Originally Posted by Sixty Fiver

My personal anecdote for the day:

I was up at 4:30 am and made bulletproof coffee for myself and my wife and after taking her to work came home and had a little nap before I got things ready for an out of town trip we had to make.

A luncheon was served but the only thing my wife could eat was a little cheese so I did the same, we brought a thermos full of bulletproof (fat loaded coffee) with us and had a cup of that on the way home and got back at 6 pm so our day was already 15.5 hours long.

Calorie intake by this point had been less than 600 for the day and we each had a little slice of liverwurst when we got home.

It is nearly 8 o'clock and I am not hungry, I don't feel like I am going to bonk (feeling quite perky actually), and my wife is taking a nap... I will make dinner when she gets up.

I bet if you measured my blood sugar I would be fine as this has been a common occurrence where not eating has not diminished our ability to get stuff done as any extra energy we need comes from fat stores, which are your body's primary fuel reserve, and our bodies know how to tap that.

Our last meal was last night's dinner (we ate at 8pm last night) and had roasted pork and a healthy serving of peas and green beans in butter and we did not do any snacking after dinner save for enjoying a small portion of unsalted nuts.

I am now as lean as I should ever be and you can't pinch an inch... but I am not so lean that I don't have some reserves.

My wife continues to get curvier and curvier...

Originally Posted by mklos1

There is a difference between amateur cyclist and professional cyclist. Does everyone who touches a bike has to be skinny?

Originally Posted by Machka

There is the notion that cyclists need to carb load before every ride, that they need to eat 200-300 calories per hour while riding, and that they need to consume a special recovery meal after each ride ...

But if your ride is less than 2 hours, and you're eating regular meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) you really don't need to eat anything extra at all.

If you haven't eaten in a few hours before your ride, it's not a bad idea to have a banana or small granola bar before you go out. And bring a granola bar with you, just in case. But once you get back, all you need is whatever you normally eat at that time of day (i.e. dinner), nothing extra.


It's when your rides extend longer than 2 hours that eating becomes more important ... but even then, you don't need to overdo it.

Originally Posted by buffalowings

Caloric/carbohydrate intake is a mess with Type 1 diabetes.. -_-

Originally Posted by Sixty Fiver

Type 1 diabetes used to confer a death sentence until insulin was developed and made available in the 1920's... I have only known a few people in my life who had type 1 and it does not run in my family, even type 2 is still rare although I fear that will not be the case with future generations.

Originally Posted by buffalowings

Oh, lol I was referring to my own condition.

Originally Posted by c0urt

truly I am shocked this page ran pages. am I also surprised we take our selves we takes the subject at hand.
what is really at a fat hand, a swinging belly gut skin in kit cyclist. have you ever rode with these guy? I you a
guy with a guy a guy who a guy who had a guy with with a major gut with I delivered food it was from beer, and
he competed in the hill climb we here and he had one of the fastest average times the shop had. some people. are just
stuck with a body type, and they don't help it with things like drinking.

Originally Posted by Heathpack

I don't have any answers to OPs query, but I do have a newby question. I've read that I should be consuming about 160 carb calories/hr while cycling on long rides. This seems high to me and would honestly be hard for me to do. I'm pretty slow, rode 67 mi today in 5hr. My Garmin said I burned 1600 cal and usually tells me I'm burning something like 300-350 cal/hr on long rides (I assume so low because I'm slow).

Originally Posted by Long Tom

Just..... wow.

Originally Posted by Long Tom

There's more to life than being uber-skinny. Beer being Exhibit A.

However I will comment that it's a bit funny seeing what cyclists manage to squoze into their Lycra. There was a guy came into the local LBS when I was renting bikes who looked like sausage links, or the Michelin Man, in his spandex body-suit. Not a good look.

Originally Posted by RJM

Just ride, people.


sheesh.

Originally Posted by zymphad

Never did marathons, but for 10K-15K races I ate only a banana and some orange juice before. Didn't realize cyclists ate so much!

Originally Posted by Machka

Burning 300-350 cal/hour in that time is probably reasonable. So in 5 hours, you might have burned 1600 calories.

Originally Posted by Heathpack

I don't have any answers to OPs query, but I do have a newby question. I've read that I should be consuming about 160 carb calories/hr while cycling on long rides. This seems high to me and would honestly be hard for me to do. I'm pretty slow, rode 67 mi today in 5hr. My Garmin said I burned 1600 cal and usually tells me I'm burning something like 300-350 cal/hr on long rides (I assume so low because I'm slow). Today I ate cereal, blackberries & milk before the ride- about 250 cal. Then another 600 on the bike- a granola bar, some dried apricots, and a peanut butter & banana sandwich- scattered throughout the ride. Then an OJ-milk-whey powder-banana shake post ride 400 cal. Keeping in mind that the ride & it's associated eating took up much of the day & therefore I only ate one other meal (dinner), does that cycling-related intake sound right for a long ride like that?

I agree with those who posted nothing special food-wise for short rides, except interval rides in which case I eat half a banana. But no one should listen to me, because I really have no idea what I'm doing, lol.
H

Originally Posted by FrenchFit

I fast during the day, every day. Last few months I've increased my work-outs to include running and boxing as well as biking. On days when I do all three I have an apple or banana for lunch, sometimes an Oh Yeah bar afterwards. My point is the whole fueling thing is bunk, for me anyway. I think we've been sold on the idea that we need this constant and exotic fuels to be "athletic", sorta like supplements. Think again.

Originally Posted by Slackerprince

The weight-loss war is won and lost in the kitchen.
IMO, I think it's important to cross-train.


S

Originally Posted by mklos1

There is a difference between amateur cyclist and professional cyclist. Does everyone who touches a bike has to be skinny?

Originally Posted by Sixty Fiver

Exercise is a limited factor when it comes to weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight is mostly about what you eat and how much you eat.

If you want to drop weight to improve your power to weight ratio (and perhaps lose that extra 10 pounds that refuses to budge), you have to adopt a diet that will promote that weight loss.

Most of the cyclists I know are carb junkies and a lot of those carbs are not the good kind; many power gels they sell contain a bad mix of sugars in that they use fructose which does not metabolize like glucose and actually triggers hunger rather than suppress it.

Spend a day bombing it on the road where you are putting back gels or other fructose loaded supplements or foods and you will come off the bike hungrier than you really are and this can lead to over-eating. A lot of people do not realize how fructose is different from glucose and how it does not trigger the hormones that let us know we are full and fuelled up. The extra fructose that does not get burned gets turned into fat while extra glucose is converted into glycogen.

The folks who down a candy bar and a soda on a ride are probably getting more glucose than they need and half of the sugar in those foods will be fructose which will end up as fat since it was not required for the level of activity.

On an evolutionary perspective, fruit consumption was an excellent way to build fat stores for times when food sources were limited... our bodies can produce all off the glucose / glycogen it needs for normal levels of activity and we are not designed to be sprinters or high speed animals, we are built for endurance.

I practice a low carb diet / lifestyle and it is not some crazy paleo or Atkins diet... we avoid all processed foods and don't eat sugar, and limit to carbs according to our needs and goals.

I have not been riding nearly as much this winter as I have in past years and am still at my race weight... I got there by eating a lot of higher fat foods and keeping my carbs under 100 grams a day.

My wife stays under 20 grams a day (with no calorie restriction) as she has been working to lose post surgical weight and has lost almost 50 pounds since summer during a poeriod when her activity levels have been reduced.

Originally Posted by mapeiboy

Ding , ding , ding . Give this man a medal . He knows what he is talking about . Stay away from the junk carbs .