You get sick more often. You sleep badly. You start building this guilt around food. And worst of all, you start blaming yourself instead of blaming this broken system. So that's the problem. The standard approach to cycling weight loss treats nutrition like a simple maths equation. Eat less, lose weight. But your body doesn't work like that. Your body's not a calculator. It's an adaptation machine. And if you don't fuel it correctly, it doesn't just slow down. It fights against you. So what did I do? Well, I implemented a framework which I want to walk you through now. Fuel for the work required. So how does this actually work? Well, the answer comes from that concept, fuel for the work required. And it was developed by Dr. Sam Impey and Professor James Morton, who I'm hoping to get on the podcast really soon at Liverpool John Moore University. And it's not a diet. It's, as I said, it's like a formula, a framework. So here's why it's so powerful. It flips everything you've been told on its head. Instead of eating the same thing every day, regardless of what you're doing, the way most diet plans actually work, you match your nutrition to the specific demands of each training session. Day by day, meal by meal. Let me break down this with a real example from my own training week. So, Monday, I typically do a lot of my podcast work. That's a rest day. I'm not training, so I don't need a lot of carbohydrates. So, I eat a lower carb day on Mondays. plenty of protein, good fats, some vegetables. I'm still eating well. I'm not starving by any means, but I'm not loading up glycogen stores that I don't need. Tuesday for me is normally a hard interval session that I get done in the morning. It's threshold work sometimes, like at the moment. And this is where I need to hit the numbers. So, the meal before that session, I get proper carbohydrates in. We're talking almost two grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight in the pre-ride meal. For me, this is like 170 grams of carbohydrates. It's like a big bowl of porridge with a banana, toast, some Nutella, some honey. And during the ride, I'm taking on about 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour. I'll try and take this from a mix of sources from like gels. I I love for endurance stuff. Gels, drink mix, whatever works. Wednesday, I'm back to the uneasy spin, recovery rides, coffee ride with the lads. So, I'm back to lower carbs because I just don't need them. I'm not trying to perform, so I let my body do its thing. Thursday's another hard session. So, fueling goes back up. You see the pattern? On days where performance matters, you fuel for performance. On days where it doesn't, you pull back and you let your body tap into the fat stores and build that metabolic efficiency. Slight sidebar for one second. How I've actually been doing this in practical terms is I've been using an app every single day called Hex, Hexis, and it's developed by Dr. Sam Impey, who I've referenced here, and his co-founder, Dr. David Dawn. And about 40% of all world tour riders are now using this app, too. If you want to try it out, you can find it in the App Store, the Play Store, and I do have a code for it, so you can go see if that code still works. Sam gave it to me when he was on the podcast. It's just code roadman, R O D M. Try it at checkout, and it should knock 25% off your monthly or annual cost. It is cheap as chips to sign up, but 25% still never hurts. Okay, back to the podcast. This pattern of alternating the amount of fuel is what the professionals actually do. I'm not sure when the pros started fueling like this. My guess is around 2016 when James Morton was at Team Sky because I know this strategy helped Chris F win the 2016 Tour to France. Team Sky back then, now Inos Grenaders, they built their entire nutritional strategy around this concept. And the beautiful thing is it works even better for amateurs because we've more easy days in our schedule than the pros do. we've more opportunities for a natural calorie deficit to build up without ever actually feeling like we're dieting. The key insight, and this is the thing that changed everything for me, it's that you're not restricting anything at all.
You don't notice it partly because it's flashy. You notice it because it feels right. Because every input, every climb, every corner happens exactly how you imagined it would. Customer production, every frame goes through the same uncompromising process. Traceable, tested, and finished by people who still believe craftsmanship matters. Parley doesn't chase trends. They chase that moment every rider lives for when the bike and the body move as one. Parley Cycles, engineered for that feeling that keeps us coming back. Okay, so this week I want to break it down and show you what it looks like. So step one, you just need to look at your training plan for the week. Open up your training peaks account and now let's start identifying sessions which are the hard sessions. I'm talking intervals, tempo, threshold, V2, max sessions, anything where you need to hit a power target and which the sessions are aimed to drive that upper adaptation, you know, the hard work. Now secondarily, identify the easy sessions. You know, you can use a traffic light system if you want on this. Identify the easy sessions, endurance rides, coffee rides, activation sessions, yeah, recovery spins, anything like that. Now, step two, work two meals backwards. So, the meal before the session and the meal the night before. So, say if it's a morning session, you're looking at dinner the night before and you're looking at breakfast that morning. That's where you're going to try and up your carbohydrate consumption. So, for the meal before, I'll typically go with two grams per kilogram of body weight. If you're an 80 kilogram rider, that's like 160 grams of carbs. It's quite a bit of eating. For me, my go-to is in the morning. their like porridge, their bananas, their toast, their bagels, Nutella, but whatever works for you. Eat it like at least 90 minutes to two hours before your ride. If it's a race, I'll try and push that to three hours before. Step three, during hard sessions, start practicing on the bike fueling. Begin at 40 grams an hour. If you haven't done this before, that's maybe roughly one gel depending on the brand you're using. Try it with different sources. Try a gel energy drink and building it up over time. Step four, on easy days and rest days, pull back on carbohydrate consumption. Not to zero, but you're just looking to eat more protein and prioritize that. More vegetables, fewer starchy carbs. You're still eating well. You're just not loading glycogen that you don't need. Step five, you need to be patient with this. You need to zoom out and give it space to compound, space to work. Give it minimum eight weeks to observe the changes. Don't change absolutely everything two or three days later. If this isn't working, commit to the framework. Weigh yourself once a week. Track your power and training peaks and trust the process. If you want to go deeper on the science behind all this, I sat down for a really long form podcast with Dr. Sam Impey. I think it's like 90 minutes or two hours. I'm going to link that episode in the description down below. It's thoroughly worth watching. It's maybe the single most important conversation I've had on this podcast about nutrition. He explains the research behind everything I've just told you in a way that'll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about fueling. 7 kg in 12 weeks is what I lost. Eating more food than ever before. Power numbers up, energy up, and for the first time in years, I actually enjoy eating without this bakedin morality again. No guilt, no restrictions, no white knuckling my way through another calorie deficit that always going to fail. Just a simple framework. Fuel for the work required. Match your nutrition to your training. Stop eating the same thing every day and give your body what it actually needs when it actually needs it. If this video helped you, please hit subscribe. We put out videos like this every single week, breaking down the stuff that actually makes you faster on the bike without any of the fads. And I also am curious. Drop me a comment below and let me know what is your biggest struggle when it comes to nutrition and cycling. I read every single one of the comments. See you in the next video, folks.