The weather in New York, it fluctuates so much. Some days it's humid, some days you have a thunderstorm.
— Joey Chestnut
If I can train for a contest for a week, it's a guaranteed victory.
So now I'm 'the hot dog guy,' which isn't bad. I take it in stride. It's not like it was my goal in life. I'm having fun with it.
There are competitive people who love to push their body but don't love to eat like I do.
My weight does fluctuate, and there are extreme highs and lows in my blood sugar, so there is some worry about diabetes.
I have the craziest dreams when I'm digesting a massive amount. It feels so real, it's psychedelic.
Going into a contest, I do not eat solid food and take in minimal calories for days, so I am hungry.
I'm very competitive.
I was 21, and I was in college, and I'd eat real healthy during the week, and then on the weekends I would reward myself, and I'd just go to town on whatever my parents had in the fridge. And my little brother would be like, 'Hey.' And so it was actually him that begged me to do my first contest.
I love to eat internationally and do eating contests everywhere. Traveling around, meeting people, and doing different things.
I love king crab a lot. I love good Mexican food, good tacos, and chile rellenos.
I'm really normal except for the competitive eating.
I can't always go out to a restaurant and have a normal dinner.
The crowd loves a record, and if they're gonna be standing out there in crazy, blistering heat on the 4th of July, I mean, if they're doing it, I may as well try and give them a record.
There's nothing pretty about competitive eating. It might be uncouth, but it is fun, and it is lighthearted.
Mom only gets angry when I don't visit her enough. She raised six kids to be 100 percent independent and work for everything we achieve. I mean, we don't expect anything for free.
I'm lucky. My parents are, like, super hippies. They were just happy I was going to school and I wasn't getting in trouble.
It's more of a mental sport because I know I can push harder than someone who doesn't know what his body can do.
It was a hard decision to give up a normal job. I worked hard to get through school. You go from building a fire station to an eating contest.
I've signed babies' arms. I wanted to pull a 'Ricky Bobby' and sign a baby's forehead.
It's always a battle to maintain my weight.
I like going to the doctor, being vigilant, being told that I'm healthy so I can push myself.
I love to eat! I don't think I have ever gotten sick of eating a food, unless it is bad food.
I love Italian food, such as pasta or lasagna.
Every time you learn you can do something, you can go a little bit faster next time.
It wasn't like I grew up wanting to be a competitive eater at all. Not like a lot of people, like football players, famous people - they knew that that's what they wanted to do when they were young.
If I'm going to get up on stage to eat hot dogs, I'm not going to do it to get third or fourth.
I think food brings people together, and it makes people happy.
The bigger the crowd, the more likely I'll do whatever it takes to win.
I'd like to go out on top, preferably breaking a new world record on the Fourth of July.
There are times when I'm not eating buns if I'm on a low carb diet. I'll have hot dogs and romaine lettuce, but if I'm at a baseball game, I'm always eating a hot dog.
I think my body was built to eat 68 hot dogs. It's natural.
I don't really get hungry that much. Sometimes I get cravings for certain foods. But I can go all day without eating.
I was able to get a civil engineering degree and travel around the world and eat.
When I'm in training, I eat no solid food except hot dogs for six weeks.
It was hard for me to take competitive eating serious at first. When I made people happy, I became addicted to that. It's been a fun, fun ride.
Make sure I'm chewing, swallowing, and breathing, my whole body is working together. I can just find a rhythm and keep going and going and going. It's my love of food.
I've strained some muscles here and there, in my throat, even my jaw. Nothing that doesn't heal quickly.
There have been times when things get stuck in my throat, but you just work it up or down. Like how a swimmer probably can't imagine drowning - their bodies are so used to being in the water. I'm so used to shoving things down my throat.
After a contest, I try to eat fairly healthy.
I've learned how to gnarl the food down. It's not pretty.
I was awful my first time. I was so shy eating in front of people. It was so awkward. But my next contest, I brought a bunch of my family out, and I won that one. I remember I almost barfed because my mom, at the end of the contest, she yelled out, 'Do it for Mama!' Everybody laughed. It was one of the closest I've ever been to barfing.
I think the traveling is what drew me into 'The Amazing Race' years ago.
I think Peter King... he's kind of narrow-minded.
When I'm eating I try to make sure I can breathe through my nose the entire time. If I have to breathe through my mouth, there's no way I'm eating or swallowing.
I lose now and then. I get lazy. And sometimes I work just hard enough to win.
It's pretty rare for them to not be in our fridge, I have usually a good supply of all-beef hot dogs.
There's no better feeling than beating someone who's up on a high horse.
Maybe in America there's more of an emphasis on food than there should be. But when I look out at the audience during a competition, some people are shocked, but most people are smiling.
They don't sell the Nathan's hot dogs hardly anywhere in the West Coast. So I have to special order them, and I just end up getting Nathan's to ship them to me.
