GQ Breaks Down The Diet Of The Talented Mr Kai Lenny

Kai Lenny’s one of surfing’s great enigmas. The kid could ride a loaf of bread at Pe’ahi if you coated it with resin. Kai’s beyond a waterman – even by Laird Hamilton’s standards. And, to layer on some icing, he’s as apt as any on a standard thruster (check 2:01 above). He was destined for water sports, as long as they involved rolling hills of water. Oh, he also recently won Molokai2Oahu Paddleboard Championship that was held at the end of July. He paddled from Molokai to Oahu in a world record setting four hours and seven minutes. Curious what the young sir puts in his body? We are. And to make it easy, GQ recently broke down Kai’s dietary habits. Let’s grab a Taco Bell burrito and analyse: 

“There’s every single type of body in these sports. I have really long arms, I’m 5’9”, I fluctuate between 154 and 146 pounds, so my diet really consists of a large intake of calories. The more I can get into my system the better, just because I’m burning so many throughout the day. I have to eat well, but I also have to eat a lot.”
He’s seriously not kidding about that. That 154 is usually his target weight, but he’s never able to stay at it very long, partly because he burns so many calories on the water and partly because he has the metabolism of a jackrabbit. On an island-to-island race from Molokai to Oahu, he started the four hours at 154 and got off of his board eight pounds lighter. (Two goddamn pounds per hour. Even if it’s water weight, that’s frightening.)

He’s also the first gentleman to perfect the two for one.

His diet leans pretty heavily on fat and protein, and when he’s tried to have more conventionally “healthy” diets, he’s been fatigued and ravenous. So he eats a lot. Like, four eggs with cheese and two pieces of avocado toast every morning a lot, plus some brown rice. And five times a week, he has a Taco Bell burrito for lunch. “How can you mess it up?” he says. “It tastes good, it has a lot of fat, and I need to burn so many calories.” He doesn’t just swear by the sustained energy that he gets from food that other people eat super-high at five after midnight—apparently all of his biggest wins came after eating Taco Bell.

Here’s our fave wind-kite-sup-foil-rhino-chaser’s diet.

Breakfast:

Four eggs with cheese, two pieces of avocado toast, brown rice with ketchup and Tabasco

Lunch:

Taco Bell bean burrito

Dinner:
Mahi Mahi, quinoa and lentils, salad with avocado