13ollocks

Yes - Cut down on the fried crap and frozen pizza - this is less about "calories in vs calories out" than "clogged arteries"

Pantah

ScottCommutes , I figured I'd chime in here since our body types and typical relative exercise levels are fairly similar.
I'm also 6'3" but weigh slightly less at about 180lbs. Also a few years younger at 36 and while that will make a difference, it'll be close enough for this. I bike quite a bit less than you, I do anywhere between 35-90 with elevation gain anywhere between a few hundred feet to a few thousand feet, all dependent on how I'm splitting commuting, riding around town for errands and fun long rides. However, what I lack in miles ridden I make up for in running miles. I average 40+ miles per week with anywhere from 3,000 feet of climb to 8,000 feet. Top that off with all the walking and heaving lifting at work and we're fairly similar as far energy expenditure goes.

For food, it's reasonably well balanced and almost always home made. Stuff like eggs, breads, meats (alternating between red meat, pork and chicken and never large amounts), rice, beans, vegetables, cheese, other dairy products, fruit, pasta, peanuts (both in regular nut form and peanut butter), etc. I do need to eat more leafy greens so working on that. The only food that lives in my freezer is fruit to make smoothies out of, which is my standard meal actually after a strenuous run/ride. They have plenty of peanut butter, yogurt and a whole banana so the protein is there as well as calories and other stuff the body needs like fiber and vitamins. I eat out 3-4 times a month tops and that's when I generally don't pay attention to what I'm eating. I usually have a box of Clif bars or Builders bars at work and I'll eat one at some point if I plan on going on a long ride or run after I get off, that's on top of the regular food I bring for lunch.
For the evenings and weekends, I'll often, but not always, have a beer in the evening but limit it to just one. If I'm getting wild and crazy, it's 3 but that's it.
I did a very rough calculation of how many calories on average I'm eating on a daily basis and it's somewhere in the 3,000 to 3,500 range. Not sure the numbers for anything else like protein, should probably figure that out.
All of that allows me to maintain a healthy weight and I'm not going hungry or feel as though I've eaten too much. When I was younger, I was known as a human garbage disposal, I was hungry all the time and there was never leftover food when I went out to eat with my friends as I'd eat it all. Those days are behind me, despite being more active than I already was when I was in high school and in my early 20's. My metabolism has always been exceptionally high but age catches us all and is slowly slowing down. I need to adjust what I eat accordingly.

Something to add that many people don't think about and that is salt/sodium consumption. A few years back, I got a routine health checkup and my blood pressure was higher than what it should be to be considered healthy. I lack virtually all the markers for high blood pressure so it got me digging into any possible reason and what I could do about it. Read somewhere that eating excessive amounts of salt can cause high blood pressure. Crunched the numbers on how much salt is in my diet and sure enough, despite not adding salt to anything I eat, there was a ridiculous amount when added up, way more than I should be having. It surprised me just how much was in all sorts of foods. Sausages have an absolutely insane amount, things like tortillas have more than you would expect, canned beans, peanut butter, cheese, etc. After changing brands for some items and going with the low sodium or organic version (the latter of which cuts out much more sodium than the low sodium versions), I got it down to a number I felt was reasonable. It paid off and the last few visits to the doctors office has brought back a healthy blood pressure.

Not sure how much of that wall of text will be read but the take away is that a healthy diet is important, pay attention to what you eat. As it sits, the OP A) eats too much and B) eats garbage, to be blunt. You can't outrun, or in this case outride, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or any one of a number of other health risks caused by putting garbage in your body. A pizza every now and then is great. All the time, no.

SpedFast

I sure hope you meant daily average and not per week

Sierra_rider

Yesterday's lunch of champions...Mind you, this was on mile 75/3500' climbed with another 30 miles and 5500' to go. 5k calories burned during the ride, based on power meter data...sometimes you just gotta go for easy calories. It is a good habit to stay away from junk like this, when you aren't just trying to get easy carbs.

Flame away:

Pantah

I sure did. 3500 per week is what I'll eat when I'm dead. Whoops.

RH Clark

You should honestly get the idea out of your head that what you eat doesn't matter if you are cycling enough. It's not about carbs and calories. Would you drink a 6 pack of beer to get the quick carbs?

Trakhak

Former Vuelta winner Chris Horner is big on electrolytes and protein drinks, but otherwise, he seems to be mostly a calories-are-calories guy. Love that, at a minute into the video, his display of his favorite choices for on-bike nutrition includes those plus Clif bars but also a Snickers bar and a bottle of Coca-Cola.

He also takes a swipe at interval training, which he says he almost never did during his long career as a pro. Not sure why he mentions it or why he doesn't mention that maybe he didn't need intervals because he was training hard for six-plus hours a day back then.

Bonus video for wintertime housebound amusement: Horner's cheerful description of riding himself into the ground as Cadel Evans's right-hand man during the infamous 2006 Tour de France stage where Floyd Landis left everyone in the dust. Snickers and Coke!

That's my all-time favorite race commentary video. Even non-cyclists are likely to be awed.

Edit:

Bonus within bonus: in the Landis video, Horner awkwardly half-admits to doping in his career, using the code word "prepared."

RH Clark

Winning doesn't make him right. Lots of top athletes die early due to health issues caused from their careers.

Trakhak

You're right, of course. Any yet, far more don't. Drawing a straight line between, e.g., "processed" food and morbidity and mortality rates - in the absence of compelling real evidence - sometimes looks like a manifestation of that stubborn Puritanical streak that surfaces in us Americans more or less randomly - in this case, as "pure food good; processed food evil."

I'm willing to believe that that connection exists - I certainly have that Puritan streak in me - but I've got to see some numbers from long-term studies first. In the meantime, as anecdata, Chris Horner looks pretty good.

What worries me more than a possible connection between processed food and mortality: recent studies seem to indicate that long-term aerobic exercise can damage athletes' hearts. Which is depressing for you and me.

Jughed

He's had some significant health issues - sepsis a few times, blood clots in his lungs and some form of super bug that put a big dent in his career. Can't say its diet related... but health is something he's struggled with.

Real food vs fake, carb loading vs not, eating whatever you want and cycling to burn it off...

For some, me included, I can't do the above. I started with T2 symptoms in my 20's/30's from doing the whole consuming more carbs than the Coneheads to fuel my riding. I would have nasty hypo's, massive blood sugar spikes - and ended up with advanced T2 later on in life.

Now I can seemingly ride harder, longer and in some cases just as fast, on limited to no carbs and just good old fashioned whole foods - and my T2 is gone.

I think the non racer often over fuels by a long shot. We hear what the pro's eat and follow that advice +/-. Except they are fueling 300w+ per hour efforts for 5+ hours, and we are doing much much less.

Trakhak

Advanced T2 - not good. Amazing recovery, though. I've seen a few similar stories. The through-thread seems to be being willing to do whatever it takes to get healthy.

I did myself some real cumulative damage in my 30's and 40's - riding 10 to 15 hours a week while subsisting almost exclusively on a bachelor's diet of oatmeal, pizza, and dessert. Only in my case, I ended up with atopic dermatitis (aka "We have no idea what's causing it") over most of my body. Itchy and painful, to the point of making it hard to sleep.

Don't remember what the first two dermatologists asked about my diet, but I probably said something like "It's okay, I guess." They prescribed laughably small tubes of medicated Vaseline-like stuff. Completely inadequate for my case.

Finally, after a couple of years of my looking as if I had scurvy, the third dermatologist got a pharmacy to give me a custom-mixed steroid-laced canister of lotion that finally fixed me up. And I started eating at least some fruits and vegetables, more or less regularly.

That was sheer idiocy on my part, though. My guess is that a diet that includes some processed foods but is otherwise well-balanced and doesn't include overeating is about as healthy as the same diet without processed foods. It's not the corn syrup per se, for example: it's that the corn syrup tempts people to overeat.

PeteHski

The timing does matter a lot though. A sugary drink taken on the bike toward the end of a truly hard ride does not trigger the same blood glucose spike as the same drink sat on the sofa watching Netflix.

PeteHski

I think the jury is still out on this. Phil Cavell touches on this subject in his excellent book “The Midlife Cyclist”. It’s a fairly recent (2021) book and very well researched, with input from medical professionals involved with cyclists. It even includes case studies of what can potentially go wrong if we over do it. This reminds me that I need to re-read his book as there was so much good info to digest.

But the bottom line is that staying on the sofa is far more damaging than anything we do on the bike!

RH Clark

That is correct. How negatively such things effect our health is a complicated issue. I'm not even as concerned about the pure sugar part of the above meal I objected to as all the other ingredients. The dye in the candy is enough for me to want to avoid it not to mention the other potentially harmful chemicals.

On the other hand, the exhaust from traffic may be just as bad, or sun damage for that matter. I just try to avoid the harmful things that I can easily avoid. I hardly ever consume processed foods of fast food, like maybe two meals a year at holidays when it's too antisocial to avoid it. The rest of the time I just try to make better choices. I would eat bananas and apples before the Dr. Pepper and candy. You just have to make that decision ahead of time.

MoAlpha

True and, more importantly, it is taken up by muscle via a non-insulin dependent transport mechanism, making it pretty damn near harmless as far as I can see.

indyfabz

Sounds like a good read, and I see it’s available for Kindle.

indyfabz

Nothing wrong with something like that during the type of ride you describe. Mountain Dew has saved me plenty of times. And sometimes when I tour in rural places, healthy options just aren’t available. Got to get calories somehow.

As you note, it’s not for normal consumption.

Sierra_rider

Meh, context matters...This isn't my daily choice, or even a choice on shorter rides. However, if I'm doing a 5,000 calorie ride it is really a struggle to consume enough carbs to not bonk during the ride. Carrying around enough whole foods for a 100+ mile ride would be problematic too. Especially since there aren't markets or quickie-marts located at regular intervals on my routes. When I do come across a market, I'm just going for calorie-dense choices.

It'd be one thing if I could just cruise around in zone 2 for the duration of the ride, but there is enough elevation gain/wattage spikes, that glycogen replacement becomes key. I try to get my share of whole foods in, and to limit processed junk, but getting 100+grams of carbs per hour is pretty much impossible for me on just apples and bananas(without GI distress.) In the case of that ride, I realized that I was pretty far in "debt" as far as carbs were concerned and that readily absorbed carbs were going to be key in a mountainous finale to the ride.

Again, consuming soda and candy isn't a daily routine, and all health indicators are good.

Sierra_rider

Even if I could actually eat enough whole food to replenish glycogen, it's pretty much impossible to carry that much food with a minimalist non-touring set up. Between a small tire pump, spare tuve, tools, and shedding layers as the ride warms from a 40F downhill to a 60F uphill, there just isn't much room left on my road bike or in my pockets.

RH Clark

I don't agree that healthier options aren't available. Maybe if I was dying in a desert and a passerby gave me a soda, but anywhere there's a store I can find better foods. I would eat some peanut packs before I would eat the candy. Like I said it's not just the sugar. I would rather eat spoonful's of pure cane sugar than eat all the extra chemicals in the candy.

I mentioned earlier that I bring my own snacks made from whole food ingredients like toasted oats, nuts and dried fruits.

I wouldn't argue that endurance athletes don't need carbs, but I might argue how much of that translates to the real world. It would be beneficial for any athlete or aspiring athlete to wear a continuous blood glucose monitor. t is my feeling that a lot of cyclists aren't quite as elite as they think they are, and some may even suffer more from insulin insensitivity causing blood sugar swings than from simply burning all their glycogen stores. It would be beneficial for anyone who frequently consumes carbs to get an insulin sensitivity test. If you are becoming insensitive it's because of too much and too frequently, just as it would be with an opiate.

RH Clark

I get it but the point of the whole thing is to be healthier, isn't it? Maby you are a competitor, but I see no other reason to push yourself to unhealthy limits. I do know that's subjective. My point though is just to be honest with ourselves about both what we are consuming and how we train is impacting our health.

PeteHski

Last year there were maybe 2 or 3 occasions on the bike where a Coke and Snickers would have easily trumped a banana or apple for instant energy release. It’s when you eat junk like that all the time that it becomes a problem.

indyfabz

Yes. One advantage to a full touring setup is that you have much more capacity to carry supplies. There have been times when I knew pickings would be slim, so I packed extra for those stretches. But there have been times when I’ve found things like soda and sugary fruit pies the be the only viable options. As you get at, sometimes you have to do whatever you can to get by. As long as it’s not the norm, it’s not going to kill you.

Sierra_rider

I'm not doing a continuous blood glucose monitor, but do have blood panels done on an annual basis. My A1C levels are near the bottom of the normal range, so I'm not going to change too much.

For me, all the riding keeps me away from destructive habits. I do compete and have found my training load to be requisite for what I want to accomplish in competition. I've had some success in shorter events and am now aiming at longer distance stuff...the main goal for this year is to earn an invite to and then finish the Leadville 100 mtb race. If nothing else, I want to at least put in all the work that I'm realistically able to do. Besides that, I do enjoy long, difficult, slog-fests of rides.

As far as training duration/intensity and my health, I think I really have a balanced approach to it. It's not like I got off the couch and decided to do this. I've worked up to my current fitness over the course of years and am very careful about including enough low-intensity work...basically with the aim to not burn myself out physically or mentally. Probably my biggest single health fear is some sort of joint damage. I take measures to mitigate some of those risks, but even a bum knee is the difference between health and suddenly not being able to do any form of exercise.

PeteHski

I really don’t think many of us here are pushing ourselves to unhealthy limits in training or events. But probably half of the general population is certainly pushing unhealthy limits on the sofa.