It’s not easy being the World’s Strongest Man. The current holder of that title, Hafthor Bjornsson — who also stars as Ser Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — had to deadlift over 1,000 pounds to win the title.
Bjornsson, 30, has to stick to a strict diet to build his strength and maintain his impressive six-foot-nine, 400-plus-pound physique.
“I’m very disciplined and I’m very focused when it comes to training, nutrition, and everything, and I’m always prepared,” Bjornsson tells CNBC Make It. “And, that’s the key to success, I believe.”
Bjornsson tells CNBC Make It that he eats seven meals every day.
“I want to fuel my body with the best nutrition I can for strength,” Bjornsson, who lives in Iceland, tells CNBC Make It. “This is my job, and my body is my job, and I treat it as a job,” he says.
So what are Bjornsson’s daily eating habits?
“Every morning, I eat six eggs, six pieces of bacon, maybe one cup of rice,” he says.
From there, Bjornsson’s next six meals are totally repetitive: Six times a day, he eats 250 grams (about 8.8 ounces) of ribeye steak along with 200 grams (about 7 ounces) each of rice, carrots and red bell peppers.
“For me, ribeye steak is the best meat for strength,” he says.
In order to figure out roughly how much it would cost to eat like the World’s Strongest Man, CNBC Make It determined what all of the food Bjornsson eats each day would cost if you bought it at Trader Joe’s in New York City. Just for one day of Bjornsson’s diet, you would need to buy six eggs, six pieces of bacon, three pounds of ribeye steak, 49 ounces of rice, and three pounds each of carrots and red bell peppers.
The total grocery bill for those items would be more than $60 per day and about $426 each week. (In November, the average cost of a week’s worth of food for a men 19 to 50 years old in the U.S. ranged from $42.50 to $84.40, according to the USDA.)
To eat like the World’s Strongest Man for an entire year would cost you about $$22,228 in total.
All of that eating is definitely paying off, Bjornsson says: “It’s working. I’m the World’s Strongest Man.”
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