Skip to main content
Clear icon
52º

What you’d need to do to burn off the calories consumed by hot dog-eating champ Joey Chestnut

Chestnut reportedly consumed nearly 23,000 calories in 10 minutes to win latest contest

Defending Champion Joey Chestnut wins after consuming 76 hot dogs and setting a new world record at the 2021 Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest. Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage (Getty Images)

So, have you ever consumed roughly 10 days worth of calories in 10 minutes?

Once again, hot dog eating champion Joey Chestnut did so at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Sunday, consuming a record 76 hot dogs to win the event for a 14th time.

Recommended Videos



According to TMZ Sports, that is roughly 22,800 calories, 1,368 grams of fat and 1,824 carbs.

That would certainly kill any diet.

There’s no way anyone could burn all those calories at once, but just to have a little fun, let’s draw up some pretend scenarios as to what someone would have to do burn all those calories by either running, swimming or biking.

Just to be safe, we’ll put the number of calories that need to be burned at 22,000.

As a disclaimer, the figures below are rough estimates, not exact figures, based on average weight and ability to run, swim or bike. They could be higher or lower depending on how much faster someone performs than average, or if they are bigger or smaller than the average weight.


Running

According to verywellfit.com, a good estimate is that people burn 100 calories for every mile they run. That means a person would have to run 220 miles in order to burn off that large number of calories.

With that in mind, someone could run from New York City to Boston and still not quite burn all the necessary calories, given it’s 215 miles between those cities.

An average runner should aim to run a mile every 9-13 minutes, according to Healthline, so let’s just put that number at 10 minutes, which means an average runner can run six miles every hour.

Dividing 220 by 6, that means it would take more than 36 hours of running to burn off the 22,000 calories.

Swimming

According to estimates from the American College of Sports Medicine, it takes a 205-pound person one hour to burn 931 calories swimming fast, and 651 calories swimming slower.

So, let’s meet in the middle and say it takes an hour to burn 791 calories. If you divide 22,000 by 791, that’s nearly 28 hours of swimming that would have to be done.

According to Swim Competitive, it takes an intermediate swimmer between 30 and 35 minutes to swim a mile. If that’s the case, then someone would have to swim for roughly 14 hours to burn off all the calories. For beginner swimmers, that time frame would be longer.

Cycling/biking

If you prefer going on a bike ride to burn off 22,000 calories, then it usually takes an hour to burn off 750 calories for a person that weighs 165 pounds, according to Cycling Weekly.

That means it would take just more than 29 hours of cycling to burn off the calories.

If you go at a moderate pace of 15 miles per hour on a bike, that means a ride of 435 miles.

Of note, it’s 440 miles between Boston and Washington, D.C.

Triathlons

If someone had to burn all those calories and decided a triathlon would be the best way to do it, well, that would take a while also.

According to Ironmate, the average finisher in the annual Ironman Triathlon will burn between 8,690 and 10,495 calories. Either one of those numbers means you would have to run the world’s most grueling triathlon twice to burn a majority of the calories consumed in 10 minutes by Chestnut.