surfncycling

First off, this is just stuff that I have learned about my own body so it might not work for you, but it might, and I know how frusterating it is to work out insanely hard and not lose weight.

I was stuck at a plateau, and was incredibly frusterated, so here are some things that worked/are working for me.

1st: I stopped drinking milk. I read some stuff and it makes sense, basically milk is for fatting up baby cows. Within a week I had lost 5 lbs, just came right off without any effort. You get used to soy milk quickly, and in 2 weeks you don't miss milk at all.

2nd: Eat ALOT on the bike, and not so much at home. I was eating 10 fig newtons on a century, and basically sending my body into starvation mode, even though I wasn't that hungry and wasn't bonking. Then when I got home I'd eat alot of food, and my body would store alot of that as fat because of me putting it into conserve mode while on the bike. Most people can intake 50-65 grams of carbs an hour while excecising, which is a fairly large amount of food if you're out for 3-4 hours. I haven't read the research, but my guess is that the body metabolizes fat much much more efficiently using carbs/sugars as a catalyst, or something along those lines.

3rd: Time/coordinate what your eating with your excercise. If you're riding in the morning, eat a high carb breakfast, lots of carbs on the ride, then afterwards around lunch have veggies and carbs, and for dinner mostly protein. My train of thought is that before the ride you wants lots of sugars in the system for glycogen, same with during riding, and the body will not turn any of it into fat, its going straight to the muscles. Afterwards you want vitamins and carbs to replace what you've lost, though if you ate alot of carbs on the ride, you likely won't need as many afterwards. For dinner eat lots of protein because the body is going to repair and build muscles almost exclusively while you are sleeping. If the muscles already have alot of glycogen stored up and you eat carbs, some of that is going to get turned into fat, because the body can't turn carbs into protein.


Again, this is just what I've found to work with my body after 6 or 7 months of getting pissed and depressed about not losing all the weight I wanted to, its amazing to finally figure out something that works. And it has improved my performance alot as well.

Hope that helps

Trekke

I think each of our bodies act and react differently to excercise and nutrition. However, you want to make sure you are getting enough essential vitamins and minerals in your diet. You want to make sure you are not loosing bone and muscle but loosing fat.

rich007

Thanks for sharing... I've had similar experience as you are stating in your points #1 and #3... Definitely off regular milk for long time, but used to drink a lot skim milk, now only occasionaly, since I switched to soy milk... And as you state, timing and types of meals are important, especially before, during, and shortly after training...