> you can, and will, eat just about whatever you damn please and not gain weight

I don’t know if any athlete who can sustain themselves on a junk diet.

Elite endurance athletes have awful diets by any normal standard, because the only way to fuel yourself adequately for a stage of the Tour de France or an ultramarathon is with nauseating amounts of refined carbohydrates. It's not even the fun kind of junk, just a constant effort to eat as much carbohydrate as your gut can possibly tolerate.

"somewhere between 60-120g carbs/hour" and that's on the flat stages (more in the mountains) of TdF would be considered junk food anywhere outside of sport.

Source: https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/mango-flavour-and-120g-...