“MY BODY is a machine. It’s a vessel for work. If you want your car to run well, you put good fuel in it. Same with your body.”

Those are the wise words of American strongman Robert Oberst, the 2.03m, 180kg mountain who is no stranger to $450 weekly grocery bills — just to feed himself.

“I have six meals a day. If I don’t eat enough, I get shaky, I get headaches,” Oberst told the Munchies website.

“My body is running on a level now where it’s used to having good fuel. If I cut that supply off, my body just revolts.”

Across those six meals a day, Oberst consumes 15,000 to 20,000 calories — at least five times the recommended daily intake for Australian males.

He eats directly before going to the gym because it enables him to workout harder for longer.

“When you go to the gym and your body’s fuelled up with good nutrients and protein, when you get to the point when you’re working hard and you’re hitting your last reps, you’re burned out, there’s something else in there driving you,” Oberst explains.

“Instead of reaching down and there’s nothing there, you have some power left.”

Oberst’s diet consists of largely of eggs, meat, pasta and rice. And lots of it.

For breakfast, he’ll eat 8-10 eggs and then snack on whole boiled eggs throughout the day.

For lunch, he’ll often have two large steaks.

Dinner is a pasta meal, which also includes meat.

And in between it’s more meat and more eggs, plus he finds room for six cups of rice.

The main rule is Oberst consumes 1.6kg of meat per day, which can come from various sources.

“Basically, I clean out the meat section,” he says of trips to the supermarket, where he packs his trolley with beef, turkey and pork.

“It’s got to taste good and it has to have a high protein content,” he says.

He eats no cheese and no dairy.

“It’s very strict,” Oberst says. “I get one day off every four weeks where I can eat what I want.”

The 29-year-old is currently the second strongest man in America but “I am working my arse off take first place”.

A former American football player, Oberst worked as a bouncer at a bar before a colleague encouraged him to join strongman.

He describes his job as “travelling around the world and lifting up heavy weird objects”.

“I get paid to be the freak show. I’m fine with that.”