A biography for Joey Chestnuthasn’t been written yet.
“I go to the doctor every four months to get my blood work done to make sure everything is working right.”
“I didn't just eat hot dogs. I studied how the food went into your system and how it would be digested.”
“I love food, and not surprisingly, I often suffer from stomach upsets when I overeat in general, let alone when I'm competing.”
“I do know when my body is ready or when it's going to perform best for me.”
“There's a couple of foods that if you see me eat them in a contest, you can tell I like them. Grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken wings, ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza. I mean, those, they go down like I was made to eat them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I think that happens to anybody, when they train for things over and over again, and then they just realize, 'What do I train for now?'”
“The bigger the crowd, the more likely I'll do whatever it takes to win.”
“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.”
“Traveling around the world to eat, it's a weird life, but I love it.”
“I have the craziest dreams when I'm digesting a massive amount. It feels so real, it's psychedelic.”
“Pretty much all I'm doing during an eating contest is being uncomfortable and not forgetting to breathe.”
“You need to stay calm the day of the contest. Not let the weather bother me and just relax.”
“I have to learn to ignore my feelings. Not just the feeling of hunger and the feeling of full, but the feeling of embarrassment, too. I have to remember that this is only weird if I make it weird.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There's no better feeling than beating someone who's up on a high horse.”
“Seafood is one of the easiest things to digest - a bratwurst is really hard on the body.”
“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.”