“After a contest, I try to eat fairly healthy.” — Joey Chestnut Quote

After a contest, I try to eat fairly healthy.

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 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.

Traveling around the world to eat, it's a weird life, but I love it.

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.

In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.

I remember I was so crabby in my third trimester - I got gestational diabetes because I'd been acting like I was in a one-woman pie-eating contest.

The first time I joined the gym was during the Miss Sri Lanka pageant in 2006. Then, I went for the Miss Universe contest where I was exposed to girls who were very fit for their age. They could have joined the Olympics. They were doing crazy exercises.

Although my seat is a contest between Labour and the Lib Dems, it could well make the difference between a Labour and a Tory government at the next election. In terms of international development, this choice is a very clear one.