide's food estimated energy requirements recommend that 19-30-year-olds only consume between 1900 & 3000 calories. Therefore, that means the 10'000 calorie challenge is 3-4x above the average person's daily calorie requirements. That is almost a week worth of calories for some, in a single day. 

The reason I decided to take the challenge, and the reason you perhaps should to, is to truly be able to comprehend what 10’000 calories actually is. Everyone thinks 10'000 calories it’s not a big deal – until they try it. You would be amazed how much you have to eat to cross that finish line. 

But hey, they call it a challenge for a reason... 

Are you up for the challenge? That is an honest question to reflect on. Yes, It is fun to have a day of trying to eat your heart out without mental remorse. In fitness especially, we accept the reality of monitoring and limiting our diets for aesthetic success. This challenge allows freedom from those mental constraints, it can be an awesome challenge to see how much you can really eat.

The largest and most common reason to do the ten thousand calorie challenge is for the massive metric boost on social media platforms. Generally, we guarantee that we will make the money we spend on the challenge back from Adsense. These videos are guaranteed tens of thousands to millions of views which can lead to new fans, followers, and subscribers. 

So What Are The 10'000 Calorie Challenge Rules?

1. No liquid Calories (Pops and juice do not count)

2. Must be completed in the span of one day (Cannot be past, or before 12am-12am on the day you start). Saying so, some people find it cheating to use the full 24 hours. If you really want to do the challenge, you need to do it in a normal time frame from waking up to going to bed. You can make your own decision about this, however, I personally think waking up to eat really ruins the fun of it. 

3. All meals and eating must be shown (For video platforms to show legitimacy). Timelapses are very handy to condense the video. 

4. All meals must be logged and tracked and up for public display to prevent cheating. Then again, if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself.

(Click to Watch) An example of a successful 10'000 calorie challenge that I did.  

4 Helpful Tips to Complete the 10’000 Calorie Challenge:

1.         Do not eat foods you like?

This may seem little backwards, but stick with me. YES, eat foods you like when doing this challenge, just don't go crazy on them. For instance, if ice cream is your favorite food, maybe just have one pint of Ben and Jerry's instead of 5000 calories of mouthwatering, delicious Ben and Jerrys. Why? Well, if you go too overboard, you're going to feel sick - and if your favorite food makes you sick, your body is going to try to remind you next time (hint-hint a nauseating feeling whenever you eat that food), to avoid that food that made you sick. Don't ruin your favorite foods by going to hard on them, spread them out! 

2.         What foods are best to eat?

You’re going to want high calorie, low fibre, and foods that do not consist of a ton of food volume. The human stomach is impressive, and can handle/digest a lot of food, but it's better to do yourself a favor and try to find foods that will take up less space. This is the one day where you are going to want to avoid veggies. 

Instead, high fat, carb foods are fine, do not be scared of your monstrous macros! Here are the top five Colossus Fitness Favourites:

• Tacos

• Pizza (Especially Little Ceasers)

• Ice Cream (Dairy Queen has some serious calories) 

• Hamburgers

• Chicken Nuggets

3.         Do It With Friends!

This challenge is 10x easier when you complete it with friends. Spreads the joy and you are therefore able to keep each other motivated.

4.         Make Sure You Go To The Gym

Do not be stationary, you want to burn and sweat as many calories as you can to help offset the input of excessive calories. Do not expect to burn off the excess food, take the loss and the slight weight gain, it really is not the end of the world. 

What Do I Do The Day After The 10'000 Calorie Challenge? 

My best advice here would be to not try to starve yourself the following days after the challenge. If you do this challenge, it's healthier to accept that a pound or two will be gained. What I personally found was best, was for the day following the challenge, I simply just had only protein shakes and vegetables as often as I was hungry. This way I let my body level itself out without introducing a ton of additional food the next day. Chances are anyways that you will be very stuffed still and not even that hungry the following day after the challenge. Then two days after the challenge I just resumed my normal diet, keeping it simple is the best option instead of shocking your body.

You’re at a massive advantage reading this article. Best of luck with your challenge! Here are some additional resources you might be interested in. 

Want more detail? Here is a video we made on this blog

We tried a 15'000 calorie challenge: You're going to want to see what happened