This year's Tour de France (which starts tomorrow!) covers 2,087 miles over the course of twenty-one grueling days. Always interested in the deepest and most technical questions, we here at GQ Fitness have already satisfied our curiosity about how riders pee during the race. But we here were also wondering: How much do these guys have to eat to survive? So we called up American Tejay Van Garderen, who finished fifth overall in last year's Tour, and asked him what he feasts on to keep the furnace warm as he pedals to Paris.

Breakfast is the biggest meal of the day"We eat a lot! Probably a good 1,000 to 1,500 calories for breakfast. I'll usually have some oatmeal or porridge with honey. Some toast and jam. And an omelet—usually two eggs, maybe some ham and cheese. We eat three hours before the race. We eat such a big breakfast that you need to give it a chance to clear, let the glycogen hit the muscles and clear from the stomach so that you're not starting lethargic."

Riding 100-plus miles daily, you keep chowing when you're actually on the bike"Throughout the race, I like PowerBar energy bars early on. They taste almost like a Snickers bar. The soigneurs—that's French for caretaker, they're like the massage therapist and they pack the food and water bottles—they'll usually wrap up some little paninis with some jam and a banana. Or even, like, a little ham and cheese panini. So we would try to take in about 300 calories an hour. And we're burning probably 800 calories an hour."

And you have to drink all day. But not water"Water is kind of one of the worst things to drink. [Ed's Note: Water is totally fine for normal people not biking thousands of miles.] When you sweat you're not just losing fluid, you're losing sodium. Like when you see white lines around your mouth. If you're sweating out all these salts and then you just drink water you're basically further diluting the cells that are already losing all these electrolytes. So you need to get the sodium back in. We drink these effervescent electrolyte tabs that have twenty-five milligrams of sodium in it. Typically, it would be one sixteen-ounce bottle to a bottle-and-half an hour."

Refill the tank immediately. (Then refill again)"At the end of the day you're still running a big deficit, so you have to start making up for those calories once you cross the finish line. You'll take your recovery drink— it's a mix of carbs and proteins—a couple hundred calories. And head back to the hotel. There will be a food room, where I'll have a bowl of rice or something. Some snacks. Some fruit. Nuts. We get a massage, then it's to dinner. For dinner we'll have a plate of pasta, some salad, some meat or fish. And some fruit and yogurt for dessert."

Cyclists get sick of pasta"We have to eat so much sometimes you're like, man, I don't want to eat anymore pasta. Walter Grözinger [team BMC chef] tries to mix it up, make things flavorful while still keeping it clean and nutritious. He bakes his own bread. And Germans, they're really good at bread. He makes this bread with dried fruit and nuts and that's always a really good treat to look forward to."

There's no cheat day on the Tour de France"Sometimes on a rest day we'll do kind of like a barbecue. But it's still all pretty healthy. If there's a stage victory, then we'll have some champagne and do a toast. Alcohol is definitely not the best thing to be drinking during the race! [Laughs.]"

The final calorie count boggles the mind"I'd say we eat 5,000 to 8,000 calories a day. And we burn between 3,000 to 5,000 just on the bike. So you add your daily metabolic rate to that which is somewhere around 1,800 to 2,200 calories then you do the math, you add it up, and that's kind of what you have to eat."

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