The cycling internet sells masters riders the same nutrition advice it sells everyone: eat less, ride more, get lighter, go faster. For a 25-year-old it's incomplete. For a 50-year-old it's actively harmful. The metabolism you're feeding at 50 does not respond the way it did at 30, and the single biggest change has a name most amateurs have never heard: anabolic resistance.
Anabolic resistance means the muscle-building machinery gets harder to switch on with age. The same protein feeding that built muscle in your thirties produces a smaller response in your fifties. So the masters rider who cuts food to lose weight isn't trimming fat — they're shedding the muscle that holds their power. What changes about masters metabolism, and the anabolic-resistance protein protocol that answers it is the piece that puts the whole shift in one place.
Protein is the lever, and the dose went up
The practical consequence is a higher protein target, eaten differently. Where younger riders get away with 1.4 g/kg, masters cyclists do better at 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg/day, split into four feedings of 30 to 40g rather than loaded into dinner. How much protein cyclists actually need covers the targets and timing; registered dietitian Alex Larson's work on getting lean and staying lean shows why under-eating sabotages the very body composition riders are chasing.
One feeding matters more with age than any other. Dr Michael Ormsbee's research on 40 grams of protein before bed targets the overnight repair window — the lever most amateurs skip and the one anabolic-resistant muscle needs most.
Stop chasing the scale
Body composition, not bodyweight, is the number that determines how you climb. Why "lighter is faster" is holding you back and the body composition guide make the case that scale weight is a crude, often misleading proxy — and Dr David Dunne, who has fed World Tour riders, explains in why most cyclists get race weight wrong how the lighter-is-faster framing creates the problem it claims to solve.
Eating well is a skill, not a sacrifice
None of this requires misery. Michelin-starred chef Alan Murchison, who feeds Specialized Factory Racing, makes the case in what a Michelin chef knows about cycling nutrition that performance food can be food you actually want to eat. And what the sports scientists say about cycling nutrition gathers the consensus from the researchers on carbs per hour, fasted training and race weight.
The masters position is the opposite of restriction. You eat to hold muscle, fuel your sessions and recover faster — and the leanness follows. It pairs directly with the training in our VO2max for masters hub.