I lost seven kilograms in twelve weeks. I went from 86 to 79 kg. I did it while eating more food than I had eaten in years. My power did not drop. My energy went up. I stopped craving junk at nine in the evening.
What I did not do was download MyFitnessPal and start tracking calories. What I did not do was weigh my porridge. What I did not do was scan barcodes on packets of rice. I did not do any of that.
I used the fuel for the work required framework instead — matching what I ate to what the training demanded. High-carb days when the sessions were hard. Lower-carb days when the sessions were easy. Protein at every meal. Fat never cut below a threshold. Simple principles, applied roughly, consistently.
But here is the thing nobody tells you about tracking macros. For some people, at some stages, it is properly useful. Not as a permanent lifestyle. Not as a religion. As a diagnostic tool — a short-term investigation into what you are actually eating versus what you think you are eating. Because those two things are almost never the same.
The problem is that most cyclists either track obsessively until it makes them miserable, or refuse to track at all because they have heard it causes eating disorders. Both positions miss the point. Let me break this down.
The Spectrum: Strict Tracking, Informed Intuition, and Everything Between
There are not two camps here. There is a spectrum, and you need to find where you sit on it.
At one end: strict macro tracking. Weighing food, logging every meal, hitting precise gram targets for protein, carbohydrate, and fat. This works for a narrow window — competitive bodybuilders peaking for a show, or athletes under the direct supervision of a sports dietitian managing a specific clinical issue. For the average masters cyclist training eight to twelve hours a week with a career, a family, and a life outside of cycling, this level of precision is unnecessary and usually unsustainable.
At the other end: pure intuitive eating. No structure, no awareness of what goes in, just eating when hungry and stopping when full. This works well for people with an excellent natural relationship with food and stable body composition. For many cyclists — especially those over 40 whose hunger signals have been distorted by years of training, under-fuelling hard days, and overfuelling easy ones — pure intuition is not reliable enough.
The middle ground is what I call informed intuition. You understand the principles. You know what a high-protein meal looks like without weighing it. You know whether today is a high-carb day or a low-carb day based on the training plan. You have done enough short-term tracking to calibrate your eye. And then you eat with awareness, not anxiety.
That middle ground is where most of us should live. The question is how you get there.
The 7-Day Audit: Track, Learn, Stop
Here is the approach that works for the vast majority of riders. Track everything you eat for seven days. Not forever. Seven days. Then stop.
During that week, use an app — MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, whichever one you find least annoying — and log every meal, snack, drink, and nibble you take from a colleague's biscuit tin at three in the afternoon. Include a mix of training days and rest days. Do not change what you eat to impress the app. Eat normally. The whole point is to see reality.
What the audit almost always reveals in cyclists:
- Protein is lower than you think, especially at breakfast and lunch
- Carbohydrate is constant day to day, regardless of training load
- Fat is higher than expected, often from cooking oils, cheese, and nuts that accumulate without notice
- Total calorie intake on rest days is close to or the same as high-volume training days
- Post-ride recovery meals are either skipped entirely or consist of whatever is nearest the front door
Those patterns are fixable. Once you see them, you cannot unsee them. And once you correct them with the principles below, you do not need the app to maintain the corrections. Your hands, your plate, and your awareness of the training plan do the rest.
Macro Targets by Training Phase
The specifics shift depending on where you are in your season. This is not about rigid rules. It is about understanding what the training demands from your nutrition at each stage.
Base Phase
Training is predominantly zone 2 — long, steady, aerobic. Fat oxidation is high. Glycogen turnover is moderate. More of your week sits on the lower end of the carbohydrate scale.
- Carbohydrate: 4-6g/kg on most days. The longest ride and any tempo session get 7-8g/kg.
- Protein: 1.6-2.0g/kg, spread across four meals minimum.
- Fat: 1.2-1.5g/kg. Do not cut fat during base. Your body is using it as fuel during easy riding, and the hormonal support is critical.
Build Phase
Intensity increases. Threshold work, VO2max efforts, race-pace simulations. Glycolytic demand spikes. You need more carbohydrate on more days.
- Carbohydrate: 7-10g/kg on intensity days, 4-5g/kg on easy days. Three to four high-carb days per week in a typical build block.
- Protein: Maintain 1.6-2.0g/kg. Training stress increases muscle protein breakdown, so protein needs stay high even though the focus shifts.
- Fat: Keep above 1g/kg. Do not sacrifice fat to make room for carbohydrate — reduce the low-priority snacking instead.
Race Phase
This is where your fuelling plan has to be dialled. Carb loading in the 36-48 hours before the target event (10-12g/kg), aggressive in-ride fuelling (60-90g carbohydrate per hour for events over 90 minutes), and recovery meals locked in. The periodised pattern from build phase continues between events.
Off-Season
Relax the daily periodisation. Maintain protein targets. Eat intuitively around whatever exercise you are doing. Allow 2-4 per cent body weight gain as a hormonal and metabolic cushion. The structure returns when the structured training returns.
Protein: Why Masters Cyclists Need More
Let me be really clear about this. If you are over 40, you need more protein than a 25-year-old doing the same training.
The reason is anabolic resistance. As you age, your muscles become less responsive to the signal that triggers muscle protein synthesis. A younger rider can trigger that response with 20 grams of protein in a meal. After 40, the threshold rises to 30-40 grams per meal. Below that, the signal is weak and muscle repair is incomplete.
The research from the International Society of Sports Nutrition positions the target for masters endurance athletes at 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 75kg rider, that is 120 to 165 grams daily. Spread across four meals, that is 30-40 grams per sitting.
Here is where most cyclists fall short: breakfast and lunch. A bowl of porridge with a banana gives you maybe 8 grams of protein. A sandwich with a thin layer of ham gives you maybe 15. Neither meal hits the threshold. The fix is simple — Greek yoghurt or eggs at breakfast, and a proper protein source at lunch. Two changes. Both fixable this week.
The leucine threshold matters too. You need roughly 2.5 grams of leucine per meal to fully activate the mTOR signalling pathway. Whey protein, eggs, chicken, and fish all clear that bar. Plant proteins typically require larger portions to hit the same leucine content — not a problem, just something to be aware of if you eat mostly plant-based.
Carbohydrate Periodisation: The FFTWR Approach
Sam Impey and James Morton at Liverpool John Moores University formalised the concept that changed how I think about nutrition: fuel for the work required. The principle is that carbohydrate availability should match the metabolic demand of each training session, not sit constant across the week.
In practice, this means three types of day:
High-carb days — hard sessions. Threshold intervals, VO2max work, long rides over three hours. Carbohydrate at 7-10g/kg. Full pre-ride meal. In-ride fuel if the session exceeds 75 minutes. Recovery meal within 90 minutes.
Moderate-carb days — steady rides, group rides at social pace, shorter sessions. Carbohydrate at 5-6g/kg. Normal meals with a moderate carbohydrate portion.
Low-carb days — rest days and easy recovery spins. Carbohydrate at 3-4g/kg. Meals built around protein and vegetables with one small carbohydrate portion.
The weekly total across all three day types often matches what you were eating before. The difference is distribution. On the days that need fuel, you have more. On the days that do not, you have less. Morton's research showed that this distribution produced superior metabolic adaptation compared to a constant-carbohydrate diet delivering the same weekly calories. Same food, different placement, better outcomes.
This is what I used when I lost those seven kilograms. No tracking. No app. Just an understanding of what type of day it was and eating accordingly.
The Fat Floor: Never Below 1g/kg
Here is where it gets really interesting, and where a lot of well-meaning cyclists get into trouble. They see fat as the easy macro to cut. It is calorie-dense — 9 calories per gram versus 4 for protein and carbohydrate — so reducing fat seems like an efficient way to create a deficit.
Below 1 gram of fat per kilogram of body weight per day, you start compromising systems that matter. Testosterone production relies on dietary cholesterol and fat-soluble precursors. Fat-soluble vitamins — A, D, E, K — require dietary fat for absorption. Cell membrane integrity depends on adequate fatty acid availability. Hormone production across the board is affected.
For masters riders, this is particularly relevant. After 40, testosterone levels are already declining at roughly 1-2 per cent per year. Chronic dietary fat restriction accelerates that decline. The symptoms — fatigue, reduced recovery, declining libido, mood changes — look exactly like overtraining. And the fix is not more rest. It is more dietary fat.
Aim for 1.2-1.5g/kg on most days. For a 75kg rider, that is 90-112 grams. Olive oil, avocado, nuts, oily fish, eggs. These are not optional extras. They are structural requirements.
App Comparison: What Each Does Well
If you decide to run a 7-day audit, you need an app. Here is an honest comparison.
MyFitnessPal — the largest food database by a significant margin. Barcode scanning is fast and the UK/Irish database is well populated. The free version covers basic macro tracking. The weakness: user-submitted entries are sometimes wildly inaccurate, and the micronutrient data is sparse. Best for a quick audit where speed matters.
Cronometer — tracks micronutrients in detail. If you want to know your iron, vitamin D, zinc, or magnesium intake alongside your macros, this is the app. The database uses verified sources (NCCDB, USDA) rather than user submissions. Best for riders who suspect specific micronutrient gaps or who want the most accurate data.
MacroFactor — uses an adaptive TDEE algorithm that adjusts your calorie and macro targets based on your actual weight trend rather than a static equation. It learns your metabolism over time. The food logging is clean, and the coaching features give useful weekly feedback. Best for riders who plan to track longer than seven days or who want targets that adjust automatically to their response.
Any of the three works for a 7-day audit. Pick whichever one annoys you least and move on.
Food Label Accuracy: The 20 Per Cent Problem
Here is a fact that should liberate you from calorie-counting perfectionism. Under both FDA regulations in the US and FSA regulations in the UK, food labels are legally permitted a 20 per cent variance from stated nutritional values.
A product labelled at 200 calories per serving could contain anywhere between 160 and 240. The protein listed at 25 grams could be 20 or 30. Scale that across a full day of eating — breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, in-ride fuel — and the cumulative error means your meticulously logged 2,400-calorie day could be anything from 1,900 to 2,900 in reality.
This does not mean labels are useless. They give you a reasonable approximation. But it does mean that obsessing over 50-calorie differences between food choices is statistically meaningless. The precision does not exist to justify the anxiety. A rough system applied consistently outperforms a perfect system abandoned after ten days.
Portion Estimation: The Hand Method
Once you have completed a 7-day audit and calibrated your awareness, you do not need the app. You have something better: your hands.
The hand method is not new — it has been used by sports dietitians for decades because it scales to body size, travels without a food scale, and works in restaurants, at dinner parties, and on training camps.
Protein: One palm-sized portion (thickness and width of your palm, not your fingers) equals roughly 25-30 grams of protein. Aim for one palm at each of your four daily meals.
Carbohydrate: One cupped hand of starchy carbohydrate (rice, pasta, potatoes, oats) equals roughly 25-30 grams of carbohydrate. On a high-carb day, two to three cupped hands per meal. On a low-carb day, one cupped hand per meal.
Fat: One thumb-sized portion of fat-dense food (oil, butter, nut butter, cheese) equals roughly 10-15 grams of fat. One to two thumbs per meal covers most requirements.
Vegetables: One fist equals one portion. Two fists per meal is the minimum.
The beauty of this system: it adjusts to you. A larger rider has larger hands and needs more food. A smaller rider has smaller hands and needs less. The proportionality is built in.
Calibrate once. Weigh out a palm of chicken. Weigh out a cupped hand of rice. See what those weights actually look like. Once you have done that calibration, you have the skill for life.
When to Ditch Tracking: The Warning Signs
Tracking becomes a problem when it stops being a tool and starts being a compulsion. The line is clear if you know what to look for.
Stop tracking if you recognise any of these:
- You feel anxious when you cannot weigh or log a meal
- You avoid eating out, social meals, or meals prepared by others because you cannot track them
- You feel guilty after eating something that was not in your plan, even when you were actually hungry
- You recalculate and adjust throughout the day to compensate for perceived overages
- You choose foods based on their macro numbers rather than their nutritional value or what your body is asking for
- You think about food in terms of numbers more often than in terms of taste, enjoyment, or nourishment
These are not signs of discipline. They are early markers of disordered eating. And they are more common in endurance athletes than the broader population — a 2024 meta-analysis across endurance sports found prevalence rates of disordered eating behaviours between 18 and 45 per cent depending on the assessment tool used.
The correct response to any of these signs is to stop tracking immediately. Delete the app. Return to the principles — protein at every meal, carbohydrate matched to training demand, fat above the floor — and practise applying them without numbers for at least four weeks before reassessing.
The Flexibility Approach: 80/20
Perfection is the enemy of adherence. Every nutritional approach fails when it demands 100 per cent compliance, because 100 per cent compliance is not compatible with living a normal life.
The 80/20 rule is simple. Hit your macro targets roughly 80 per cent of the time. The other 20 per cent — the birthday dinner, the unplanned pub lunch after a ride, the holiday week — absorbs without guilt and without recalculation.
This is not a licence to abandon the principles. It is recognition that a system you follow for 48 weeks of the year beats a system you follow perfectly for three weeks and then quit.
The riders in our community who have made the most sustained body composition changes are not the ones who tracked most precisely. They are the ones who understood the principles, applied them most consistently, and gave themselves permission to be imperfect without catastrophising.
RED-S Screening: When Under-Eating Is the Problem
Here is where I need to be really clear. For a meaningful subset of cyclists — and this includes men over 40, not just female athletes — the problem is not eating too much. It is eating too little.
Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) occurs when energy availability drops below the threshold needed for basic physiological function. The IOC consensus statement (Mountjoy et al., 2023) is explicit: this affects athletes of all sexes. The symptoms are subtle — persistent fatigue, declining performance despite consistent training, mood disturbance, increased illness frequency, loss of libido, and in women, menstrual irregularity.
You can be weight-stable and still be in energy deficit deep enough to damage bone density, suppress testosterone, and impair recovery. If your training load is high enough, you can eat what feels like a lot and still not cover the demand.
The risk goes up when cyclists use tracking to restrict rather than inform. When the app becomes a tool for cutting rather than matching, energy availability drops and the cascade begins. The symptoms look like overtraining. The blood work looks like ageing. The actual cause is insufficient fuel.
If you have been tracking macros, losing weight, and experiencing any combination of persistent fatigue, declining power output, frequent illness, or mood changes, stop cutting and see a sports dietitian. Use the energy availability calculator on this site as a starting point, but treat the result as a conversation starter with a qualified professional, not a diagnosis.
Where This Leaves You
Macro tracking is a tool. Like a power meter, it gives you data. Like a power meter, it is useful when you know what the numbers mean and pointless when you stare at them without understanding. It is one piece of the wider cycling nutrition picture.
Run the 7-day audit. See what you are actually eating. Fix the obvious gaps — protein at breakfast, carbohydrate matched to training load, fat above the floor. Learn the hand method. Apply the fuel for the work required framework. And then put the phone away and ride your bike.
The riders who get this right are not the ones who track most accurately. They are the ones who understand the principles deeply enough that they do not need to track at all.
That is informed intuition. That is where you want to be.