Show Notes

• Size versus genetics
• How Miki feels after a contest
• What inspired her to start competing
• The Super Bowl of competitive eating
• Miki’s favorite eating records
• Training regimen
• Staying focused during an event
• What separates the best from the rest?

Connect With Miki Sudo

✩ Website – https://TheHungryCouple.com
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/OMGitsMIKI
✩ X – https://x.com/OMGitsMIKI
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikisudo
✩ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/mikisudo

Summary

Miki Sudo is a competitive eating champion.Known for her dominance in the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, she is a ten-time, undefeated champion of that event, setting a record in 2024 by consuming 51 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Miki shares how she discovered her unique talent, and what she does to prepare both physically and mentally for each competition.

Full Transcript

Brian
Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field, so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Miki Sudo is a competitive eating champion and the top female competitive eater, according to Major League Eating, the organization that oversees professional competitive eating events. Best known for dominating the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, Miki is a ten time undefeated champion of that event, and she set the world record on July 4, 2024 for consuming 51 hot dogs and buns in just ten minutes. Her talents go far beyond hot dogs, though. Miki holds the world record in numerous food categories, including kimchi, ice cream, corndogs and donuts, and she holds several Guinness World Records, including the fastest time to eat a burrito – 31.47 seconds – and the most hot dogs eaten in 1 minute 6 seconds, both of which were accomplished in 2022. Known for her incredible stamina, speed and focus, Miki regularly outperforms both women and men in eating competitions and is currently ranked world number five among men and women combined. Major League Eating calls Miki a record crushing appetite defying phenomenon, and it’s great to have her on the show today. Welcome Miki, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Miki
Thank you so much for having me. That was quite the intro.

Brian
Thank you. I could go on and on about all your records, and we’ll talk about more of your accolades. Miki, we haven’t met in person, but I’ve certainly seen you compete, and one thing that immediately stands out is you’re so petite. You’re not standing up now, but I’m guessing you’re about 5′-2″ or 5″-3″ and I probably shouldn’t even mention weight, but I know you do weigh in as part of the competitions, and it seems like you’re around 120 or 125 pounds. You’re not a big person. How in the world is someone your size able to consume 51 hot dogs and buns in just ten minutes?

Miki
I like to give more credit to talent, but I think the longer I do this, the more I realize there’s a genetic component to all of it. I’m actually closer to 5′ 7″ and maybe, like 135 pounds, so still lean; you’re correct, lean, definitely not tall. It was funny, though, because the winning shot of the 2024 Nathan’s women’s podium – I won – Michelle Lesco and Mayoi Ebihara are to my left and right, and they are about five foot even, and maybe 100 pounds. So it’s funny because I still tower over my competition and outweigh them by a good deal. But going back to the genetic component, it’s been pointed out to me that I have wide shoulders, wide clavicles. I have a larger rib cage so all these things kind of help. I don’t know, my stomach sits low and helps me breathe while I’m eating. There’s probably some truth to that, because I am built a little bit differently, even compared to some of the guys. My build is actually probably closer to some of the guys now that think about it. But yeah, there’s probably a genetic component. With that said, I’m also incredibly competitive. I dislike losing even more than I like winning, and I just love competitive eating. I think it’s really fun to push myself.

Brian
It’s interesting that you say there’s a genetic component or a physiological component, and the thing that I think about is your stomach a few hours after an event, after you get past the celebration of winning a contest like Nathan’s, how does your stomach feel after or a couple hours after?

Miki
Our contests are only eight to ten minutes long, and I’m not great at using water liberally. I’m always afraid that I’m going to fill up. I use water very sparingly, so I tend to not hit capacity. It’s only happened a handful of times in the ten years that I’ve been doing this. Obviously, after a competition usually I just feel relieved. It’s almost like I get to take a break, take a breath and compose myself. If I needed to, I could reset the clock and probably eat more, not that I want to, but I’m not really full to the gills. With that said, I am uncomfortable. To fully recover and feel normal again after a ten minute hot dog contest, it probably takes three to five days between the sodium and all the volume. Some foods are easier than others, but I guess it’s all just part of it.

Brian
I guess you get used to it as you go along. Miki, tell us about the beginning of your career. How did you first realize that you had this talent for eating a lot of food very fast, and once you discovered that, what inspired you to start competing?

Miki
I got my start doing food challenges, as opposed to eating contests. Food challenges, if you remember about 15 years ago there was a show called Man vs Food. The host would go around and eat these big meals. A lot of times, restaurants would offer a progressive jackpot or some sort of cash prize gift card. Sometimes it was only a t-shirt in exchange for finishing a large meal. My friends had tried a challenge like this. It was a 12 pound bowl of pho, or Vietnamese noodle soup. I saw pictures and said I think I could do that. It just seemed like something fun and wacky to try. So the next day, without any practice preparation – they actually went to the restaurant with me – I tried this 12 pound bowl, and I just chipped away at it over the course of an hour and finished it, and they awarded me the $1,500 jackpot. I thought it was going to be a one time thing, but the restaurant put me on a billboard right off the Las Vegas strip. So I started getting requests to do this challenge and that challenge, and so I just collected all this little prize money, like purses across the Las Vegas valley. Then eventually I got talked into doing my very first head to head competition. I was so nervous. It was a rib eating competition. I was so self conscious at the idea of being photographed with rib sauce on my face. I thought I was going to come in dead last, but I put that fear to the side. I won the whole thing, and after that, I was off to the races. I just thought if anybody belongs on these weird little stages, I’m one of them.

Brian
You first started competing in the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2014 and you won that year, of course, your first year, and you’ve remained undefeated ever since. And for those in our audience who don’t know, Nathan’s is a huge event held every year on July 4 in Coney Island, New York. And the event is huge. It attracts around 40,000 fans and is broadcast on ESPN to millions of viewers. It’s an incredible high energy environment, and that’s just watching it on TV. Tell us what it’s like to be there, Miki, competing in such a prestigious event.

Miki
It’s such a part of our country’s yearly tradition, whether you’re attending or watching it on TV, actively or just passively, because you’re at a cookout and it’s playing in the background. I mean, a lot of people – it was brought to my attention in 2020 when we couldn’t host it in front of a live audience – so many people said, I’ve been watching Nathan’s since I was a kid, or I used to watch this with my dad, and now I watch it with my kids. It’s just like I didn’t realize that we were part of so many people’s tradition. But that energy and that sentiment really translates. The energy is palpable. It’s electric, it’s magnet, it’s really like no other. The stage literally shakes when people scream. And it’s just so much fun. To me, I joke that the Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I get more presents than on my birthday or Christmas, I eat more than Thanksgiving. It’s more fireworks than New Year’s, I don’t know. I just think the Fourth of July is the best day and now I get to do it as a family with my son Max. So it’s been a lot of fun.

Brian
Is it fair to say that Nathan’s is the Super Bowl of competitive eating? Is that the pinnacle event that everybody looks forward to?

Miki
Absolutely. I’ve been kind of spoiled because in my very first outing, not only did I get through the qualifying rounds, but I got to the final table and I won the whole thing. There are some competitive eaters that will work year after year just to make it to the final table because it’s really such an experience and one that not everybody gets to get to have. It’s definitely a Super Bowl of competitive eating. Just the fact that it’s broadcast on TV has done wonders for viewership so I’d like to see a lot of our other contests move in that direction.

Brian
I see you have a belt on your shoulder. Is that the Nathan’s belt?

Miki
This is not this year’s belt. That one’s off for cleaning. This is actually 2023 but they’re all pretty nice. People are always surprised at how much they weigh. These are the four plate edition, actual handcrafted leather, Wildcat Belts makes them. They also make those Swarovski crystal encrusted wrestling belts. So it’s the real deal. I love my collection. Other than my husband and my son, I would say this is the best souvenir I’ve gotten from competitive eating. [Laughter.]

Brian
That’s number three, huh.

Miki
Yeah, exactly.

Brian
Miki, I know your hot dog eating record gets the most attention because of the Nathan’s Famous event, but you hold a number of records, and I mentioned a couple of them, including eating 16.5 pints of vanilla ice cream in six minutes, eating eight and a half pounds of kimchi in six minutes, eating a 14 pound wild rice hot dish in eight minutes, eating 368 steamed fish balls in eight minutes, and eating 87 two ounce donuts in eight minutes. Are there any records that you’re especially proud of that I didn’t just mention?

Miki
Those are definitely some of my favorites. I think the ice cream one, by volume, is probably the most impressive in my mind. People can’t wrap their mind around. I think – I forgot how many – 367 slices of cheese in eight minutes, that one’s up there too. I think that another – it’s not a record – but I won the contest, I don’t think I ever captured the world record, or if I did, it was later broken but I did beat Joey Chestnut at a whole Thanksgiving turkey eating contest at Foxwood Casino one year. I thought that was a lot of fun because we were incredibly competitive, and just the visuals of us holding up these turkeys and eating them whole. All the money – the money was donated to the food banks for that contest – really made for a memorable event. That’s probably one of my favorites. Even though the numbers are kind of irrelevant at this point, all I know is that I beat Joey eating turkey. Some of the wing contests, those numbers are pretty high, 260 something wings in 10 or 12 minutes. We’re fortunate where we get to compete at the home, the birthplace of the buffalo wing, Buffalo, New York. We’ve also had a wing contest hosted by Make-A-Wish Foundation right here in Miami. Hooters had a wing eating competition. The wings always vary a little bit, but those numbers are always high and they’re always delicious.

Brian
Which record means the most to you?

Miki
Probably the 51 hot dogs in ten minutes. I think I set out really early on to beat the women’s world record for hot dogs. While I was doing it at home, it never translated on stage. So while I knew that I could, I knew that I was capable of it, honestly, way back in 2013, I knew that I could beat Sonia’s 45 but I just never practiced at home. Even if you’re practicing in Florida humidity or Vegas heat or in 32 degree weather outside – all of which I’ve done – when you’re practicing in front of that crowd, it’s not so much that I get stage fright, it’s really hard to slow down my mind and remember what to do, because I have about 10 seconds, 20 seconds, to prepare all my liquids once I get on stage, because I’m the last one on stage and I need to pour my water to the correct dilution, to the correct temperature. If I’m fumbling, I just can’t do it correctly. So, I mean, there’s something about the intensity and feeling rushed in front of a live crowd that just, I guess, kept me from from breaking that actual record. I finally did it in 2024 and now it’s at 51 and I just hope to beat that next year.

Brian
Let’s talk more about training, because I know that’s very important, and I’m interested in learning how you prepare for an eating contest. I’m sure there’s more than just sitting down and eating a bunch of food. You talked about a couple of the variables, eating in cold weather, eating in hot weather. What do you do specifically to prepare for an upcoming event, and how far in advance of each competition do you start training?

Miki
That really varies contest by contest because some of our events only test capacity really, like imagine a chili eating contest. There’s really not much technique or speed, really. It’s just how much can you fit in your stomach. So something like that, really, to me, doesn’t require practice where something like hot dogs requires coordination, technique, speed, capacity. You need to deal with flavor fatigue. There are all these different things that you need to kind of practice for or train for. So hot dogs, I would probably say maybe two months ahead, I’ll do my first practice. Now that I live with Nick – fellow competitor, obviously, my husband, now that I live with him – his practices start as early as January sometimes I get swept up in the excitement and start practicing earlier than I plan to, but it varies by food. With that said, my training is kind of in three parts. There’s the actual physical food practice, and it’s not always ten minute practices. Sometimes I’ll only grab, like a dozen donuts if I’m doing a donut eating contest. I’ll grab just a dozen donuts and really, just in slow motion almost, figure out how many bites I need to take, how many sips of water I can take, how quickly I can swallow. That way I don’t have to eat for ten minutes and I don’t necessarily have to eat fast. It’s more important for me to learn than to go quickly in these practices. So there’s practice with food. There’s the working out component. I like to be physically fit, so I spend a lot of time in the gym. I guess the third part of that training practice triangle would be going back and reviewing my past performances and really critiquing what I could do better. So it’s not just about shoving food into my face, there’s actually more time spent not working with food as far as I’m concerned.

Brian
You mentioned evaluating performances. Are you watching video of contests and evaluating that? Are you taping yourself during practice to to evaluate technique and style? What does that look like?

Miki
I’ve done that. But also, if I just search for “Miki Sudo 2024” I can pull up the Nathan’s footage, and I can see at what point I went from eating two hot dogs or two meats and then two buns; what point I went from that to switching over to just one meat and one bun. Because I know if I did that I got tired really early on. So I’ll just watch for that minute mark and try to extend the time where I’m eating two hot dogs side by side. So some of it’s my footage, some of it’s just what’s available online.

Brian
Then how about as you get closer to the event, say, a day or two before a contest, what does your routine look like? Are you eating normally, or do you starve yourself going into the event?

Miki
Going in starving is a little extreme for me, one, because when I’m that hungry, I’m incredibly distracted. It’s hard for me to focus on anything. I’m also in an incredibly bad mood when I’m very hungry. [Laughter.] (Brian: You’re hangry.) No, no, you should ask, Nick, I’m not pleasant to be around, I get very hangry, as the kids would say. But I do limit solid foods about maybe 36 hours, maybe a little bit further out, maybe 48…two days, a day and a half is probably when I eliminate like heavy, large meals. One of my one favorite meals is kale salad. I just wilt kale down with some chicken broth, season it with vinegar, lemon pepper, I eat that with chicken, avocado. But kale doesn’t break down very quickly. It’s very, very fibrous, very dense, so I can’t really eat my large kale salad within two days of a contest. So I eliminate foods like that in favor of like yogurt, soup, fruit, protein shakes, things like that. And then I’ll probably fast completely, maybe 12 hours ahead of time. It’s just important for your digestive tract to be kind of clear.

Brian
And then what about mentally? What are you thinking about and doing mentally in the day or two leading up to the competition?

Miki
That also depends on the contest, because I put a lot of pressure on myself for some of them, whereas others, I know that they’re not my strong suit really, I’m just there to put on a good show for the crowd, make sure the clients are happy. As long as everybody enjoyed themselves it’s really a win. For example, I have a hot cake contest coming up in Las Vegas, and I know it’s not a food that I’m strong in. Hot cakes or pancakes are fluffy. They’re not easy to swallow. They’re probably going to require more rigorous chewing, using water very liberally. None of these are things that I do normally, like the foods that you mentioned – hot dish, ice cream and even kimchi, to a degree – these are almost like wet foods that are very easy to swallow. I don’t chew a lot, actually, even hot dogs. I don’t use any of my molars when I’m eating hot dogs. I’m kind of going off on a tangent here. But I have a hotcake contest coming up, I know I’m not going to do great, probably not going to win. And I don’t want to go in with that attitude, but I kind of just think as long as everybody has a good time I have the best job in the world. I’m paid to be there; if I can collect a little bit more by doing well, that’d be great. But as long as everybody enjoys their time, that’s what’s important to me. With that said something like Nathan’s, never lost in ten years, why would I start now? You know what I mean? So Nathan’s, I put a lot more pressure on myself. There are the contests where I feel the same way; the buffalo wing eating championship in Buffalo, New York. I’ve just been one of the crowd favorites for as long as I’ve been competing there, so I feel this obligation to the crowd to put up high numbers, like, they groan when I don’t win. So it’s like, I don’t want to let them down.

Brian
You mentioned the pressure of events that are important to you, like Nathan’s. What do you do to stay laser focused as you’re pushing the limits to consume so much food in such a compressed period of time, especially in that intense environment with 40,000 people? It’s being televised to a million people, or millions of people on television. How do you stay focused? You mentioned just coming up and pouring your water and that preparation – that the difficulty of doing that – with the pressure and the anxiety, but as you get into the contest, what do you do to just make sure you’re focused on eating?

Miki
Actually this year was interesting because my practices weren’t going well. It’s not one of those years where I was confident that I was going to break the women’s world record, which is crazy, because actually that’s exactly what I ended up doing. But I wasn’t very confident, and my closest competitor, Mayoi Ebihara from Japan, said – in the weigh in at the press event the day prior on July 3 – that she was going to eat 50 hot dogs. She was going to break the women’s world record. I’m not one to exaggerate or inflate my numbers; if anything, I want to downplay them so I’m underestimated. I assume the same of other people. So I kind of took a step back and I wondered, how likely is it that she’s going to hit 50 like she’s saying? And you have to keep in mind, the hot dogs that they have readily available in Japan are a little bit different than what we have here in America, so practices might not translate. But with that said, the year before, in 2023, she said she was shooting for high 30s, and she finished with 34 so she wasn’t very far off. So when she said 50, I thought, well, this girl might actually at least do 45, she might actually beat the women’s world record so now I have to. It was really hard to stay focused after that, and frankly, I don’t think I even did stay focused. For the first time ever, for the first time in ten years, I had my headphones on during introductions so I wouldn’t have to listen to hers, and that wasn’t a sign of disrespect. I always have them off, just this one particular year I wasn’t confident and I didn’t want anything else to boost their confidence and rattle mine. As selfish as that sounds, I just didn’t want to listen to somebody else being built up. Of course, I congratulated them afterwards, but that’s what I needed to do to kind of protect my well being and from spiraling into competitive anxiety. So yeah, this year was interesting. Other than that…once the ten minutes start, it’s pretty easy. I have the sign flipping guys – they call them bun boys – but I mean, he might as well be my coach. So the gentleman behind me who’s flipping the signs, he’s also yelling into my ear, like, you’ve got this, one more plate. You can do it, Miki, you can do it, Sudo, dig deep, one more plate. He’s my coach in my ear for those ten minutes even though we don’t even talk the rest of the year. I don’t even know them, but every year they push me to do better and better. That’s one of the ways that I stay focused on stage.

Brian
As you were talking about the your competition, who stated that she was going to eat 50 hot dogs, the first thought that popped into my mind was that she’s trash talking (Miki: Yeah.) Is there that? Does that element exist in competitive eating, a little bit of banter, a little bit of trash talking?

Miki
Yeah, I would say more so on the guy side. That’s something that you just don’t see on the women’s side. I guess if, in terms of ranking, if anybody was good at trash talking, it would probably be me, and that’s just not my style. I would rather be underestimated. I don’t want somebody working harder because I gave away my hand. But you do see it on the guy side. I don’t trash talk, but when I am feeling confident I’m going to put up a high number, I want other people to sense that, because it does rattle people. There is a sense, I might not verbalize my trash talking, it doesn’t take the form of words, but you can tell by my demeanor, and sometimes that’s enough to kill people off. But yeah, the guys are, the guys will say anything. They’ll say, I’m eating 100 hot dogs, bro, and just try to scare the other one. But I don’t pay that any mind.

Brian
Well, it has to be believable. The young woman who said that she was going to eat 50 when the record the year before was 45, and like you said, she said the year before that she was going to eat in the high 30s and ended up at 34. That’s believable and it seems like that got into your head just a little bit.

Miki
Yeah, because Mayoi, she’s an otherwise pretty humble personality on screen. In person – I’ve only met her a couple times – she’s very reserved, very complimentary, very nice. I really didn’t take her for somebody that was intentionally inflating their numbers. I think it was just an issue of maybe the hot dogs that she had to practice with in Japan allowed her to eat 50, and that’s just not what we had on the fourth of July here in America. So I think it was just more of a miscalculation, instead of an intentional misstatement on her part. But I won’t underestimate her or dismiss her at all. She might come back next year even stronger. Who knows, I might have to do mid 50s to keep my title.

Brian
Miki, what is it that separates the very best competitive eaters like you or – you mentioned Joey Chestnut – from the rest of the people in your field?

Miki
I think one of the common threads across the top eight, nine top competitors is we’re very competitive through and through, and that’s outside of competitive eating. Probably the competitive nature that we have predates our involvement in competitive eating. If you look at what Joey’s been doing, I guess Joey has been doing this since he was a baby. I mean, he was like 19 when he started, so not him. But if you go to Jeff Asper, he’s a former power lifter, and James Webb, he’s a former high level football player from Australia. Nick is a former bodybuilder. You look at all these people who played either individual or team sports, very, very competitively. I was very competitive in the academic sense. So I think there’s this personality trait where we just don’t want to lose, we want to challenge ourselves, and we want to be victorious. And it’s just somehow you end up in competitive eating. Now you’re chasing that trophy and that check and that belt. I think that’s a common thread. The other thing, there’s probably, like I mentioned, a physiological or genetic predisposition that makes some people better than others. We have like a 6′-7″ – is that even possible? I forgot – Gideon Oji. I forgot how tall he is, but he’s a former basketball player, super, super tall Nigerian guy with a wingspan of like eight feet. Anyway, he would be incredible at competitive eating, but he’s mediocre on a bad day, he’s great on a good day because he just doesn’t want practice or train. But he’s got the physique to do really, really well. Joey will tell you he’s got child bearing hips, he’s got a waistline that allows for it. I think my rib cage and where my stomach sits, I think those are advantages; there’s an element of that. What else makes somebody good, there’s a training component. Again, that’s not really like where I’m going to be. That’s not really where I’m going to shine. But some of these guys will train and practice and push themselves when nobody else will and Nick’s one of them, my husband, he’ll tell you where his talent and genetics fall short, his effort and his tenacity makeup for it. So it’s some combination of all those things.

Brian
As you know, our show is called LifeExcellence and I wonder what does excellence mean to you?

Miki
It’s changed a little bit since I’ve had a child. Because what would I tell my son? Excellence is now taking pride in what you do, taking pride in who you are while helping people, chasing your dreams and contributing towards the common good in some way, doing what makes you happy, but never at the expense of somebody else. I think I’ve been fortunate enough when I’ve had a job, for over a decade, that allows me to travel and make money but also entertain people, make people smile, contribute to a yearly tradition. It was really, really meaningful to me to be part of the Make-a-Wish Foundation’s Raised for Wishes event. That day raised, I think, half a million dollars for children and their wishes. I wish I had a more eloquent way of phrasing all this, but my idea of excellence is wrapped up in there somewhere.

Brian
You mentioned philanthropy and the Make-A-Wish, and you talked earlier about a turkey eating event on Thanksgiving and how there was a component of feeding families related to that. Is there commonality woven throughout a lot of these eating events that includes a philanthropic component?

Miki
I’m not sure of the exact percentage, but there are a lot of events that we do that have a charitable component. The events that we do are part of the marketing campaign. It’s to raise brand awareness or to engage with the community. While we are a marketing tool, I think a lot of companies these days like to give back or incorporate a charitable component. I understand that what we do is entertainment first. It’s really nice when those two things go [hand in hand]. We’re kind of coming towards the end of the year, so I don’t really have too many events coming up, but from Buffalo Wing Festival, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Nathan’s, even locally; JC Newman Cigar Company, it’s like the longest running operational family owned cigar company, and it happens to be in Tampa. It’s in their fourth generation, very proud family, they hosted a Cuban sandwich eating contest as part of their Founders Day celebrations. It was an inaugural local event, but the turnout was amazing. It was really cool that we raised money for a local charity, Ybor Misfits Chicken Micro-sanctuary, for these chickens that run around wild. So whether it’s helping animals in a small way or giving back to a food bank, it’s cool just to know that we help them some little way.

Brian
I think that’s great to the extent that that happens. That’s probably good marketing for whoever’s sponsoring the event as well. Miki, how do you envision your career evolving going forward? I’m guessing the hot dog eating record is one that you’ll want to break. Are there other records that you want to improve on, or any new records that you’d like to set? Maybe new food records?

Miki
I always thought it’d be fun to have…because in some of our contests you have to use…for a chili eating contest you have to use a spoon. I always thought it’d be fun to have a contest where you had to use chopsticks, whether it was ramen noodles or sushi. Because I grew up in Japan, I just think it’d be fun to have more variety of formats. A lot of ours are who can eat the most in eight, ten or 12 minutes. That’s fine, and it works for a whole different bunch of foods but I think it’d be fun, once in a while, to have, like, a relay race style or something where you have the physical component, like you have to sprint or they have the Tour de Donut thing, where you cycle around. It’s not a major [inaudible] but you ride a bike around, and then you eat a bunch of donuts, and then you bike some more, and then you eat more donuts. I think every donut that you eat takes off a certain amount of seconds from your overall time, I don’t know. But anyway, maybe not to get that complex, but I think it’d be really cool to have something with an athletic component and an eating component. I would just like to try different styles of contest, or more sprints, or the Japanese format [which] is eating for 45 minutes to an hour. So yeah, I’d just like to upset more world records and eats in all different ways.

Brian
Well, I’m very confident that you’ll do that, and we’ll all look for that, especially on July 4 at Nathan’s, look for you to best that 51 hot dogs and buns. I’m confident that you’ll do it. Miki, we’ve talked a lot about eating massive amounts of food, and I’m curious, how do you eat when you’re not competing?

Miki
Well, today is a really long day for me. Oh, I wish I had my lunch box. I could do a little show and tell. I actually came directly from work, and I have a meeting here now. I worked today from 7am to 4pm, with traffic, I got here around five. I took some work calls, but anyway, for lunch today, I packed my kale salad with a large peach with an avocado and chicken breast topped onto it. The peach didn’t go in the salad, peach is separate. And then before coming here, I bought – this is not good – I literally bought a hummus bowl from Publix. It was like a salad. I’d show you the…I mean, just so you’re…I’m not making this up, but Boars Head Fire Smith Chicken, 500 calories per bowl. Anyway, that’s what I just ate. Probably a little bit fewer calories because I didn’t use a dressing. I used mustard instead, which is right here. None of this is made up. Anyway, that’s how I eat normally. Ideally, I pack my own lunch so that I’m not tempted to buy…I saw some amazing chocolate lacy cookies at the checkout. I almost bought that instead of my salad. I have a huge sweet tooth, but I try to pack my meal so that I stay the course. Anyway, lots of fresh produce, lots of lean protein. As far as dairy, I love non-fat, plain Greek yogurt. I love fruit and that’s probably 90% of my diet.

Brian
So pretty normal eating outside of competition.

Miki
I would say borderline boring, because that’s what my co-workers say.

Brian
You mentioned that your husband, Nick, is a competitive eater. Do you ever, at dinner, just like spur the moment, have this contest and you just have this eating frenzy, or is that just not part of the deal?

Miki
No, not a contest, because I eat very slowly. When I don’t have to eat in contest, I really enjoy food, and I enjoy enjoying my food. I don’t like to rush and we won’t even see who could eat more than because why be uncomfortable without a check at the end, or without even entertaining people. With that said, we do go to, like, right now, I really like Korean barbecue and hot pot. There’s just one place by our house that we’ve been going to about once a week. I also really like the Brazilian style steak houses, where they carve the meat in front of you. So, we don’t have competitions about who can eat the most, but we will go scope out places with all you can eat options.

Brian
What’s your favorite food?

Miki
My favorite everyday type of food is the stuff that I mentioned: kale salad, chicken breast, avocado, fruit and non-fat, plain Greek yogurt. But if we’re just talking about what I want to eat right now, what’s my favorite food? I love a good rib-eye steak. I just really like fatty meat in general; porterhouse steak, I love the Brazilian steakhouse picanha, yeah, I really just like rare red meat.

Brian
Is there any food you vowed never to eat again because of a bad experience in a contest?

Miki
I didn’t have to vow to never eat it again, but I never enjoyed – actually I can’t even say that – I never even liked the idea of eating oysters, no matter how they’re prepared. I don’t care if they’re on the half shell or deep fried oysters, they don’t look appetizing to me. But I was offered a trip to Ireland in exchange for eating oysters for three minutes so I accepted, and I did my best. And unless I’m going to Ireland again, I don’t think I’ll be eating any more oysters.

Brian
[Laughter] Or another place where you’re offered a free trip to eat oysters.

Miki
No, I love to travel so if it’s only three minutes I can make it work. But oysters are just visually and texturally…they just don’t feel me.

Brian
How can our listeners and viewers learn more about you and where can we all go to read more about all the records we didn’t have time to discuss? Because I know there are many others that we haven’t talked about.

Miki
Thank you. I’ll do my best to update the website, but it is thehungrycouple.com, see all the records, upcoming contests. You can also follow me on various social media platforms. My user name is O-M-G-I-T-S-M-I-K-I. It’s “OMGITSMIKI”. And that’s on Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter. And also “MIKIANDNICK” is more family based content that’s on Instagram. So “MIKIANDNICK,” you can see pictures of our practices, our son dressed as a hot dog, I don’t know, whatever kind of comes to mind.

Brian
We’ll definitely include all that information in our show notes. Miki, thanks so much for being on the show. It’s great to meet you, and I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. It’s actually made me hungry.

Miki
Sorry for the long winded answers. I mean, some of this is just…some of this requires explanation so thank you so much for your patience. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you so much.

Brian
Well, you’ve been great, Miki. And to our listeners and viewers, thank you for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with competitive eater, Miki Sudo on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at brianbartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.