Originally Posted by
crankarmbreaker
Ok, thanks for that advice. Wow, I guess I have a lot to learn about nutrition, cause I read your paragraph on not eating rest stop food as a sure-fire recipe for bonking about four hours in to the thing. I mean, when I do a 92-mile training ride from Seattle to Centralia on not-too-hilly terrain, I have to stop at Puyallup (35 miles), and Spanaway (55 miles) for the equivalent of a full meal's calories, otherwise I get ravenously hungry and can't keep going.
Also, why are you saying you don't need any protein or fat "on a ride that short" in regards to RAMROD? That's kind of confusing. It's 154 miles.
I will go look for wider, lower tread tires. I had not thought about that option before.
Warning: I am not a doctor nor a nutritionist. My advice is to see both of those about losing weight. What I know, I've learned from others on this forum and from personal experience.
First of all, read this:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/072...4ea2f823dc.pdf
Then google "lleptin and ghrelin" and read at least the articles on the first page.
None of that may be of any help, but maybe.
My guess is that you are so heavy because of exactly what you are describing: ravenous hunger. Usually this is a result of basically eating too much. Besides ghrelin, I find that hunger comes from low blood sugar. Low blood sugar between normal-sized meals might just be the lack of ability to burn fat.
Cycling can suppress hunger. It just needs a little help. My prescription is to go out on the bike for some time period without eating and without eating beforehand either. Start by trying for an hour's ride. I take a bottle of sports drink with me when I do this, just in case I start to feel woozy. I usually start to feel hungry at ~45' but can ride through that and keep going for 2 or more hours without eating or drinking or being particularly hungry. This is something one has to work up to.
When exercising, on the bike for instance, one burns a mix of carbs and fat along with a comparatively small amount of protein. The idea of the above is to increase the share of fat in that mix. It's completely possible to ride all day, burning almost entirely fat if one keeps the effort down, but you have to train your body to do that.
It's important, both during a ride and after, not to eat too much. Eat slowly and just enough to make the hunger stop, then quit. Train to eat on the bike as I've described above for RR. Like all training, it takes time, but it works. It doesn't have to be only Clif bars, but it does have to be carbs and at about the 250 cal/hr rate, not more, preferably less per hour. Don't get frustrated, just keep trying.
In terms of long distance riding, 154 miles is pretty short. LD riding starts at ~200k and goes up to 1200k. A century is looked upon as an ordinary day ride. As the rides get longer, precise nutrition becomes ever more important.