Matthew Kai Stonie is a twenty-seven-year-old American competitive eater ranked three in Major League Eating and he has his own YouTube channel where he films many eating challenges. He is known as “Megatoad” because of the Toad from Super Mario.
He weighs 130 pounds (59kg) and is 5ft 8in tall (173cm) which can be quite hard to maintain when your job is eating enormous amounts of food. That’s why he watches what he eats after competitions and goes to the gym five times a week. Before he made a career out of eating, he was studying nutrition which helped him stay healthy and understand his body. When he first started he had a problem adapting to so much food and he was bloated and dehydrated all of the time. Eating enormous portions of food as competitive eaters do, can be very dangerous and it carries plenty of risks later in life.
All of these risks get higher if eaters don’t watch what they eat on a daily basis. Lucky for Matt, he tries to eat as healthy as he can. The knowledge he gained from nutritional courses helped him deal with all of that. When it comes to actual preparation and training for the competitions, Matt usually eats two huge meals per week. He rests for a few days between these meals and he said he thinks of this training like bodybuilding. In order for your body to be ready for bodybuilding, you have to go to the gym, train hard with most weight you can handle, and then go home and let muscles relax for a couple of days. That’s exactly what he is doing with his stomach and his entire body.
He started competing because of the free food and prizes when he was in college. He didn’t plan on making a carrier out of it, but he says he has been a competitive guy his whole life, so when he started winning he just never stopped competing and winning. Another perk, aside from being paid to eat food is that Matt’s grocery bills count as a work expense. So, free food at home and free contest food. The first contest he won was a lobster eating contest in 2010. He won by half a lobster roll and took $1000 prize. The first time he entered a Major League eating competition was a year later at the Stockton Deep Fried Asparagus Championship and he was the youngest member of the organization at the time. He has a long list of world records and wins behind him now. Some of the most impressive include:
- 5 lb (3,4kg) burger in 4 minutes and 43 seconds in 2013.
- McDonalds Happy Meal in 15.22 seconds in 2014.
- 182 strip of bacon in 5 minutes in 2015.
- 103 tacos in 8 minutes in 2015.
- 25 Big Macs in 22 minutes in 2015.
- 343 gyozas in 10 minutes in 2015.
- He shocked the world when he out ate the eight-time champion Joey Chestnut and ate 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes in 2015.
- 85 moon pies in 8 minutes in 2016.
- 113 pancakes in 8 minutes in 2016.
- 255 peeps in 5 minutes in 2017.
- 203 cookies in 27 minutes in 2017.
When he saw how many people come to see others compete and eat huge amounts of food, he decided to use this and make a business and money out of it. People love spending time watching different things, and if you seeing someone eat a 7,5lb (3,4kg) burger will definitely capture your attention, and make you watch it until the end. He started filming for his YouTube channel in 2010, and the first video he uploaded was of him eating a 6lb (2,7kg) pizza in 18 minutes. He now has almost 10 million subscribers and more than 1.3 billion views overall. His younger brother Morgan works with him as a cameraman, so it is sort of family business that doesn’t only bring him money, but his family too. He is probably the most known competitive eater in the world because of the success his YouTube channel brought him.
So, after hearing all of this, the big question is how much money can a competitive eater earn? You will probably be stunned by the fact that Matt has an estimated net worth of $3 million. This might seem like a lot of money, but most of that comes from his YouTube channel rather than eating competitions. He gets about 1.5 million views from different places in the world and that gives an estimated $6000 pay per day which is about $2.2 million a year from ads alone. YouTubers get paid between $2 and $7 per 1000 monetized views, which is from 40% to 80% of the total views they get. If you add all of that up, you get a pretty impressive number. An average competitive eater might not make a lot of money, but this isn’t the case for Matt Stonie. It has been noted that he made about $500 thousand from eating competitions. But it is a long way to the top if you want to be able to make a living out of eating food as Matt did. An important thing when it comes to Matt Stonie’s money is that he uses his money for good. He donates money to charity and fights world hunger as much as he can. It is one of the world’s problems that are close to his heart since his line of work requires a lot of food when some people don’t have any.
A very important thing you can learn from Matt Stonie is to expect the unexpected. You might think you have your career planned, but don’t give up on your dreams and hobbies. You might find your future job by accident or find a way to make a living out of your hobbies. The most important thing is to find something you love and do that, and maybe try to make good money out of that.
