When Dr Sam Impey was on the podcast he said something the cycling internet hasn't quite caught up with. The 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour message — the one everyone in the amateur world started parroting after the 2022 Tour — was never meant for most of the people who are now trying to hit it. He works with Tom Pidcock, Filippo Ganna, and the top end of the World Tour. The 120g number was developed for very specific contexts: short-duration TT efforts at threshold, sub-3-hour race stages where the rate of carbohydrate oxidation is the binding constraint on power output. Amateurs riding a four-hour Saturday loop at endurance pace are paying for it, getting nothing in return, and often blowing their stomach apart in the process.
His updated message is simpler. Match the fuel to the work. If the work is genuinely Tour-stage intensity, the number is high. If the work is what most amateurs do on most days, the number is much lower than the internet has led you to believe.
I tested this on myself across three identical four-hour rides, same route, same conditions, fuelling at 20g, 60g, and 120g per hour. The result was clear and the numbers might surprise you.
The 20 vs 60 vs 120 test
The first ride at 20g per hour was the bonk control. I knew it would hurt. The second half fell apart at the expected place, the power dropped by about 12% in the final hour, and I limped home craving sugar. The 20g/hr group is the amateur who thinks they're tough, or who's read too much fat-adaptation Twitter.
The second ride at 60g per hour was the surprise. Power held within 4% across all four hours. The legs felt the same at the end as they did at the start. The gut was fine. The mental state stayed clear. By the standard of an amateur four-hour ride, this was excellent fuelling.
The third ride at 120g per hour was barely better than 60g. The power held within 3% across the four hours — a marginal improvement on the 60g day. But the stomach didn't cope as well. Some bloating in the third hour, a brief wave of nausea climbing, and the post-ride feeling was worse, not better. For the work I was doing — Zone 2 with some tempo, not a race — the extra 60g per hour was unnecessary load on a system that hadn't been trained to absorb it.
The conclusion lined up with what Impey said on the podcast. The jump from under-fuelling (20g) to adequate (60g) is the big gain. The jump from adequate to maximal (120g) is small at recreational intensities and large at race intensities. Spend your gut training on the second jump only when you actually need it.
What Ben Healy actually does
Ben Healy is the other side of the same conversation. When he won his Tour de France stage, he was fuelling at 140g per hour. That number is real and the protocol behind it is meticulous. It also took him 18 months of structured gut training to get there, and he doesn't ride that way on training days.
The gut, like everything else in endurance sport, is trainable. Mixed glucose-fructose sources at a 2:1 ratio use two separate intestinal transporters and allow higher total absorption — this is the SGLT1 and GLUT5 pathway, and it's the reason modern sports drinks blend the two sugars. The progression looks like this: start where you can hold without stomach issues (often 60g for amateurs), hold that for two weeks, add 10–15g per hour, hold again. Across 8–16 weeks most riders can get to 90g comfortably. Past that, the rate of improvement slows and the training cost increases.
Healy's framing was that for amateurs aiming at long, hilly events — Etape du Tour, Marmotte, Gran Fondo World Championships — the gut work is worth it. For amateurs doing the local Saturday group ride and a mid-week interval session, it's training cost without performance return. He's clear that the prescription depends on the goal.
The pre-ride, during, and after framework
The full structure breaks into three windows. Each one has a different physiological job.
Pre-ride. Two to three hours before a hard ride or race, a meal of 1–2g of carbohydrate per kg bodyweight, low fibre, low fat, moderate protein. For a 75kg rider, that's 75–150g of carbohydrate. A bowl of porridge with banana and honey covers it. The aim is topping up liver glycogen and not arriving on the bike with an empty stomach or a brick still digesting.
For early morning rides where the pre-ride window is short, a smaller carbohydrate hit 30–60 minutes before — toast and honey, a gel, a banana — does most of the same job. Skipping breakfast entirely for hard sessions is the mistake too many amateurs make trying to lean out. You under-perform the session and the adaptation suffers more than the body composition benefits. See the pre-ride breakfast guide for the timing detail.
During the ride. This is where the numbers from the test above land. For Zone 2 rides under two hours, water alone is often sufficient. For two to three hours, 30–60g per hour. For three to four hours with intensity, 60–90g per hour. For events of four hours or more with race-intensity efforts, 90–120g per hour if the gut is trained for it. Use the fuelling calculator to plug your specific ride duration and intensity in.
The format matters less than the consistency. Gels, drink mix, real food, dates, rice cakes — what works is what you can actually eat at high intensity without nausea. Test on training rides, not race day.
Post-ride. The first hour after a hard ride is the window where glycogen replenishment is fastest and protein synthesis is most responsive. Yori Carlson's prescription is the 4:1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio — for a 75kg rider, around 75g of carbohydrate and 20–25g of protein. A rice and chicken bowl. A bagel with peanut butter and a glass of milk. A recovery shake. The exact format isn't the point; the timing and the ratio are.
The amateur error Carlson called out specifically is the protein-heavy, carb-light recovery — protein shake and a salad. The math doesn't replace the muscle glycogen, the next day's session suffers, and over a training block the under-recovery accumulates. The 4:1 ratio after rides, then a balanced meal 2–3 hours later, is the framework most pros use.
What Yori Carlson said about over-protein
The most counterintuitive thing in the Carlson conversation was his position that amateurs are eating too much protein at the expense of carbohydrate. The high-protein wellness culture has migrated into cycling, and amateurs who were once under-fuelling carbs are now under-fuelling carbs in a different way — by displacing them with chicken breast and eggs.
Carlson's working numbers: 1.4–1.8g of protein per kg bodyweight is sufficient for trained endurance cyclists. Above that, the marginal benefit is small and the carbohydrate displacement starts to bite. For a 75kg rider, that's 105–135g of protein per day. Spread across three or four meals. Most amateurs hit this without trying and assume more is better.
The carbohydrate piece is where most amateurs fall short. For a rider training 8–10 hours a week with serious intensity, carbohydrate intake in the 4–6g per kg bodyweight range on training days is the working target. For the same 75kg rider, that's 300–450g of carbohydrate. The reason amateurs feel constantly under-recovered is often this simple — they're eating like a sedentary office worker on the days they ride three hours.
Dr Podlogar on the calorie calculation mistake
When Dr Tim Podlogar was on the podcast — he works with Tudor Pro Cycling and was previously at Bora — he flagged a specific maths error amateurs keep making. They calculate calorie intake as if their rest day is a normal day and their training day is a slightly elevated day. The reality is the opposite: a four-hour training day burns roughly twice the calories of a sedentary day, but most amateurs eat only marginally more on big days.
The result is chronic under-eating on training days and accidental over-eating on rest days. The body adapts by holding onto fat stores, dropping the metabolic rate, and protecting against the apparent famine. The rider does more training, eats less, and gains weight or stays the same. This is the body composition trap most amateurs are caught in.
The fix is matching fuel to the work. Big training day, big food day. Rest day, smaller food day. The deficit, if there is one, comes on rest days only, while the training days are fully fuelled. Body composition shifts over months, training quality stays high, and the rider doesn't fight their own metabolism. This is what Podlogar means by "fuel for the work required."
Periodised nutrition by training phase
Nutrition isn't fixed across a year. The amount of carbohydrate that's appropriate during a base phase is different from a build phase is different from a race phase. The nutrition periodisation guide lays out the phases in full, but the short version:
Base phase. Mostly aerobic riding, moderate intensity, longer duration. Carbohydrate intake matches volume — 4–5g per kg bodyweight on training days. Protein steady at 1.6g per kg. Some specific work on fat oxidation can fit here through controlled lower-carbohydrate Zone 2 rides, but this is a precision tool, not a general approach.
Build phase. Higher intensity, more glycogen-demanding sessions. Carbohydrate intake rises — 5–7g per kg on hard days. The body needs more fuel to support the work and recover properly. Skimping here is where most build-phase fatigue comes from.
Race phase. Match the fuelling to the race demand. Carbohydrate loading 36–48 hours before key events. Practiced in-ride fuelling at the rate planned for race day. Recovery focus immediately after each event. The race day fuelling timeline covers the 24 hours before, during, and after.
The body composition tension
There's a real tension here, and most amateurs feel it. The audience wants to be faster and lighter at the same time. The data on this is clear: doing both simultaneously usually means doing neither well. Performance gains require fuelled training. Body composition gains require some periodised restriction. Trying to do both in the same block produces stalled training and minimal weight loss.
The model that works is sequencing. A body composition block of 6–10 weeks in the off-season or early base, when the training load is lower and the deficit doesn't compete with performance gains. Then a fully-fuelled build phase. Then race phase with race weight already in place. This is what Dr David Dunne — INEOS, EF, Uno-X — described as the prepared body composition: arriving at the race already lean from work done months earlier, not crash-dieting into the event.
The cycling internet has flattened "lighter is faster" into a permanent diet. The reality at the pro level is that body composition is built across cycles, with deliberate fuelling phases protecting performance and deliberate composition phases protecting body fat targets. The amateur version of this is the same model, scaled.
Practical examples
A 75kg rider, 8 hours per week, working FTP build phase. Tuesday hard intervals, 90 minutes. Pre-ride: porridge with banana and honey, 90g carb, 2 hours before. During: 750ml drink with 40g of mixed glucose-fructose carbs plus one gel mid-session — about 60g/hr. Post-ride: rice and chicken bowl within an hour, 75g carb plus 25g protein. The day's total carbohydrate intake lands around 350g across four meals.
The same rider on a Saturday endurance ride, 4 hours, Zone 2. Pre-ride: oats with milk, 90g carb. During: 750ml drink per hour with 40g carb plus two whole-food snacks (rice cakes, dates), about 60g/hr total. Post-ride: a full meal within 90 minutes, 100g carb plus 30g protein.
The same rider on a rest day. Three balanced meals, protein at 1.6g/kg, carbohydrate at the lower end of the range, fats normal. No special intake required. The "ride more, eat less" amateur reflex is wrong; the right reflex is "match the food to the work."
What to do next
Start with the Plateau Diagnostic — four minutes, free, returns the one change most likely to move your numbers, and under-fuelling shows up as a limiter for far more cyclists than they realise. Plug your numbers into the fuelling calculator — duration, intensity, body weight — and run with the suggested rate for two weeks. If the gut handles it, hold the dose. If it doesn't, drop by 15g/hr and progress from there. The energy availability tool is the second check — it tells you whether your daily caloric intake is matching the work you're doing.
For deeper guidance, the Not Done Yet community at $195/month runs a weekly nutrition Q&A — the most common question is "I'm not losing weight and my training has stalled", and the answer is almost always under-fuelling rest days, over-restricting training days, and not periodising the year. For full one-on-one programming including nutrition periodisation, the Roadman Method at $297-397/month integrates fuelling into the 12-month structure.
The 120g/hr message was never meant for you. Match the fuel to the work. Train the gut over a season if your races need it. Eat properly around hard rides and stop being afraid of carbohydrates. The performance is in the fuelling, not the restriction.