Shocking diet of athlete Hunter McIntyre who believes vegetables are 'girlfriend food'

While many top athletes are known for highly healthy diets to match their exercise-heavy lifestyles, it seems not all follow suit.

Hunter McIntyre, 36, is an athlete known for his competing in Hyrox - an indoor fitness competition in which he has been very successful, being the Hyrox World Champion three times, and OCR World Champion six times.

The athlete has espoused his diet, which is very surprising for someone who is performing at such a high level.

This involves lots of steaks, as much sugar as he wants, whiskey, and absolutely no vegetables, which he dismissed as 'girlfriend food'.

And we wonder why women have a higher average life expectancy than men.

Hunter McIntyre opened up about his unusual diet (Cliff Lipson/CBS via Getty Images)

Speaking to Men's Health, he said: "Vegetables are girlfriend food. You get a bunch of guys coming to my training camps and not one buys vegetables."

He added: "I tried being vegan twice, but I’ve never found any data that links eating tons of vegetables to tons of performance. If you read about the Kenyans, they’re eating goat meat and drinking booze made from honey."

McIntyre explained that it's all about getting in enough calories to allow him to keep training.

"It’s just kind of an add/ subtract game: calories in, calories out," he said. "There are no calories in vegetables but there are in chicken, rice, steak. It’s all about the building blocks. A piece of chicken has protein, a cup of rice has carbohydrates, and that’s really it."

But how exactly does McIntyre's daily diet play out?

Steak and whiskey feature in McIntyre's diet (KucherAV/Getty)

It starts with a 'morning jolt' of a strong coffee, which the athlete says also contains collagen.

This is followed by some supplements from his own brand in a cup with three spoons of honey.

For breakfast, there's 'Honey Nut Cheerios and milk and more sugar on top of that. Or Twinkies' - that's a lot of sugar first thing in the morning.

And as for the other meals in the day? Well, there are a lot of steaks, with McIntyre saying that he eats 'two or three big steaks per day'.

The athlete explained that his diet can change with the seasons as well, and with the Hyrox season just having ended he can relax a little.

"I have a couple of weeks to chill before I ramp up my strength training again," he said. "My diet is periodised, so I just got off a week of drinking as much as I could and eating ice cream."