No, that's exactly what you don't want to do. A shot of energy now, and nothing for the next hour, means you will bonk. You want the most coarsely ground thing you can find, because the longer it takes to digest it, the longer you can go without eating.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "easy to digest." There are things you can't digest, and obviously you shouldn't eat them. The rest of it, well, your stomach can digest it. It's all easy. If your ham sandwich has a high glycemic index (finely ground, processed ham, etc) your stomach will proceed to digest it all at once, which will take a lot of energy all at once, and give you a lot of energy all at once; and then your stomach will have nothing to do, which is problematic in its own way. One minute you feel like Lance, and then with little warning you feel like crap. Now if you had eaten a ham sandwich with a low glycemic index (coarsely ground whole grain flour, tough crust, &c), your stomach would require a low level of energy over a longer period, and will give you a correspondingly lower level of energy over a longer period. You want the latter, because your energy level will remain relatively constant over the course of your ride; no highs, no lows.

PB&J has come up several times already...I'll have to give that a shot, but I know its gonna be hard to eat only a 1/4 of a sandwich at a time i love PBJ.

does 1/4 pbj contain 200-300 calories?

So chunky PB and bread with tons of grain in it?

I know that in-ride nutrition is my biggest downfall. I'm really trying to end that, but I'm pretty sure my current solution of toting a banana and some trail mix isn't the answer.

I'm with you, Tom. Riding makes me ravenous. I reckon that means I'm burning a lot of calories. Unfortunately, I have trouble not eating more to compensate for the exercise and as a result I'm not getting rid of this tire around my midsection.

FWIW, I think a traditional Cuban sandwich starts with Cuban bread and includes ham, roasted pork, mild cheese (swiss, provolone), sliced dill pickles and yellow mustard. I've no idea if it's a good meal for energy, but it's a tasty damned sandwich!

yes!

Nothing wrong with that! The banana is especially good because it's totally unprocessed, comes neatly packed in a wrapper that you can just toss into the bushes. Just don't expect one banana to fuel you all day; more like one banana per hour. The problem with trail mix is that it's essentially a fluid, and hard to eat on the bike. Also, trail mix tends to have a lot of ingredients like nuts and chocolate that give you a lot of fat and some protein, whereas what you really want is carbohydrate.

I get the same thing when I'm riding well - I'm flying on the bike, and STARVING all the time. What do I eat? MORE!!! I do try to stick to relatively healthy stuff: granola and yogurt for breakfast, animal protein on whole-grain for lunch, etc. My inbetween-meals meals usually consist of mixed dried fruit and nuts (Costco "Fruit-Nut Medley" - way tasty), rice cracker mix (also from Costco), and fruit. Larabars (also available as Costco - are you seeing a pattern here?) are really good: all natural, "real food" ingredients, tasty, and calorie-laden. And at dinner, slightly increased portions of the usual.

SP
Bend, OR

I have also experimented with my own energy drinks. Particularly in hot AZ weather, I will split a can of Squirt between two 24 oz bottles and then add water and 1/4 tsp of salt substitute (50% sodium chloride, 50% potassium chloride) to each. The salt substitute replaces more than 90% of the electolytes and the squirt makes the whole thing flow down better.

I should clarify something - when I mentioned the 250 or so calories an hour, I neglected to add something important.... why. According to the reading I've done, your body can only metabolize that much in an hour - the rest just sits in your stomach causing problems. The trick is to pick the right type of calories.... one you can use most effectively. That's why I use a sports drink powder that has maltodextrin in it. It is a complex carbohydrate in liquid form and gets absorbed easily and steadily, and can keep you in the saddle all day.

Stuff like Gatorade has a lot of simple sugars in it, and while it is good for a 2-3 hour run, it can leave you collapsed on the side of the road after several hours if that's all your using. Plus, my personal experience is that after drinking it for several hours, I get nauseous. I just don't need gastric distress on a 6 mile 8% climb.

For those interested, this place will mix a custom powder for you: https://www.trueprotein.com/

But all this is way off topic for Tom - he's not riding big distances and long hours. Tom, here's what worked for me when I was in your shoes - 5 small meals a day, balanced with 6 ounces of some sort of lean protein, 6 ounces of some complex carbs (baked sweet potato was my favorite), and all the steamed vegetables I could eat (broccoli and brussel sprouts....MMmmmmmm!). Add fruit to the mix and you will be surprised at how full you are all the time. The first meal, breakfast, was always just lean protein - usually egg whites. You will have to adjust that when riding right after breakfast, as you'll need something like oatmeal to give you the energy to get moving.

Also, you might try getting the habit of carrying PayDay candy bars. Junk food, I know - but is a great energy bar in a pinch and has saved the day for me on more than one occasion.

So.... blad, blah, blah.... yadda yadda yadda. Keep it simple, Tom.... a healthy 400 or so calorie breakfast an hour or two before you ride, and a mix of protein and carbs throughout the day. The carbs for energy, the protein to keep you feeling full and to keep your muscles in good repair. And have a pizza now and then.

I should clarify something else -

I AM NOT an expert in this nutrition stuff. I've just stumbled across stuff that seems to work for me, and information that seems reasonable when I've read it. After a few years of long distance riding, I know what works FOR ME... and more importantly, what doesn't.

YMMV, and I may be full of crap. I'm not a doctor, and I don't play one on TV. And I do not remember the last time I stayed at a Holiday Inn. And Tony Soprano is my hero.

Well, another concern is money. Money is very difficult these days, so I'd sooner MAKE a Payday bar than eat one. And you could do worse than a Payday bar. They're mostly peanuts, and peanuts are good for me. I'm not saying they're good for everyone, but they are good for me.

Processed foods are profitable. Whole foods (not the brand) are best and least profitable. That's why they're marketed heavily, but they can save money and improve nutrition.

I do eat a lot of fruit in the summer. I love it, but it doesn't fill me as much as it fills others. I can eat an entire box of blueberries in one sitting and still be extremely hungry.

Try a watermelon.

Melon fills me up too. Cantaloupe and Watermelon make a great combo.

Tom, you ever try a frozen fruit smoothie? They're pretty delicious and fill me up. Freeze (or buy already frozen) fruit, toss a fresh banana and whatever frozen fruit you like in a blender. Add yogurt or ice cream or milk or water and a squirt of honey. Blend til smooth, drink with a straw to avoid brain freeze If you're into flax seed or hemp seed or protein powder or powdered fiber you can add it in the blender and you'll never know its there.


be warned. I've burned out 2 cheapo blenders in the last 3 years because of this.

Ironically, my own home-made granola bars are WAY more expensive than the ones they sell at the store. I assume they're worth the premium; but they're not cheap.

I start the day with a huge bowl of oatmeal that has raisins, roasted almonds and sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, a little brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of milk.

I make my own power bars with peanut butter, oats, honey, and almonds, and raisins at a cost of about 50 cents each... they contain 250-300 calories each and have diverse sources of sugar for sustained energy release as well as protein.

Evening meals are usually smaller portions of meat with lots of veggies and either pasta or rice.

Will often pack a few bananas in my handlebar bag and usually drink only water as most sports drinks contain high fructose corn syrup.

I can eat pretty much anything and when I was training hard and putting in a 10 hour day was putting back 4000 calories a day.

Sixty Fiver, you've given me other good things to try! Sensible and economical.

Zaphod, I'll think about the smoothie, too. It sounds expensive.

Yep Noglider, and it happened dangerously close to your house....still deciding if I'd do it again

The PB&J. I do extra crunchy spread thin, preserves and whole wheat, never had a problem with digestion and the whole wheat and peanuts ensure a slow steady burn.

The can also produce gas and perhaps a sudden unplanned movement. Bananas seem easier on the system and less sticky on the bars.

Now I'm hungry!

+1 Smoothies stick with me for a while. When your bananas are ripe, but you're not going to eat them right away, peel them and place them in a bag in the freezer. A frozen banana goes a long way in keeping your smoothie cold. I love, but can't tolerate cow's milk so I've been using that almond milk. It has a relatively long shelf life too.

Thankfully my wife and I received a good quality blender as a wedding gift. You're right, though, smoothies labor them.

i study and read about nutrition all of the time. i only eat whole foods, and then only a select amount of whole foods. if you want to do your body and mind good, you need to start there.

i recommend people who consume wheat and dairy to research what they do to your body. although i'm not a strict follower of the "paleo" diet, i do believe in many of it's principles. it is a good place to start.

nut fats are some of the healthiest things you can eat (a peanut is a legume btw). you should be less concerned about calories and more concerned with ingredients.

what we eat is as important as anything to our health. it is important not to cut corners.

I agree with a lot of the advice here, but people are different. Some people need more protein than others. My Lovely Wife™ tried to be vegetarian but her health suffered. She doesn't eat animal protein all the time, but she's sure to have a little bit most of the time.

That does me well, too, but I need a lot more starch than she does. I skipped bread for a while, and it was no good for me. When I went back to bread, I felt better and more satisfied.

I have a good physical energy level, and I'm approximately my ideal weight, as I always have been. I say this in case I sound like overweight people who make excuses and act like they know their bodies when they clearly don't know how to reach their ideal weights.

So anyway, I know a bit about the perils of dairy and gluten, and My Lovely Wife™ is completely off gluten and hardly ever eats dairy. That's good for her. They are good for me. There are different blood lines and body types, and I seem not to suffer from having small amounts of dairy and large amounts of wheat. I'm slightly lactose intolerant, so I eat yogurt. I never have trouble with it. Gotta be careful with milk and ice cream.

Here's a recipe that I use for a morning shake. Make is so often that I have it pretty much memorized.

1 cup frozen fruit (I usually use blueberries)
1 single serving size fruit flavored yogurt
1/4 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup milk
1 banana

Put it in a blender and blend till smooth. Sticks with me pretty well. The recipe I follow also calls for something like 1/4 cup wheat germ but I never have wheat germ on hand so I never use it. I may be wrong on the quantity of wheat germ, too.

One more thing my boss always used to say to me when I used to bring in sandwiches on cheap-o white bread: "The whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead." Whole wheat everything seems to help a lot too. Bread, pitas, etc. I think the only white "bread" I eat is tortillas.

There's an old paperback recipe book that I use for ride food, "Recipes for a Small Planet."
Their trail mix and unbaked cookies are excellent ride food, cheap to make, and better, IMO, than anything that comes in a wrapper.

The carbos in cheap Mac & Cheese, Ramen, Cup-o-Noodles, stuff like that are good, but basics are better: rice, beans, pasta, and they're all cheap.

Treat food as fuel, and things change quickly.

This https://dinner-recipes.suite101.com/a...touille_recipe its very very tasty and very very easy to make. We have it at least once a week.

As much as possible, we enjoy a whole food diet and avoid processed foods that come with an ingredient list that requires a degree in chemistry to decipher... The Girl has celiac disease and some food allergies so this also means we watch what we buy very carefully and don't eat out very much.

I love to cook and she loves my cooking and we are on the same page when it comes to the things we like although I just eat twice as much...

The home made power bars are a hit with my kids as well as my adult friends and only take a few minutes to make as they are a no bake recipe although you will need your stove.

I combine 1 cup of natural peanut butter (you can also use almond butter) with 1 cup of honey and warm this in a saucepan until it has a smooth consistency and then add 3 cups of oats and another cup of whatever else I feel like adding to the recipe, mix well, and then press this into an 8 by 8 baking pan.

I usually roast almonds and sunflower seeds as they add a nice nutty flavour and add to the protein content and dried fruit is always a nice addition.

Once this has chilled in the fridge for a few hours I cut it into bars and with gluten free oats The Girl can also enjoy these... she prefers the almond butter version and I will sometimes use half a cup of maple syrup with half a cup of honey to make the bars less sweet.

Did the math on the ingredients and these have a nice balance of carbs, protein, and fat and contain about 275 calories each... they are also very dense and filling.

On one ride I started tossing these out at people and once folks had this little power snack the pace of the group went up by a fair bit... the honey / maple syrup gives an immediate energy boost and then provides a nice sustained source of energy as the more complex carbs and fats are processed.

+1 Honey is a wonderful thing. If you can use local unpasteurized honey it will help with pollen allergies too.

On one of the epic siupported rides I did last year, towards the end I was coating bananas with honey at the rest stops. It was like magic.