Many cyclists training 10-12 hours per week still carry excess body weight, and the culprit is often counterintuitive: they're not eating enough. When you under-fuel relative to your training demands, your metabolism adapts by holding onto calories as fat rather than burning them as energy. This episode breaks down how to eat for performance and weight loss simultaneously, with specific strategies for different training intensities and days of the week.
Key Takeaways
- Don't eat the same calories on recovery days as you do on hard training days—adjust your intake based on the variability of your weekly schedule and session demands.
- Fuel around your workouts (pre, during, and post) as a separate calorie budget from your baseline daily needs, which allows you to create a realistic deficit on easier days.
- For efforts under 60 minutes at low intensity, you can train fasted or with minimal pre-fuel; for 60-90 minute threshold efforts, add 50-100 calories in the final 30 minutes to maintain performance.
- On 4+ hour endurance rides, aim to replace 40-50% of calories burned with carbohydrates (roughly 50g/hour), distributed every 15-30 minutes rather than in one bolus to aid digestion.
- Sustainable weight loss requires slow, steady changes that fit your lifestyle—extreme deficits lead to metabolic adaptation and yo-yo cycling, making the weight harder to keep off.
- Protein at breakfast (25-35g) sets your metabolism up for the day; pair carbs and fats with snacks far from training to maximize satiety without sacrificing performance around sessions.
Expert Quotes
"If we are not eating enough calories and we are training a lot, our body's going to adapt it's going to take our metabolism from this like nicely functioning burning food and calories as fuel and energy to down here kind of just barely holding on."
"Slow weight loss tells me that it's more realistic and it's going to stick for the person because they're not having to completely do a pantry overhaul they're not having to completely revamp their entire life."
"The goal is to replace 40 to 50% of the calories that we burn per hour with fuel primarily carbohydrates. If you are burning say 600 calories per hour you don't need to be eating 500 calories per hour."