After a contest, I try to eat fairly healthy.

I'm getting older, and I'm smarter about how I eat.

Once I get a rhythm going, I can jump those hot dogs down.

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?'

I was awful my first time. I was so shy eating in front of people. It was so awkward. But my next contest, I brought a bunch of my family out, and I won that one. I remember I almost barfed because my mom, at the end of the contest, she yelled out, 'Do it for Mama!' Everybody laughed. It was one of the closest I've ever been to barfing.

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.

There have been times when things get stuck in my throat, but you just work it up or down. Like how a swimmer probably can't imagine drowning - their bodies are so used to being in the water. I'm so used to shoving things down my throat.

The weather in New York, it fluctuates so much. Some days it's humid, some days you have a thunderstorm.

I have the greatest job in the world, and my life revolves around my love for food - particularly devouring hot dogs.

I travel pretty much every weekend of the summer. And then during the winter, I still do appearances and a couple contests here and there.

I like going to the doctor, being vigilant, being told that I'm healthy so I can push myself.

I love king crab a lot. I love good Mexican food, good tacos, and chile rellenos.

I love Italian food, such as pasta or lasagna.

I'm lucky. My parents are, like, super hippies. They were just happy I was going to school and I wasn't getting in trouble.

It's pretty rare for them to not be in our fridge, I have usually a good supply of all-beef hot dogs.

Kobayashi won't talk to me. He hates me.

It was hard for me to take competitive eating serious at first. When I made people happy, I became addicted to that. It's been a fun, fun ride.

I love to eat internationally and do eating contests everywhere. Traveling around, meeting people, and doing different things.

The hardest is foods I am not familiar with. Gyros, I lost that one; I don't like tzatziki sauce very much. I did kimchi in Korea, which was rough: fermented cabbage and spicy.

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.

There's no better feeling than knowing I'm going to break the guy next to me. His body will shut down, and I will keep eating. Then I will look out and see a crowd of happy people.

It's addicting, beating the heck out of people and eating hot dogs and making people smile. I do feel like garbage afterwards, but so what? Most people feel like garbage after a long day of work.

I was able to get a civil engineering degree and travel around the world and eat.

They don't sell the Nathan's hot dogs hardly anywhere in the West Coast. So I have to special order them, and I just end up getting Nathan's to ship them to me.

I don't really get hungry that much. Sometimes I get cravings for certain foods. But I can go all day without eating.

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.

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.

There's no better feeling than beating someone who's up on a high horse.

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.

I'd like to go out on top, preferably breaking a new world record on the Fourth of July.

I can't always go out to a restaurant and have a normal dinner.

I lose now and then. I get lazy. And sometimes I work just hard enough to win.

The bigger the crowd, the more likely I'll do whatever it takes to win.

I'm really normal except for the competitive eating.

When I'm eating I try to make sure I can breathe through my nose the entire time. If I have to breathe through my mouth, there's no way I'm eating or swallowing.

I think Peter King... he's kind of narrow-minded.

I think the traveling is what drew me into 'The Amazing Race' years ago.

It wasn't like I grew up wanting to be a competitive eater at all. Not like a lot of people, like football players, famous people - they knew that that's what they wanted to do when they were young.

I was 21, and I was in college, and I'd eat real healthy during the week, and then on the weekends I would reward myself, and I'd just go to town on whatever my parents had in the fridge. And my little brother would be like, 'Hey.' And so it was actually him that begged me to do my first contest.

I'm very competitive.

Going into a contest, I do not eat solid food and take in minimal calories for days, so I am hungry.

I love to eat! I don't think I have ever gotten sick of eating a food, unless it is bad food.

I've strained some muscles here and there, in my throat, even my jaw. Nothing that doesn't heal quickly.

It's always a battle to maintain my weight.

There are competitive people who love to push their body but don't love to eat like I do.

Make sure I'm chewing, swallowing, and breathing, my whole body is working together. I can just find a rhythm and keep going and going and going. It's my love of food.

I've signed babies' arms. I wanted to pull a 'Ricky Bobby' and sign a baby's forehead.

So now I'm 'the hot dog guy,' which isn't bad. I take it in stride. It's not like it was my goal in life. I'm having fun with it.

If I can train for a contest for a week, it's a guaranteed victory.

When I'm in training, I eat no solid food except hot dogs for six weeks.