ktulu05

I've been riding on roads for several years, but am trying to get more serious about it this summer. I've been riding every weekend since April, and am now averaging about 75 miles per week. Have ridden 350 miles so far this year. I usually ride 15-20 with a group on Wednesday, 25-30 on Saturday, and 25-30 on Sunday. I'm 6'1", overweight, and need to lose about 60 more pounds (have lost ~17 since April). Since April, most of my carbs are whole wheat, and I try to eat more protein than carbs, along with fruits/veggies. My diet isn't perfect, but it's at least somewhat better.

On my Wednesday evening rides, I have incredible power (for me at least), climb hills easily, and usually beat most of the other riders back after the ride is over. The weekend rides are a different story. I struggle even early on, have no power, and feel just pathetic afterwords. On the weekend rides, I tend to not eat anything before because when I did eat in the past, my stomach would awful. On the Wednesday rides, I eat a normal breakfast/lunch and feel great. During all my rides, I've been bringing one bottle of water, and one bottle of Cytomax to replenish some calories.

I've read enough to know now that on my weekend rides, I have no carbs in my system, and my body is "hitting the wall" and trying to gain all of the energy required from burning fat. Which is bad if you're trying to ride with a group of fit cyclists, but good if you want to burn fat? I see a lot of posts and advice for cyclists to load up on carbs (whole grains, fruits, energy bars, energy gels) beforehand and during, but I'm thinking this is geared more towards people with low body fat?

This weekend, I ate nothing on Saturday and performed awful. On Sunday, I ate a whole-grain english muffin with natural peanut butter, an apple, and a glass of OJ. I felt better than Saturday for the first 20 miles, but the last 9 were a struggle. I guess my question is how do I balance the weightloss with performance? I know I need some carbs to avoid struggling the entire time, but I don't want to load up so much that I don't lose any weight. Or do I need to just forget about performance, and struggle the whole time, to maximize fat burn?

Thanks,
Kevin

gregf83 

When you ride in the morning on an empty stomach you are not riding with no carbs in your system. Your muscles likely have at least 1500 Cals of glycogen providing you ate properly the day before. So first off make sure you are eating a sufficient number of carbs on Fri before your Sat ride.

If you are feeling poorly from the start on Sat it's quite possible the pace is higher and you are riding harder. If possible, try and reduce your effort by drafting more and not doing any work in front of the group.

The number of carbs your body burns is a function of intensity not how much is stored. The higher the intensity the more carbs will be utilized. Group rides are fun but not necessarily optimal for burning fat as you may have to ride hard at certain points.

Sometimes you just need to experiment. Try eating some cereal before your Sat ride and try riding at a slower pace if you don't feel well. The last thing you want to do is stop riding because you don't feel good.

Other recommendations:
- Try eliminating any calories during rides under 2 hrs. You aren't riding frequently enough or long enough to have to worry about replenishing your glycogen stores. Just eating a normal balanced diet should take care of restocking your glycogen.
- Try and ride more frequently. If you're trying to lose weight, consistency is important. Its easier to lose weight when the amount you need to eat each day is the same. See if you can fit in 5 or 6 rides/week.
- Maximum fat utilization occurs around 65% of VO2Max which may not mean much to you but it's basically a steady moderate effort. It shouldn't feel easy but, you should be able to maintain this level of effort for several hours. It's often difficult to ride at a steady effort with a group so consider doing more solo rides. Riding with low to moderate effort also has less impact on hunger following the ride.

davidlewis

Awesome advice! Also eat more lean protein and fresh veggies...

ktulu05

On Friday, we usually have pizza since we eat better during week. So I get a massive dose of carbs on Friday night, which is probably a shock to my system. The Saturday/Sunday rides are either solo, or with a friend who is also trying to lose weight.

I think I have a good sense of the steady moderate effort. When the terrain is mostly flat, I don't have the feeling that I could do this forever, but I can go for a few hours. My rides are usually 1:30 to 2:00 in duration. I did experiment a bit with eating before Sunday's ride, and felt a little better. I'll eliminate the CytoSport for now until I start going longer. Most of the time after a ride, I'm not hungry at all, and I don't want to eat anything for a good hour or two. On the weekend, I usually ride from 8-10 AM, and so an hour or two later I'm ready for lunch.

Also, after the ride, I try to eat as few carbs as possible, in the hopes that my body continues to burn fat after the workout. I may be wrong on that though.

gregf83 

If you are not comfortable or feeling poorly on your Sat ride, take the intensity down a notch until you feel good while riding. You should be enjoying your rides! Save the suffering for after you've lost some weight and want to get faster.

Yes, this isn't correct. Your metabolism may go up a little with heavy resistance training but not much with cycling. There is a 30 min window after you stop exercising where your body will assimilate carbs at a higher rate than normal. If you've exhausted most of your carbs this is a good time to replace them. Mixing in 25% protein with your carbs will also speed the rate of glycogen assimilation.

ericm979

> I've read enough to know now that on my weekend rides, I have no carbs in my system, and my body is "hitting the wall" and trying to gain all of the energy required from burning fat. Which is bad if you're trying to ride with a group of fit cyclists, but good if you want to burn fat?

Not really. And riding bonked is no fun as you have discovered.

Eat a decent breakfast with some low glycemic carbs before your weekend rides. Oatmeal (real oatmeal, not the package stuff that is loaded with sugar) is good.
To lose weight cut sugar from your diet. It's in a lot of processed food. You need to read the labels to find it. They put it in all sorts of things that should not have sugar such as peanut butter and spagetti sauce. Once you get used to non sugar versions of food you will find the sugared stuff actually tastes strange.

If you drink soda or other sweetened drinks, cut that out. There's no food value in those, just empty calories. Water is better. And diet drinks are not much better than non-diet- the sweet taste triggers the same response in the brain as sugar does, making you want more food. That's what the giant corporations that make it design it to do.

Ride more. You're not riding much. Eat enough to support your rides.

Carbonfiberboy 

It is said that "fat burns in a carbohydrate fire." IOW, you have to eat carbs in order to burn fat. You're describing a condition in which you are always carb-poor.

Have a recovery drink that's high in carbs immediately after a ride. A pint of chocolate milk is the simplest thing. After that, I'll nibble on carbs until dinner, which will also feature carbs and some protein.

The day before a long ride, try to eat at 6-7 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight. That's a lot. Rather than increase the amount you eat, simply substitute carbs for fat and protein. Use concentrated sources like pasta, rice, whole wheat bread, and fruit juice all day. If it's going to be a long ride, the day before I'll drink 2 water bottles of a sports drink like Cytomax. My "long rides" are usually over 60 miles. You can get by with fewer carbs for shorter rides.

Pizza is not a good source of carbs, but it is a good source of fat. Don't eat it before a ride.

Studies have shown that carb consumption the morning of the ride is less important. If you must eat before a ride, eat 3 hours before the ride, 200-400 calories of mostly carbs. If you can't do that, don't eat anything. Rather have an energy bar or banana in the last 15 minutes before the ride start or immediately after the start.

Your comment about finding that breakfast before your Sunday ride making the first 20 miles better than your Saturday ride leads me to believe you are eating too few carbs all week. Eat twice as many carb calories as you do protein calories at every meal. Just don't eat a lot.

You won't be able to completely replenish your glycogen after the Saturday ride, so a good strategy is to do the Sunday ride with a slower group or go out by yourself, so that your Sunday ride is at a much slower pace, one that will not burn much glycogen but will still burn fat.

Take something more caloric with you on your rides. Stick a Clif bar in your jersey pocket. If you feel yourself losing power, eat 1/2 of it, then the other half 1/2 hour later. But on a short ride like you're describing, that shouldn't happen if you've fueled properly the day before the ride.

As others have said, try to increase your weekly mileage. Gradually work it up. 100-150 miles/week seems enough for most purposes. Most of these miles should be at a moderate pace, one that doesn't strain your legs or make you breathe hard.

ktulu05

Thanks for all the tips. I'm learning a lot, and realizing I need to read up on a lot more nutrition stuff. I think I also need to realize that I need to focus now on burning fat, and not speeding along as fast as I can possibly go. I've been mesmerized by improving my Strava segments as much as I can and really pushing things everytime. It seems counter-intuitive to want to keep the intensity down to burn fat, and I think I kept thinking that the harder I push, the faster I'll lose weight.

I agree that I may be eating too few carbs. I found this article about glycogen, and I have seen the same pattern with weight gain. On a day where I eat more carbs, even if I stick to my calorie goals, I would gain a few pounds. It's not a gain of fat, but likely a gain of glycogen brought on by eating so few carbs in the days before.

I have been trying to eliminate processed foods, sugars, and white flours as much as possible. Quaker oats has a weight-control variety which has no added sugar, and I try to have that for breakfast a few days a week. I do have a bad diet soda habit which I'm trying to break in favor of water.

Thanks!

Carbonfiberboy 

As your link says, glycogen adds about 3g of water for every gram of glycogen. So if you are consistently glycogen rich, you'll weigh more, a lot more, up to 4 kg more, and vice versa. So that's something to watch - glycogen depletion will drop weight off you, but you don't really want that, which makes the whole weight loss/exercise thing much more complicated. You can adjust for that to some extent by waist measurements. I chart my waist and thigh measurements along with my weight. I also have one of those electronic bodyfat scales which is not accurate but good for spotting trends.

gregf83 

How do you get 4kg? Assuming 500g of glycogen (2000 Cals) and an extra 3g of water per g of Carb would be 2 kg extra assuming one could function with 0 carbs.

ericm979

Actually good pizza works well. Crappy pizza loaded with fatty meat and triple cheese, maybe not.
That's pushed by Hammer among others. I have followed it for races. I'm finding that it's wrong for me. If it's a ride, I can eat and ride. The half hour or so that it takes to get ready and out the door is enough of a start on digesting the food that I have no problems, even heading right up a 10% grade. If it's a road race, eating an hour or two before the race seems to be the best. If I eat three hours before the race I am already getting hungry when the race starts. That's a problem as I need to eat more to keep fueled. And I am eating way more than 200-400 calories for breakfast... more like double that.

But to the OP, who isn't racing or even riding all that much yet, don't get all worried about not eating this and eating X hours before a ride. Most of it won't make a difference for you. If it does it won't be the end of the world. You'll be a little slow and you will learn something about how you respond as an individual.

Even if you are racing, you can't afford to get too rigid about your food because circumstances may dictate different. And it may not matter. For example at a two day stage race with tons of climbing my dinner after the first stage turned out to be late, small and greasy. I didn't choose that but the resturaunt was way overloaded (as was every other place in town) and that was what I got. I had a good ride the next day anyhow.

Spoonrobot 

For someone who isn't racing and is trying to lose weight that is absolutely insane advice*.

OP, check out Pg. 63 of this PDF (The top article):

https://www.cyclofiend.com/Images/pdf/RR42_web.pdf


And a more detailed article here on page 34:

https://www.cyclofiend.com/Images/rbw/rr43_v1_all.pdf




*To wit: If the OP weighed 200 lbs or 90 kilograms that would be a recommendation of 540-630 grams of carbs, which is around 2160-2500 calories. He's riding a bike, not climbing Everest.

MEversbergII

If you're going for weight loss, drop the bread. Drop the grains, even. You'll be le suck for a little while as you become more adapted to the fat burning. You might not be as zippy as more carb-loaded cyclists, either, but you will be burning more fat stores if you are not creating glucose and whatnot from the carbs.

M.

Carbonfiberboy 

Top search item problem - incorrect information. Didn't even think about it. Sorry. I think the author was incorrectly figuring 15g glycogen per kilo of body weight rather than lean body weight. You are of course correct.

Carbonfiberboy 

Nutrition links to Rivendell Reader, LOL. He says riding hard, lots, doesn't lose fat, then puts up a photo of The Chicken. Too funny.

OP is racing, BTW. If you don't think group rides are racing analogues, you need to ride with a much faster group.

As for the "insane advice," average glycogen muscle content runs around 15g/kilo. For example, I weigh 154 today and am ~40% lean muscle mass, according to my electronic scale. That's exactly 70 kg * .4 = 28 kg * 15g = 420g glycogen stores. Also 70 kg * 6 = 420g, exactly the same number. I.e., not insane advice, just simple math. The OP will burn more fat, not less, if he is properly fueled for a ride.

The most common thing for a person trying to lose weight is to first drop their glycogen and water, 5-10 pounds depending on the person's size, and see that as weight loss, when it really is not. That's just getting depleted, not dropping fat. Being depleted makes it that much harder to drop fat. If you've ever bonked on a ride, you know exactly what I mean. One doesn't burn much fat at 10 mph.

Carbonfiberboy 

So here's the theory:

I think we can agree that an average size cyclist has about 2000 total calories of glycogen stores. It's possible to replenish these stores at a usual rate of about 2% per hour, perhaps rising to 5%/hour under perfect conditions, which is only 40-100 cal./hr: https://www.thesportjournal.org/artic...stive-exercise

It takes some time to replenish glycogen. Doesn't happen right away. Normally, we want to have our glycogen stores replenished or almost so before dinner on the night preceding a hard ride or training session. During the night, our brain, which runs only on glucose, will diminish our liver glycogen. Our muscle glycogen is of course untouched. Liver glycogen stores are 300-400 cal., which decrease by about 2/3 during the night:
https://books.google.com/books?id=OMU...0night&f=false
So we really only need 200-400 cal. and we need them early enough to allow for liver glycogen replenishment. About 3 hours at 100 cal/hr. would just do it.

It does work to short ourselves on liver glycogen and ride anyway. We have a mechanism for that. Our bodies simply go into gluconeogenesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
but that's not exactly the best thing.

I'm guessing that when you had a successful second stage with a poor dinner, that you had a good recovery drink followed by carbs until you could have dinner, and had eaten well during the ride, so your glycogen was mostly replenished anyway.

BTW, you're supposed to be hungry at the start of a ride. That's your signal to start eating! I do best when I do the 250 cal./hr. for the first 3 hours for sure. I start 15 minutes into the ride or in the last minute before the start.

Pizza restaurant pizza, even a veggie, runs about 1/3 fat as much fat as carbs. So 10g fat/30g carbs or 90 cal. fat/120 cal. carbs. I sure as heck wouldn't eat that the night before.
https://www.pizzahut.com/nutritionpizza.html

ericm979

Like I said, that appears to not work well for me. Especially for long races. If I am hungry when I start, I am that much farther behind on my eating. Getting enough calories during the race is already difficult.

Actually I'd been ill in the latter part of stage 1, abandoned near the end (after 5 hours) and then went back to the motel and threw up for a while.

I know all the theory you quote above and have tried to make it work. It doesn't seem to work for me. You telling me it should does not change that.

None of this has any relevence for the OP, and of course you missed my actual points in your eagerness to argue with me.

Carbonfiberboy 

The reason I've been following this thread so closely is that I've been having the same issues as the OP and have been researching and working to solve them for quite a while.

I don't mean to argue with you. I respect you a great deal. Rather, as you note, I'm trying to present the theory for how it's supposed to work to the OP and incidentally to you, even though you already know all that. Cognitive ethologists tell us that supposedly intelligent animals like humans, chimps, dolphins, some birds, etc., have "mental maps" of how the world is supposed to work and thus can reason from past experience to future actions. Without much experience or a theory, how can the OP plan his future activities?

I'm down 10 lbs. since December with 2" off my waist. Since I'm losing power due to age, I thought I'd try to get back to what I weighed in my 20's, from a BMI of 26 to 23.5, while still doing my competitive group and mountain rides. Now at 24.3. After a vacation and 20 days off the bike, trying to lose weight rather than fueling properly, I put in 1:15 at or near LTHR on Sunday's group ride and had a liver glycogen bonk. The tandem was only down 5 watts on the climbs after that layoff! Good stoker. I slowed and ate and came back after a few miles to finish more or less normally. This coming Sunday, I'm going to fuel as above and see how that goes. Right now, I'm down 3 lbs. in the past 4 days, which is too much, obviously glycogen loss. I'll fuel on Saturday.

ktulu05

In my case, I'm riding with the C or C- group that rides together on Wednesday's. I ride on Saturday's with a friend (who is also trying to lose weight), and usually ride on Sunday mornings alone. In last night's ride, I averaged 14.5MPH, and finished the ride in the last 1/4 of the group. We have several re-groupings along the way as well. Rode ~29 miles in 2:00. During the ride, I had several conversations with people, and was able to talk for the most part unless going uphill, so I don't think I was pushing it too hard.

Kit Smith

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CommuteCommando

I always eat a light breakfast. If I am doing an early morning ride, iget up early enough that I can eat and give it time to settle. My weekday breakfast is almost always 1 oz peanut butter on a slice of wheat bread. (usually on the run, so rarely toasted.)

You made no mention of fat. I track intake daily and get about 25%, 30%, 45% Cal from protean, fat and carbohydrate. This is not a low carb diet, but is a little lower in carbs than the typical American diet. I follow what is called the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes moderate consumption of complex carbs, and fats and protean from mostly non-animal sources. Beef and dairy are eaten in very small quantities, most animal protean is gotten from chicken and fish.

SkyeC

You have to find what works best for you, it's that simple. One person is going to tell you carbs are evil, the other guy eats twelve pancakes 10 minutes before he leaves, etc. Use something like the myfitnesspal app or website to track your calories AND track your macros including protein, carbs, fat, sugar, and so forth so you can use that as a food log to put in your riding journal.

For myself, I like to ride around 8 or 9am since my schedule allows for that. I hate eating early in the morning so if you try to feed me oatmeal I will get nauseous just from the smell and texture, so I don't do that. What WORKS FOR ME is one hour before I leave I have a slice or two of whole wheat toast and a glass of apple juice. If that's not available, I pop some ShotBloks or Sport Beans w/ caffeine and have a full glass of water. After I get that over with, I get all my **** together and leave in about an hour. Feel great when I walk out the door.

For rides of an hour or less, all I take is one bottle of water w/ a scoop of Skratch Labs drink mix.

For rides of 1-2 hours, I take two bottles w/ SL drink mix and some form of food (ShotBloks, Stinger Waffles, or real food like a PBJ sammich, rice cakes, banana, apple pie, whatever) that will give me around 25-35g of carbs. I snack on it by the first half hour mark and finish it by the end of the first hour. Water every 10-15min.

For rides of 2-3 hours, I take two bottles w/ SL drink mix and two packs of food (see above) that equal out to 50-75g of carbs and start the first at 30, finish at 60, then repeat with the other goodies I've brought.

When I get home, I grab 10oz of milk and 2 scoops of BSN Syntha-6 whey protein and down it. An hour later I eat some real food, normally a good mix of proteins and carbs and a veggie or two.

My goal for each day is 1900 net calories with macros in the area of 150g protein, 75g fat, and 175-300g carbs depending on riding I've done that day.

What I do is by far the most common and oft advised program I've seen and guess what, it works. And many, many racers/Pros do the same damn thing.

Looigi

Give or take a bit, this is what works for me too. One nuance is that for me, I don't try to net out calories daily. I find it easier/better to keep the caloric intake more even day to day despite large day to day variation in expenditure. For example, if I typically ride 3 days a week, 7 hrs total, burning 3500 cal total, I'll add 500 per day over the week rather than 1000 or 1500 on the days that I ride.

SkyeC

I tried that, but I end up being so hungry! I usually do the same as you, just add 500-750 calories over the day and end up quite under net.

Then again, I'm human so I use big rides as an excuse to have a burger or pizza after big rides.

mr_pedro

Your appetite does a pretty good job of sorting this out for you without needing too much thinking.
Calorie counting is a good tool if you need to change your habits, until your appetite has been reset.