To eat 10,000 calories a day, you might try putting away a family-size box of Oreos, a box of packaged cakes, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, takeout from Five Guys and McDonald’s, and many, many Reese’s cups—all between your regular three meals.
Dru Borden subsisted on this diet throughout his 20s and 30s. As a competitive bodybuilder—fans know him as Big Dru—he needed the calories. Since the mid–20th century, one of the core tenets of bodybuilding has stipulated that gaining muscle requires putting on weight, regardless of how. In Big Dru’s case, it worked: In early-career photos, he appears to have been cobbled together from boulders.
Body-composition researchers have established that a surplus of calories, plus resistance training, is required to gain muscle. The basic idea is that repetitive exercise causes muscles to break down, so the body needs energy and additional nutrients to build them back bigger and stronger.
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