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What’s Life Like As A Competitive Eater?
George 'The Smorgasbord' Chiger • 2025-01-07
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to The Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, what's life like as a competitive eater? You will learn in this episode how to prepare for eating competitions, strategies used by competitive eaters, and disciplines in competitive eating. Our guest goes by the name, The Smorgasbord, is ranked 15th in the world by Major League Eating, and set a record by consuming two 8-ounce cans of Easy Cheese American Spray Cheese in 59 seconds. I introduce to you, George Chiger. I am in 7th grade, sitting down in the cafeteria when several of my classmates begin discussing Buffalo Wild Wings. And specifically, they're talking about the Blazin Challenge, which for those that don't know, has something to do with eating a certain number of wings with a certain hot sauce in a limited amount of time. That was the first time I had ever heard of a competition surrounding eating personally. And as someone that always struggled with eating, I thought that this was like very interesting, and especially someone that wasn't all that into hot foods. And that was kind of my first exposure, if you will, to someone kind of gamifying eating. So I'm curious, George, how does one get into competitive eating?
George Chiger:Well, that's a great question, right? Like, I don't think it's for everybody. But, you know, personally, I, not that I struggle with eating, but I'm a large person. I've always been a large person. So I always ate, you know, two kids meals. I would order two kids meals off the menu when I was a kid, or, you know, two burgers when I went to McDonald's and a 20-piece chicken nugget, right? Like, I always ordered two of everything, a large pizza, like, oh, you guys want to get a pizza? Okay, I'll jump in on that, but I'm going to get myself a pizza too, right? So I always ate a lot. But to get into the competitive realm of it, I guess, you know, just, oh, there's a food challenge here. You know, you could go there and, you know, if you eat it, it's free. So I've always dabbled in that, but I had no idea what I was doing until, you know, one day I'm paying my cable bill, and there was a woman in front of me, yoga pants, purple hair, bee bopping around, just high on life, excited that she's going back to Coney Island for the famous Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, and she's telling the girls in the cable office that, oh, I ate 15 hot dogs and buns, and I chuckled, right? And she turned around. And today I'm a much smaller man. And then I was 400 plus pounds. I'm standing there. I'm six foot tall, six foot six tall, 400 pounds. I'm standing there. And she's like, big boy, I can eat more food than you. And I'm like, lady, you're crazy. Have fun. I think it's awesome that you're doing this. And she's like, well, I need a sparring partner. Why don't you come to the gym and train with me? And I'm like, no, I'm okay. You're a little, this is crazy. I don't want to go eat a bunch of hot dogs. But I kept running into her around town. And finally she talked me into going to the gym and just becoming her sparring partner. She's like, you know, because I have no idea how many hot dogs I could eat in 10 minutes, you know, and buns and she's like, you know, whatever you think you could do. So I order, you know, hot dogs come in packs of eight, buns come in packs of 10. And it, or, you know, and so it's just, it's a confusing, you know, option on what I need to do. But I know I can eat more than eight hot dogs. So I'm like, okay, I bought two packs of dogs and two packs of buns. We go to the gym and I crush them. I eat 16 dogs and buns in, you know, 10 minutes. And she's like, oh, you're good. You should train for this. And I'm like, lady, you're crazy. Like I'm just here, you know, to check this out. And I became her sparring partner. So like hot dog season runs from the first week of April to the last week of June or the first week of July, right? You know, we take it right up to the 4th of July. And I just every week get together, we set up dogs and buns and, you know, I'm training for about five years. And, you know, she's like, you know, you really, you're good. You should really try to push yourself, you know, because she's like, this isn't fair because if, you know, you can eat more than me. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, but what I'm, you know, because I've always eat like 16, but she's eating 15. And she's like, well, what if I eat 16? Now I'm like, I'll just eat 17, you know? And she's like, oh, I hate you. And I'm like, well, I'm just here to push you. And, but when she finally talked me in and trying to qualify, I started signing up for the qualifiers. And my very first qualifier, I came in like second place with 17 hot dogs and buns. And I walk off, you know, George Shay is like the MC. And I got hooked right from the get-go with him spitting the intros and, you know, going in, you know, just the crowd pumped up and then like walking off stage, you know, Badlands Booker, you know, Eric, you know, Badlands Booker is there, you know. And he's like, man, you're good. You need to hang out with us. And like, he's one of my best friends today. And this, we're going back almost 10 years ago now. So, you know, it's changed my life, you know, 15 years ago of eating with my mentor, but now, you know, competitive eating, trying, you know, about 10 years almost, and then going pro in 2018, when I first got my shot at Coney Island, I won a qualifier and went to Coney Island, and that just changed my life and opened up the whole circuit, you know, of different foods and traveling and, you know, I hope that was your question. That was. I might have spun on that a little bit. No. You know, but that's how I got into competitive eating, right? That's how, you know, I got in competitive eating. I, you know, if I guess, you know, you just have to do it, right? Like you have to try. I've always been an eater. But at the same time, I started my weight loss journey and I've lost over 120 some pounds in the last, you know, 12 years, I guess, or, right? We're going on 14, 14 years now.
Dylan Carnahan:So congratulations. Thank you, George. That was an excellent answer. You're it's crazy to think otherwise. Let me just get this straight. So I got some notes here. Going to pay the cable bill and randomly get challenged by a stranger, and then then become a sparring partner for nearly half a decade of training to eat hot dogs. Yeah. Yeah.
George Chiger:Hot dog season is real. It's crazy to just randomly run into somebody off the street in my neighborhood. That's like, Hey, I'm a famous competitive eater. Like come train with me. We'll teach you how to eat hot dogs fast. Right. Like, you know, so yeah, life changing. And it's it's really, you know, sparring with Laurel, you know, forever now. You know, she she took my technique that I started with, and that's what she's using today. And I took her technique and that's what I'm using today. And like we switch techniques, we, you know, like practicing. It's a real thing. We work on, you know, capacity, training, but technique and, you know, trying different flavors. You know, we're we're just trying to get everything, you know, dialed down. It's it's consistency with the 10 minutes, you know, some of our contests contest are eight minutes. So you really just have to use your time because it's like it's a sprint for the whole whole, you know, time.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Well, that you brought up, you sprinkled in a couple little asymmetrical terms and kind of concepts that I think we can delve into that I'm sure our audience is curious about. Strategies, okay. You're kind of alluding to that. What kind of strategies do you employ to win these competitions? So if someone just says, hey, you're eating a set of hot dogs and you have X amount of minutes, go.
George Chiger:Right. So, you know, I break it all the way down to, you know, we're allowed to dunk, right? So a lot of people are like, oh, water, that's disgusting. You're dunking the bread in the water. Nobody, you know, doesn't expand the bread, but it really is, you know, when you throw a piece of bread in the lake to feed the ducks, it's not expanding. It's dissolving and floating apart, right? A lot of people don't understand that. So, you know, we dunk the, you know, the strategies to dunk the bread in the water to get the air out of the bread. But then I use extremely hot water. You know, I have my favorite temp I set my water at, try to at least, and I'll liquefy the bun because it breaks the starches down. So then I use the bun to wash the hot dogs down. I never pick up liquid off the table unless I'm having an issue. So I'm using the liquid bun to wash the hot dogs down. And then, you know, on top of that, it's like, you know, we're flavoring the water with our, you know, our favorite flavors. For flavor changers, he's eating, you know, 40 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. There's no ketchup. There's no mustard. There's no chili. There's no relish. There's nothing, you know, good. I mean, they're good hot dogs, but there's, you know, the flavor fatigue of just a plain hot dog gets to you after a while in a soggy bun. So, you know, we can run multiple flavors to try to change it up. You go just back to plain water, you know, straight, you know, in my head, like I take it as far as I take the bun and I fold it a certain way, right? Like I turn it inside out and fold it in half to absorb water quicker, in my opinion. A lot of people think I'm crazy, right? You know, because why are you taking the time to do that? And I have other eaters telling me, I don't have the capability to do that. I don't know how you can take a bun in one hand and fold it in half. Like they say they just don't have the, you know, their hands don't work that way. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't know. Like it's just something I'm able to do. And I think it helps me, you know? I mean, so, I mean, there's some strategies there trying to, you know, figure out what's the best time to eat in the morning, to get some fuel in you for, you know, a noon o'clock event to like a five o'clock event, because they're all different times. But, you know, for the July is like the biggest, you know, stage, it's our Super Bowl of competitive eating. And it's, you know, we get up at five o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning to start your morning prep. We got to be on the buses at seven. We, you know, we get to the green room by like 10. And then, you know, we go on stage at like 12 something. So it's a long day. And to, you know, everyone's like, you don't want to eat because you don't want to have food in your stomach. But in the same token, you need some type of fuel, right? Like I'm still 300 pounds, six foot six. I need fuel. I run on fuel, right? We all run on fuel. So I can't starve myself. So strategizing, am I eating two eggs in the morning or just two pieces of bacon? Or am I trying like, you know, a high protein shake or, you know, high carb, you know, two bar like just I've been trying different things and working on how can I keep my stomach and my bowels empty so I have the most room to expand. But in the same token, be able to fuel myself through the day to, for anything, food challenges or competition, really life, right? Because you just, you need to eat to fuel yourself. So, you know, you got to work on that strategy. And you keep the weight off too, right? Because, you know, I'm under 300 pounds today and it's the lightest I've been probably since, you know, my sophomore year of high school. So I know I graduated high school at 330. I stopped weighing myself at 400 pounds and I'm like, okay, I got to make a life change. And this is where we're at today.
Dylan Carnahan:There are so many good things that you brought up. There's so much to delve into. And it's great to hear kind of your current physique and where you're at and how you feel about it. Man, George, the talking about the preparation before entering an eating competition, it really sounds like as a whole, a lot of this is up to personal preference. And it seems like you've taken kind of this iterative approach of kind of seeing what works best for you.
George Chiger:Well, yeah, I mean, because everyone's different, right? Like, I've lost weight since I met my mentor. My mentor's upset because she's gained weight, but she's also, she's older now. I think she's 60 this year. So, you know, our bodies do change. But I, you know, I'm excited because I read the articles and interviews of Joey Chestnut and all the other great eaters out there and try to really work on, okay, you know, this is what they mentioned. Let me try it. You know, I'm willing to try anything, right? Because, you know, because it might be quicker, you know, maybe my first five minutes will, you know, I could eat my capacity quicker in the first five than I can in the last 10 or should I change it up, you know, every two minutes, try something different? And I've done that over the years. You know, I've done it in 2020. I remember I wanted to try a different technique and Joey's like, you know, you got nothing to lose. You know, there's five of us here competing. Just go for it.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
George Chiger:In the first minute, I tried a different technique and I was slower. And I'm like, no, is the, you know, muscle memory kicks in when you're in that flight or fight, you know, moment. And I'm like, okay, well, this isn't working because my body's telling me, no, this isn't working. Like we're supposed to be doing it in a different way. So I think that's where that training comes in too, to put the X amount of, you know, the time in, you know, 15 weeks of eating, you know, 15 hot dog practices plus, you know, demonstrations and qualifiers. So, you know, you get a lot of time and be able to, you know, work on your technique and the craft, I guess. Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. So the within that, I know we've talked about it a couple of times, but how do you practice? It sounds like this is almost like doing a mock competition on a recurring basis.
George Chiger:100%. Yeah. It's a mock competition. Myself, I could be by myself or, you know, I try to get, you know, Laurel, you know, during hot dog season, sometimes our schedules, you know, we can't practice because I have interviews or work, or she has interviews or work, or something, you know, doesn't click. But we really try to get together from the first week of April to July. And, you know, once a week get together, we, you know, plate up hot dogs like they're simulated at the table. We have our cups and water. We got a crowd, you know, cheering us on and we, you know, hit the clock and we eat for 10 minutes. And, you know, we try to push ourselves to max out. But in the same token, we could be trying different techniques. Sometimes we'll go to two weeks to do a speed run and then, you know, work on techniques, try something different, you know, so we can mix it up. But at this point, we're kind of set in our ways, I think. And we just try to push and increase our times and speed, you know, the first, you know, minute. How many hot dogs can eat the first minute or and then, you know, work on the three minutes and the four minutes and then the eight minutes, because I'll slow down between, you know, five and a half, six minutes to like eight minutes. But the last two minutes, I get speed back up. So it's just it's push. It's really you got to it's like a little roller coaster.
Dylan Carnahan:What's the most challenging part of that aspect? It sounds almost like once you're nearing your capacity, as well as obviously it's time.
George Chiger:So, you know, they say about four minutes in, that's going to be half of what you're eating for the 10-minute contest, right?
Dylan Carnahan:That's okay.
George Chiger:Because then you start to slow down after four minutes. But about five minutes in, you know, it could be two minutes flavor frutigues hitting you. So you're mentally fighting the flavor on top of, you know, gorging yourself, you know, shoving tons of food in your face and then about five minutes in your bodies, like definitely telling you to like shut down, stop doing what you're doing. Like this is a, like something's wrong here, right? So now you're starting to, you know, battle your body to push yourself, you know, way past the limit of pain, discomfort, you know, your body telling you like, you know, the check engine lights on, like something's going on, you need to look under the hood because, you know, this isn't right, whatever you're doing. And so you're battling all those, you know, you got the body fighting you, the mind fighting you, the food can be fighting you, right? Because if it's slow or fast and, you know, your liquids, like everything, there's so much going on and you have to focus because you got to chew it and you can't choke, right? Like, I mean, you got to push yourself. So it really takes you, I think it's 90% mind over, you know, turning into more physical.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, and that goes back to the reason that those practices, those rehearsals, if you will, are very important.
George Chiger:Yes. Yeah. So it's three months out of the year for hot dog season. And that really, it pushes us, right? So you're really trying to find that. But that it's just, it's crazy to see yourself change in those three months every year, right? You know, where I start from to where I finish. And the increase is, so it's just like, I guess it's preseason maybe, you know? But, and then it helps through the course of the year with all the other competitions also, you know, the other food disciplines, I guess we do.
Dylan Carnahan:Let's dig into that, George.
George Chiger:Okay.
Dylan Carnahan:These disciplines. And so most people that are gonna be listening to this probably have very little exposure to the world of competitive eating. So let's take a step back. How does the professional eating circuit work?
George Chiger:So, you know, I belong to Major League Eating, right? And I'm a member with them. I'm signed with them. So I'm ranked in the top 50 in the world. I'm currently, you know, 15th in the world with Major League Eating. So that allows me, you know, they, I guess, you know, Major League Eating is a, you know, a marketing company and production company. They're out there promoting, you know, small businesses, small causes, you know, or big businesses, really. I mean, we had Wendy's as a, you know, a sponsor this year for chicken nuggets, right? Like corporate businesses that puts the platforms together saying that, hey, you know, they want to do a food, you know, competition. And then they have us, like, we're, you know, we're in the pool, like, hey, you guys want to come and try to win some money. You're part of us. You're ranked in the top 50. You're signed with us. You're guaranteed, you know, a spot if there's room at the table, you know, for you. So, like, I'm 15th in the world. If there's 14 people at the table at all, you know, 14 top eaters in a row were there, there's no room for me, right? But if there, you know, two or three of them aren't there, I'll funnel in because we can't all make every contest. So, you know, that allows me to have a spot over, you know, and it is open to the public, but sometimes there's not room for the public because there's more, you know, assigned eaters want to be there and to compete, I guess, if that makes sense.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay. So what I'm hearing is that you have a ranking and that MLE, Major League Eating, will come and kind of invite you all from kind of top to bottom, and then based upon availability, that would allow you to accept that invitation.
George Chiger:Yeah. And I mean, it also, I should say, you know, it works that, you know, they put it out there and then it's like, I guess it's our, you know, responsibility to sign up for it, right?
Dylan Carnahan:Okay.
George Chiger:And then, you know, it's supposed to trickle through, like, you know, who signs up first and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes it doesn't really, you know, it works that way, but it doesn't work that way. I mean, that's, you know, theoretically, that's how it's supposed to be. But so it's, you know, kind of first come, first serve. But if there's enough room for everyone at the table, we're all going to be there, if that makes sense.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay.
George Chiger:Right. And so I think you had it spot on kind of the way you were.
Dylan Carnahan:There's a little bit of nuance to that. I want to focus in on those initial rankings. How do you accumulate points, if you will, or how do you substantiate, hey, I'm 15th? Is it because you've won X, Y and Z competition this year? How does that work?
George Chiger:So we do have a point system based on where you're finishing in the competitions and just you being involved in going to the competitions, right? Not necessarily you might not be placing in the money, but it's all about where you're finishing and it's your overall status out there. And then you get some bonus points if you go to Coney Island. Because like last year, I didn't go to Coney because I was recuperating from a surgery on my feet. And I got bounced from like, I think, 18th to like 21st or 22nd, maybe last year. And then this year, since I made it back to Coney and I was back on the circuit, you know, proving myself, not necessarily winning, but, you know, coming in with some good finishes, I moved back up to 15th in the world.
Dylan Carnahan:That's awesome.
George Chiger:So, yeah, it's supposed to be like a quarterly system now with our points. And, you know, Mike really came up with a great system to kind of help everyone together to be more fair on the rankings. And it really comes down to it like, you know, Joey Chestnut's number one because, you know, he's beatable in other disciplines, but Hot Dogs, he's the number one guy. No one's coming close to him, you know, and it hasn't came close to him in years. So he's number one. But second and third guy, fourth guy, fifth guys beat Joey multiple times in other disciplines. But, you know, they're just not taking that first spot from him with the Hot Dogs, I guess.
Dylan Carnahan:And these other disciplines, what kind of foods are incorporated there?
George Chiger:Sure. So, I mean, we travel the country and the world. So it's all your hometown, you know, delices, right? We go up to Buffalo in New York for Wing Fest every year on Labor Day weekend. So we eat, you know, wings by the hundreds in minutes, right? They do a buffet bowl. It's a two-day event up there. And the one, you know, the buffet bowl, it's all the New York Buffalo classics, right? It's not a New York style thin crust, like New York City. You know, when I say New York pizza, I think it's like the thin crust pizza. But Buffalo has their own style. It's thick, a lot of cheese and charred and cut pepperoni on it, right? So we got pizza, we got, you know, they used to do the pizza logs. That's a Buffalo thing. Now I think they're doing, they were some boneless chicken tenders in there this year. And then they do the beef on wick, which is a very New York thing. It's like a roast beef sandwich on it. It's called a wick roll. It's some type of seasoning on a roll. So we're there, but then we're down in Texas. We're doing, we go down there for tamales every year. I think I've done like 56 tamales in 10 minutes down there. But I know Jeff, I think was up in the 90s this year at tamales, which, I love a good tamale. And those are some delicious tamales, but to eat 50 to 100 of them in 10 minutes, it's next level. But I mean, we're in Florida for sweet corn. You know, we go up to Indiana for shrimp cocktail at San Alamo's, you know, famous steak house. They put on a big event at a tailgate party for the Big Ten playoff games every year. And to, you know, just hammer their famous shrimp cocktail sauce. We're out in California eating gyozas, you know, Canada for, oh, poutine. You know, we go to Canada to eat poutine. And it just, we try to, you know, just highlight everybody's, I guess, the unique of their food, you know. And then, of course, there's pizza everywhere and different things. I'm just, I'm trying to think what else is really unique. Strawberry shortcake out on Long Island at the Strawberry Shortcake Man in Tunk, you know, festival for over, you know, the last, I don't know, 10 years, 15 years they've been going out there.
Dylan Carnahan:This is a wide variance in food I'm going to hear.
George Chiger:Oh, yeah, 100 percent, right? Like, I know they used to do the king cake, you know, for, you know, Fat Tuesday, they used to just, you know, eat the big dried out cakes, you know, have an eating contest. Like we do pork roll in Jersey. You know, it's a it's a breakfast meat. So we do a pork roll sandwich eating contest. There's, you know, just whatever you think of. We were in Tennessee eating smoked bologna this year, just slabs of smoked bologna by the pound, you know. If you could eat it, it's out there. We could have a food challenge doing it, you know, or competition.
Dylan Carnahan:With these other disciplines, how, I know we've talked extensively about the kind of hot dog season and your preparation and practice for that. How do these other disciplines fit into your season and what kind of preparation do you try to do?
George Chiger:So, like, I guess overall just keep the body stretched, you know, the stomach stretched, because it does shrink, you know, you stretch it, it shrinks. So, I try to keep that stretched year round by doing, you know, food challenges and stuff. But I really don't put too much, I guess, emphasis into, like, hot dog season for any other discipline. Like, if it's a technique-y food, I will, I might try some to work on some different techniques. And maybe I do need to take it to the next level and do, like, you know, a chicken wing season or, you know, a tamale season. But it really, you know, as I've been on the circuit for so long, I'm kind of picking and choosing where I want to go because I'm not, I don't have a strong jaw for, like, the chewy. You know, we go to West Virginia to eat pepperoni rolls, and they're, like, so dense. It's like a hot dog bun, but it's just stuffed with, like, like, three pepperoni sticks in it, and it's just so much bread to chew on, and I get, you know, I'm just not strong at it, but strawberry shortcake, it's easy and light and fluffy just to cram it in, and, you know, I ate 14 pounds this year, and I came in in fourth place with that, so, and...
Dylan Carnahan:Just to repeat that, you said 14 pounds.
George Chiger:Yes, 14 pounds for fourth place, but I lost to, I think it was 21 pounds, you know, 22 pounds for the top guys in eight minutes, so... But I know I can get there, because I, you know, the capacity, and it's just kind of crazy, but, you know, shrimp cocktail, too, you know, you don't think about it, but an eight-minute contest, I've eaten eight pounds of shrimp cocktail in eight minutes, but simultaneously, Joey's eating 16 pounds, and I finished second, he finishes first, so, you know, that's why he's number one, and I'm number 15th in the world currently, right? So, but that's still oppressive, eating eight pounds of anything in eight minutes.
Dylan Carnahan:Could you maybe share, you've done a good job so far, but I'm curious, is there any other, I guess, like to kind of quantify this for people? I mean, that's very startling. I mean, what are some other, I guess, numbers you have in these other disciplines?
George Chiger:Well, I think my first year at poutine, I ate 12 and a half pounds, and it's a 10 minute contest, and I think that year, Joey might have put up over 20 pounds of, but the last, I finished fourth or fifth that year, and last place, I ate like a pound. And each serving size is like a half a pound. So, if the average person goes to a buffet, right? They eat like a pound and a half, maybe to two pounds, and that's a lot of food for one person. At one sitting. But I can go to the buffet and I can comfortably eat 10 pounds of food, you know, in a sitting, say 45 minutes to an hour, and I'm not full. I'm just like, okay, you know, a large pizza, for example, is, you know, on average, it's like three to three and a half pounds of large pizza. And I could eat one of those in like two and a half minutes and keep going. I've eaten 10 pound pizzas by myself. So just, you know, but not the average, average person can eat half a pizza, right? Like, you know, it's like two slices and I'm full. I'm trying to think what else. Well, 20 hot dogs and buns, right? They're they're saying that's that would be five pounds of food.
Dylan Carnahan:So I appreciate you kind of trying to recall some of the like the the weights around in this. I think it just helps kind of quantify, you know, again, we're having this like lovely discussion. It like conceptually, it all makes sense. But with some little numbers, you know, it starts to kind of contextualize this for for our listeners. Sure. Something I didn't ask. We kind of talked about the preparation a little bit. I want I want to know what do you do after an eating event? What do you do? Are you are you just going to like you're like, hey, you know, I just smashed 12 pounds of cocktails or shrimp cocktails like I'm good for a week. Like what's going on there?
George Chiger:So I mean, when I first started like hot dog practice, you know, practicing with Lurel in 2010, I would go home and sit on the couch for, you know, like two days in like Sony coma. And I'm like, oh, this is crazy. But losing the weight and then conditioning myself and learning like, oh, I just ate, you know, 40 hot dogs and buns. Let me go get some, you know, Reed's ice or, you know, ice cream afterwards to get some sugar in there. Or, you know, strawberry shortcake, eating all the sugar, you know, I wanna get some, you know, salt and savory into my system. So, you know, you kind of wanna counteract the food intakes, but I'm used to it today. The body really pushes it through. The body's amazing. Like, I'll lose weight during hot dog season because, you know, I build up my metabolism, but in the same token, it's like the body, you know, you eat this, the body will get rid of what it doesn't need, per se, right? Like, so I'm not eating like that all the time, but the body's like, okay, you know, let's go on with our life and it just becomes normal. So, you know, today, like, I've learned, the best thing after 4th of July, right? The number one thing I love about 4th of July is the sunrise on the 5th, because, you know, I'll go to compete, you know, it's a long day. We're up from, you know, 4 a.m. all day. And, you know, I'll compete. I might need a little nap in the afternoon, but we're out, you know, watching the sunrise. We're out tearing up the town and partying. And it just became part of my life with, you know, processing the food and conditioning myself. And sometimes, you know, 40 hot dogs and buns, I might have to take a little off the top. Or if I'm eating, you know, a 20 pound food, you know, just because it's just so uncomfortable. But it's really processed 90% of the food and just go on like it's a normal day. You know, I had a six pound sandwich for lunch last week at Nick's Big Belly Deli. And it was just a normal day. And I ended up having dinner later that night.
Dylan Carnahan:So I understand you did a certain extent, you know, as a former college baseball player, right? There is kind of this you're in a routine, you have a certain lifestyle, and you've been doing this for quite some time. And so you have a level of normalization, not only, you know, mentally, obviously, you're able to we're able to talk about this stuff, but also, you know, physically, right? You've kind of conditioned yourself.
George Chiger:Oh, sure. Yeah, 100%. You know, and that's that's what you have to do. And I stay up on top of my health too. Like everyone's concerned, right? Like I go quarterly and see my my family doc, and, you know, they're happy and, you know, losing all the weight that I've lost and keeping it off. And my numbers are good. So it's good just to stay on top of everything.
Dylan Carnahan:If I did have a listener in advance of this interview, I kind of put up sometimes, hey, you know, we're interviewing this person. What kind of questions do you have? I did have someone. If if you're comfortable answering this, and this is a good segue, what does that conversation look like with your health care provider?
George Chiger:So it's you got to be honest, right? Like you got to be honest with your doc because you're trying to figure it out, right? Like it's like you got to be honest with your mechanic on what noises the car is making. You got to be honest with your doc. And it's good. I have a great relationship with them because I'm honest about it. And we talk about it. And I found a doctor that he's on board with me as long as my numbers are good. He's not going to fight me. He's actually helped me because we had to lower my A1C for my surgeries. And we talked about how to do it. And, of course, diet is 100 percent. But do we use this medication over this medication? And the side effects. And my doctor is right there with me. He's like, I really don't want you to, if you use this one, this suppresses your appetite. We don't want to do that because you're a competitive eater. I'm like, well, it's really not about my appetite. It's about me. It's about me pushing myself. So I'm not necessarily hungry when I'm competing. It's just it's a job. You got to push yourself. So we could look at that route. But in the same token, I was really happy about it. My doctor is like, no, let's try something different first. It's worked. Just being open and honest. I had a doc that he was on board in the beginning, and I had a rough winter, and I came in first thing in the spring, and I was on winter weight. I didn't lose the weight I was supposed to, and he gave me a bunch of shit over it, and I moved on. I've been almost 10 years now with my family doctor now, and he's big supporter of their fans. The nurses in the office are on board. When they come in, they're always asking for food or whatever. Where did you come from today? It's good to be honest. You have to be honest with yourself and with the people that are trying to work with you and help you.
Dylan Carnahan:I really appreciate you sharing that personal information. I think that's really good insight. That's a good message for anybody listening as well. It sounds like you have a really good collaborative relationship with your provider.
George Chiger:100%. I can only stress, if your body hurts, it's telling you there's something wrong. Go talk to someone about it. Someone's like, I've been one of those people. I never wanted to go to the doctors. But the last 10 years of my life, I go and I made it a big part of my life and I feel much better. I definitely get out there and talk to your healthcare people, get a relationship going.
Dylan Carnahan:George, this wasn't on the list of questions, just throwing it out there. You've name dropped or you dropped in, that you've lost weight over this time that you've been a competitive eater. I mean, I'm going right for it. I'm poaching the elephant in the room. What is going on there?
George Chiger:Okay. I'll try to make it quick. But in 2010, I was 30 years old. There was a bunch of stuff going on in life, trying to get everything together, looking at health care, not health care, but life insurance and all that. I was denied. I was told, no, you're not insurable, because I was 400 plus pounds. I felt good. I've always been a big guy. That day, it started my weight loss journey. I used to cook a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon for breakfast. My wife would have two eggs, two pieces of bacon, I would eat the rest. That day, the very next day, I went two eggs, two pieces of bacon for everybody. But I started eating more often. I would eat one big meal, maybe two big meals a day. But I cut back my calorie intake per meal, but I might eat eight times a day now. I've changed my whole life because I knew I needed to lose weight. I graduated high school at 3.30, 6'6. When I was 12 years old, I was six foot tall, 200 pounds. I've never been a small person. I've been a grown man most of my life and just got bigger. So starting my weight loss journey, and it's been great because the first year I lost over 60 pounds, 60 to 70 pounds. Then I'm a winter guy. I enjoy going snowboarding. Pre-COVID, I was working in a ski resort. So I'd be out at the ski resort every night, drinking my double IPAs, having a good time. The winter weight, I would roll out into hot dog season at maybe 3.45, 3.50. Well, I'll quit drinking first day of April. I won't drink during hot dog season. So first month of April, I'll lose 25 pounds. I was losing 25 pounds on average. And then I'm rolling in to 4th of July at 3.16, 3.20, 3.25, 3.10. The best I ever went into 4th of July, previous to this year, was 22 at 3.11. And I'm like, OK. But my goal was to hit 300 pounds. When I started my weight loss journey at 400 plus, I don't know, I stopped weighting myself at 400 pounds. I said, I want to get to 300 pounds. And in 22, I was so close. I've been close, 2020, every year, I get really close to 300. But the last 10 pounds is really tough. So end of 22, I went to 285. And I've been able to keep it off. I fluctuate because of the competitions. But I might go up to 300, 305. But I've really kept it under 300 for the last two years. And it's just, well, the last, I guess, 20, 22 months, 23 months. And it's just, I just eat healthier. I don't eat the carbs. I eat 500 hot dogs on average during hot dog season with buns. But the rest of the year, I'm not eating buns. I'm very limited on my pizza intake, pastas, rice, all that stuff. I really try to cut all that out of my diet because if it's not made fresh, it's really, the preservatives in crap is not good for you. But your body craves those sugars because it's addicting. Sugar is a drug, I think, and it's addicting, and it's not good, right? So I cut out alcohol, I lose weight, I cut out the carbs and everything, I lose weight, and I just, I feel better. You know, instead of snacking on bag of chips, I snack on a bag of carrots. Like I just, you know, I really try to just, I've changed my whole eating habits when I'm not competitive eating. Like I really eat healthier. I may still consume four to five thousand calories a day, but I do it over the course of the day, and I do it as healthy as I possibly can.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
George Chiger:That makes sense.
Dylan Carnahan:I really appreciate you sharing your weight loss journey, and I think a lot of people that are tuning in this episode, probably are surprised that we're having this conversation, and I'm really good for you. Like good for you to take this discipline that you have with your competitive nature regarding eating of all things, and carrying that over into a hell of a weight loss story. I really appreciate you sharing that.
George Chiger:Thank you. Even during hot dog season, my metabolism speeds up because I'm constantly eating, and I feel that I lose more weight in those three months than I do any other time in the year, really, because your body is on fire. You said you have an athlete baseball background, right? So you need to fuel yourself, and I think that's the biggest thing. We just get stuck like, I just need to eat 2,000 calories in one meal, but I guess the reference I would use is like a fireplace, right? So a lot of people don't know fireplaces, but for those that do, if you stuff it full of wood, it will smolder and go slow, and you can keep your fire going all night. But if you throw just a couple pieces of wood in there, it just wants to woof. So in my opinion, that's what you got to do if your body for fuel, you got to throw a couple of logs in the morning, a couple of hours later. So I'm really on a, my body tells me, it's like every two and a half to three hours, it's like, oh, hey, we're hungry, let's eat. And I know mentally I can't eat to my capacity because it's huge, right? Like I can sit down and eat 20 pounds of food. So I know I can't do that all the time because my body's not going to tell me I'm full, but I just know I ate 500 calories already, 1,000 calories, I need to move on, right? I want to snack. I used to be the guy that bought a bag of chips, eat the whole thing, or cookies, I'm going to eat the whole sleeve of cookies. But you really, you got to look on the back and the portion size, and that's what you should really eat, two Oreo cookies or a handful of nuts, not the whole bucket of nuts and the whole bag of cookies. You're allowed to have, I eat whatever I want today, right? It was a long journey to get to where I'm at today, but it's all proportions, and that's what you really have to do. Then you eat a couple of hours down the road too. It's not like you're going to starve yourself. You could eat, oh, I want to have a couple more eggs in three hours from now. So it's just fuel. I think it's all proportioned.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. George, I'm curious, what advice do you have for aspiring competitive eaters?
George Chiger:Stay in school. I don't know, just, you know, don't ever take a food challenge on that you can't have liquid, right? Liquid's your friend to get the food down quick. And if you're choking, you need liquid to help you reverse it or get it down, right? So, you know, unfortunately, there's been some accidents out there with people choking and doing different things because liquid hasn't, you know, oh, you can't do this without liquid. You know, if you can't do it with liquid, don't do it. It's not worth it, right? In my opinion, you know, because you just got to be safe about it. But I mean, if you want to get out there, just make sure you're in the right mind place to know that, you know, you could do this healthy, right? These are, you know, in my business today, I'm one of the biggest guys in the business, and there's no more, I think, Badlands Booker is like one of the last buffet busters. Like he's been doing it for 25 years now, and he's a big man, but he's on his weight loss journey also. He's looking great. But there's, you know, runners, triathlon, bodybuilders, powerlifters. These are the people I'm going up and I'm competing against true athletes in other disciplines, right? So, you know, our sports kind of crossing over to other disciplines. And it's awesome because it used to be just a table of bunch of fat guys, right? And, but today it's some of the smallest people out there that are eating more food than me because they're, they're true athletes in multiple disciplines and pushing their body. You know, 90-pound women are beating me to, you know, the, you know, Kobe Ashi, I don't know, he's probably 120, 130 pounds, right? You know, five, six, five, seven. He's a small man, but there, there's a handful of people out there that just, it just blows my mind that like you can go run a, you know, a marathon and then you come in and you're a hundred and some pounds and you can eat more food than me. Like this is just like, what? You know, I don't know. I kind of lost.
Dylan Carnahan:No, no, no, I, what I'm hearing is it's, it's good for the sport that this is kind of cross pollinated into other domains and you're having other people kind of step up and want to compete.
George Chiger:Oh yeah, 100 percent. Yeah, because it's just, you know, if you're competitive, you're competitive, right? It doesn't matter what you're doing. You want to win and you want to push yourself to be competitive. And if you do that in multiple sports, it's awesome to be able to, you know, pull that down, right? Like, wasn't it, you're probably too young for a, was it Bo Jackson, right?
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
George Chiger:He, you know, football, baseball, and you know, it's, it's not on that level, but it, but it is, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, we, I ate against, you know, Kane this year from WWE at the, you know, the, you know, the pepperoni or not the pepperoni, the bloating eating competition, you know, and he, he's a big dude. He said he could eat a lot of food and like, he, you know, showed up and he's like, what? Like I got to eat this? Like, you know, so he gave it his all, but you know, he might eat a pounder. So I mean, the rest of us, you know, six plus pounds, I think Joey and them were up in the high teens. It was crazy.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow. George, what's the best way for people to learn more about you and the work you do?
George Chiger:chigareets.com. We're revamping the website, but that will be back up and running. That will take you to, you know, all my social media, all my, you know, all my social media, my sponsors, you know, give you a little background on me and how you can contact me to get in touch if you want me to come. But, you know, I do bachelorette parties to, you know, birthday parties to fundraisers or whatever. You know, I'm out there doing a little bit of everything.
Dylan Carnahan:Awesome. Well, I'll make sure that that'll be included in the show notes for this episode. George, this has been one of the more, one of the most fun interviews I've done in quite some time. So I really appreciate you coming on and thank you for sharing your knowledge and time today.
George Chiger:Oh, Dylan, I really appreciate you reaching out and have me on today. And it's honor to, you know, have a conversation and be able to, you know, get out there to your fans and let people, you know, know, you know, who I am. So I really appreciate you reaching out.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with George. We talked about training for hot dog competitions, starting a career in competitive eating and eaters relationships with their health care providers. Go to this episode's show notes to see any resources George mentioned during our episode. And lastly, subscribe to Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening. And remember to keep asking questions.