Joey Chestnut can eat 83 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes because of a combination of trained stomach physiology, specific eating mechanics, jaw conditioning, and a lean body type that allows his stomach to expand freely. His current world record, set during a 2024 Netflix showdown against rival Takeru Kobayashi in Las Vegas, surpassed his previous record of 76 hot dogs from 2021. What looks like pure chaos on stage is actually a refined system built over years of practice.
His Stomach Works Differently
The biggest factor separating competitive eaters from everyone else isn’t willpower or pain tolerance. It’s stomach capacity. A study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology compared a professional speed eater’s stomach to a normal person’s using imaging and water-load tests. The results were striking: when both subjects drank water at their own pace over five minutes, the normal subject consumed less than 2 liters before feeling full. The competitive eater hit 4.5 liters and had to be stopped early, not because he was full, but because the researchers ended the test.
The speed eater’s stomach didn’t empty faster than normal. In fact, it emptied much slower: at the two-hour mark, the competitive eater had only processed 25% of a test meal, while the control subject had processed 75%. Instead, what made the difference was the stomach’s ability to stretch. During the eating test, the speed eater’s stomach progressively expanded into what researchers described as “a giant, flaccid sac” occupying most of the upper abdomen. Years of training with large volumes of water and food had conditioned the stomach wall to relax and accommodate far more than a typical stomach ever could.
The Solomon Technique
Chestnut uses a method that originated with Kobayashi, often called the Solomon technique. The core idea is simple: break each hot dog in half, place one half in each corner of the mouth, and chew using the molars on both sides simultaneously. The molars are the strongest grinding teeth, so loading food directly onto them speeds up chewing dramatically. The throat essentially works like a conveyor belt, moving food down while the jaw is already processing the next bite.
The buns get separate treatment. Chestnut dunks them in water before eating, which compresses the bread into a smaller, softer mass that slides down more easily. Without dunking, dry bread would slow everything down, requiring more chewing and more saliva. By pre-soaking the buns, he reduces the time each one spends in his mouth to almost nothing.
During the contest, competitors swallow far more than they actually chew. The food doesn’t need to be fully broken down in the mouth. It just needs to be soft enough and small enough to pass through the throat safely. This is where the water comes in again: it acts as a lubricant, helping partially chewed food move down quickly.
Jaw Conditioning and Physical Prep
Competitive eaters train their jaw muscles the way athletes train any other muscle group. Chewing large amounts of gum or biting down on silicone tubes builds endurance in the jaw, a technique borrowed from rehabilitation exercises used after jaw surgery. During a 10-minute contest, the jaw is working at a pace that would exhaust most people within the first minute or two. Without conditioning, the muscles would fatigue and slow down well before the clock runs out.
Body composition matters too. Counterintuitively, being lean is an advantage. The “belt of fat” theory explains why: abdominal fat physically restricts how far the stomach can expand outward. A thinner midsection gives the stomach more room to grow during a contest. This is why many top competitive eaters, Chestnut included, are not overweight despite consuming staggering amounts of food during events.
What 83 Hot Dogs Does to the Body
To put the numbers in perspective, 76 hot dogs (his 2021 record) added up to roughly 22,800 calories in a single sitting. Each Nathan’s frank contains 16 grams of fat and 480 milligrams of sodium, so the totals climb fast: over 1,200 grams of fat and more than 36,000 milligrams of sodium at the 76-dog mark. His 83-dog performance would push those figures even higher. For context, the recommended daily sodium intake is about 2,300 milligrams.
Chestnut has described exactly what the aftermath feels like. About three hours after a contest, he’s “super-bloated and miserable.” His recovery strategy is deliberately simple: walking and sleep, with sleep being the most important part. That first evening, he’ll eat salad or yogurt. The next day, even without any appetite, he focuses on fiber (cucumbers, simple salads, lemon water) and avoids carbs and sugar. He’s typically back to eating hot dogs within four or five days.
Long-Term Risks of Extreme Eating
Researchers who have studied competitive eaters worry about what happens to a stomach that’s been trained to stretch this far. The same study that imaged the speed eater’s expanding stomach noted that the organ had “markedly altered gastric physiology.” A stomach that empties slowly and stretches into an oversized sac is functionally similar to a condition called gastroparesis, where the stomach loses its ability to contract and move food through at a normal pace. In most medical contexts, gastroparesis is a serious digestive disorder, not a competitive advantage.
Whether years of competitive eating cause permanent damage to stomach motility isn’t fully settled, but the physiological changes observed in active competitors are real and measurable. The stomach of a trained speed eater behaves nothing like a normal stomach, and there’s no guarantee those changes reverse after retirement.