I'm a 52 year-old male, 5 foot 6 inches tall, weighing between 155 and 160 pounds. After about 20 years as an active avocational runner (I would average 50-60 miles a week; I also did five sub-4 hour marathons during that period) I took up cycling about 13 months ago, and I've gotten into it fairly heavily. In fact, I haven't been doing any running since I started cycling. Currently, I ride about 350 miles a week; my speed ranges from 16.5mph to 18.5mph.

Whereas a daily calorie intake of 2800 seemed to support my running training pretty well, it feels inadequate for the amount of cycling I'm doing. I've been trying to eat enough to make sure I feel strong, but I find myself significantly more hungry as a serious avocational cyclist than I did as a serious avocational runner. As I feed this appetite, I worry that I am in fact over-eating; I'm not overweight, and my performance on the bike continues to improve, but I'm not particularly slim either, and the whole eating aspect of this process feels a bit random and undisciplined.

So I'm wondering if anyone can point me to information or resources that might provide some calorie intake guidelines for a rider my age who is doing the amount and type of riding I've described above. Thanks in advance.

This is a good book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Weight-.../dp/1934030511
There's nothing wierd or radical in there, it's all common knowledge for people who have been reading a lot of training litterature, but it's assembled in one place and laid out well.

Most people can ride more than they can run. I would rarely do more than a 2 hour run but that's a minimum length ride and long rides are 5+ hours. So cyclists burn more calories and would need to eat more to maintain weight.

It's fairly simple, if you're gaining weight you're eating more than you need. 350 miles @ 30 Cals/mile averages out to 1500 Cals/Day. If you eat 2800/day you should be losing weight.

nutritiondata.com has a fun calculator to use that asks age, weight, height, sex, how active you are and what activities you are doing to roughly estimate what your daily intake should be around. Each hour on the bike will probably average around 500-600 calories being burned depending on how intense your miles are.

You may want to check your protein intake. If you are riding as much as 350 miles a week your protein intake should be close to .7-1 gram of protein per lb of bodyweight. After that if you are hungry then by all means eat!


It is also hard for people only doing cardio to gain weight because exercise does help prevent weight gain quit effeciantly even if your not losing weight. And if you eat too many extra calories your body will usually find a way to put them to work as long as you give it to your body.