Nutritioninterview

HOW PRO CYCLISTS STAY LEAN | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

with Dr Tim Podlogar — Exercise physiologist and nutrition consultant for Tudor Pro Cycling, formerly with Bora-Hansgrohe; research fellow at the University of Birmingham

47:12·9 September 2025

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DR TIM PODLOGAR

Exercise physiologist and nutrition consultant for Tudor Pro Cycling, formerly with Bora-Hansgrohe; research fellow at the University of Birmingham

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Dr Tim Podlogar is performance nutrition consultant to Tudor Pro Cycling and formerly with Bora-Hansgrohe. A research fellow at the University of Birmingham and assistant professor at the University of Primorska, he has authored or co-authored some of the most-cited papers in modern endurance fuelling and is the R&D lead behind the NDurance / Hexis product line. His work translates lab-grade carbohydrate and body-composition science into protocols a real WorldTour rider can use day to day.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Dr Tim Podlogar (Tudor Pro Cycling): the "5% body fat pro" myth is folklore. Tudor uses 7-8 site skinfolds, not DEXA. Numbers vary; what matters is being lean enough for your role.
The era when climbers were dramatically leaner than classics riders is over. Pogačar and Remco prove the point — they're top in classics now too. Sprinters can be a touch heavier; everyone else is pretty lean.
When power drops on a diet, it's not your real power dropping — it's your access to it. Glycogen stores aren't full, so you can't push the same numbers. Once you stabilise at the new weight, the numbers come back.
Fuel for the work required (Sam Impey, 2016 paper) is the operating model: under-fuel easy days, fuel intervals fully. Don't try to create a deficit before the session that produces your biggest adaptations.
Some riders gain power by gaining muscle mass, not losing weight. Coaches who push climber profiles on the wrong physiology can leave watts on the table. The athlete who muscles up and becomes a sprinter often beats the same athlete dieted to skeleton.

TOPICS

CHAPTERS

Dr Tim Podlogar is an exercise physiologist and performance nutritionist at Tudor Pro Cycling, previously with Bora-Hansgrohe. He came on the Roadman Cycling podcast to talk about exactly how professional riders stay lean, and one calculation mistake that's probably been keeping you in a calorie surplus without you knowing it.

Key Takeaways

The Harris Benedict equation gives you your resting metabolic rate for 24 hours lying in bed. Most cyclists apply it to their full day on top of their ride calories, which puts them in a surplus. The fix: if you ride for five hours, you only have a resting metabolic rate for the other 19. Apply a 1.2 to 1.4 multiplier to those 19 hours to account for digestion and daily movement, then add your ride calories on top. That's your number.

On creating a deficit without losing power, Podlogar's approach is simple. Fuel your hard sessions properly, no exceptions. The deficit goes on easy days, and he wouldn't push past 500 to 700 calories below maintenance even then. The other thing he flags: don't think about daily windows. Think session to session. The 24 hours from when you finish Thursday's ride to when you finish Friday's is the unit that matters, because that's what actually determines whether you're fuelled for the work coming up.

Dr Tim Podlogar, exercise physiologist and performance nutritionist for Tudor Pro Cycling (formerly Bora-Hansgrohe), states that cycling efficiency varies from 18 to 24 percent between riders, creating a difference of 500 to 800 kilocalories across a four-hour ride at 200 to 250 watts. He recommends a maximum daily calorie deficit of 500 to 700 kilocalories and applies a factor of 1.2 to 1.4 to resting metabolic rate calculated for non-exercise hours only. Glucose absorption rates during exercise range from 30 grams per hour in smaller athletes to 90 grams per hour in elite athletes, with intestinal absorption identified as the primary limiting factor; combined glucose and fructose intake can range from 50 to 170 to 180 grams per hour. Podlogar cites a World Tour case where a rider consuming 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour still ended a race with a calculated carbohydrate balance of minus 2 grams per kilogram bodyweight, due to the demands of the race outstripping intake. Fat oxidation rates increase with fitness and VO2 max development rather than through fasted training protocols, according to Podlogar's practice with professional riders.

If you want the full picture on losing weight without losing watts, the episode on why weight loss might actually be making you slower covers that directly. And if the Harris Benedict calculation has you questioning everything you thought you knew about your calorie intake, the nine kilograms eating more episode is the one to go back to.

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

PRO PRACTICE
Tudor Pro Cycling's body composition assessment relies on 7-8 site skinfold measurements rather than DEXA scans — a methodology that tracks within-rider change reliably while not producing the sensationalist "X% body fat" headline figures sometimes attributed to elite riders.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar, Tudor Pro Cycling nutrition consultant
OPINION
The historical leanness gap between climbers and classics riders has structurally narrowed in modern WorldTour racing — Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel demonstrate that high climbing watts/kg and classics success can coexist with effectively similar body composition.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar, on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
EXPERT
Power output drops experienced by cyclists on calorie-deficit diets typically reflect reduced glycogen availability rather than true power loss — once energy balance stabilises at the new lower body weight, power numbers typically return very close to pre-diet levels.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar coaching practice
PRO PRACTICE
Some elite riders increase absolute power output through targeted muscle mass gain rather than weight loss — Podlogar describes cases where coaches initially pushed riders toward climber profiles but the riders ended up performing better as muscled sprinter types.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar professional observation
STUDY
Sam Impey's 2016 "fuel for the work required" methodology remains the operational standard — fully fuel the high-intensity sessions that drive adaptation, create the calorie deficit on easy days, and avoid arriving at intervals in deficit which compromises both performance and adaptation gains.
Source: Dr Tim Podlogar, citing Sam Impey 2016 fueling research

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

“I probably wouldn't advise to go more than like 500 six to 700 max of a deficit in a day. especially if you have the next day or the next session is hard because you would really like probably make too much damage and you would not recover for the next one.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Exercise physiologist and nutrition consultant for Tudor Pro Cycling

“When you basically look at a 4 hour ride um I don't know 200 250 watts that would equate to like even to like five six 7 800 kilo calories of a difference.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Exercise physiologist and nutrition consultant for Tudor Pro Cycling

“Instead of like looking at midnight to midnight actually look from one training session to the next training session. So basically 24 hour period becomes when you end the session on Thursday um in the afternoon until you finish the session on Friday in the afternoon. And then basically take that window as like the way how you calculate the calories. Because this way basically fuel for the work required of the upcoming training session.”
Dr Tim Podlogar — Exercise physiologist and nutrition consultant for Tudor Pro Cycling

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT9 SECTIONS

How lean are pro cyclists really

Exercise physiologist and performance nutritionist for tutor pro cycling Tim Podlar joins me today to talk about exactly how proyclists stay so lean. What lessons you can take from their nutritional habits and one thing that you absolutely should not do when you're copying the pro cyclists nutrition strategy. This is a really in-depth interview with one of the best nutritionists in the world. Welcome to the Roman podcast, Tim Poder. Tim, welcome to the Roman podcast. Thank you for having me. I want to start out talking about this almost folklore mythology around how lean world tour riders actually are. We've seen, you know, sensationalist articles that some riders are at 5% body fat. when you have a chance both at Bora in your previous role and Tuler in your current role to see like Dexa scans, how lean are riders actually and can you see a noticeable difference in leanness between climbers, classic guys, GC guys? Yeah, a good question. I don't really have any DEXA results uh to be honest. We only look at um skin folds. So we just look at a sum of seven or eight skinfolds um and basically guess the um yeah compare the riders between each other or among themselves. Um and it's kind of in the past um I feel like there was kind of this conception that like it was the climbers that were super lean and then the classics and the sprinters with a bit less lean. Um but now these days what I'm seeing is that classics riders are as lean as the um m the goat the yeah the mountain goats. Um and it's just that I think that you can also see that Pagacher and Ramco are really good in classics and this basically just translates into everyone being super lean um and having really like the nutrition nailed down. It's the sprinters that can be a bit um yeah, a bit heavier uh with a bit more fat, but everyone is pretty lean these days just because nutrition is so well controlled. Yeah. And we'll definitely get into some of that because I think we've seen huge changes in nutrition in the last few years. But is it just is it muscle composition changes across the different profiles of riders or is it purely adipus tissue? I think yeah like the sprinters would be like yeah bulkier and stronger with more muscle mass and the same applies for um classics riders. I think the comment by today Pagacher um he made not a long time ago that he would need to get um some more muscle mass to be able to be competitive in some of the classics. Um I think this is still the case. So if you want to be a pure climber and have the like really high watts per kilo um then you also need to probably reduce a bit the muscle mass um and not be big uh but if you want to be the best allarounder then you basically have a bit more muscle mass but the fat percentage would be really low and similar. Okay, this is actually really interesting. This is an interesting thread to pull at because you hear a lot of amateur riders and one of the cliches you'll hear and it's normally from the guy who's like 15 kilograms overweight saying, "Oh, I don't want to lose any weight because I'll lose power." Is there any truth to the idea that you will lose power with weight? And I guess also maybe the inverse of that question which you're talking about there. Does gaining weight have the potential to increase your absolute power if not your watts per kilogram? I think definitely the latter is true. So if you increase the the body mass by increasing the muscle mass um the power will go up and I've seen this with the riders. Um some of the riders try to be like kind of lighter. Um the coaches wanted them to become more like climbber profile. Um but in the end they basically increased the body mass u by increasing the um muscle mass not fat mass and they become stronger and the power went up and just became basically more like sprinter type riders. Um and that benefited them results wise. Um, but when it comes to like dropping the weight, the first thing that like amateurs probably see is that the power drops when they start to basically reduce their try to go into a diet because what happens when you go onto a diet is like you're in energy deficit. So suddenly you probably will start your next ride with not full glycogen stores and as a result of that your power will probably drop. Um, I see this myself. I'm getting ready for a race and well I can't push the same numbers as before I started to reduce my body mass but when I will be happy with the body mass and you basically start to maintain the energy balance again then the power should basically return back to where it was or at least kind of very close um to where it was. I think it's just like how to strategically get into the period of like reducing body mass while being aware that the power numbers might not be as high as they usually are because you're in energy deficit.

Creating a smart deficit around intervals

Um so would it be a miscatategorization to say my power has dropped? It's more like my ability to access that power has dropped. Yeah, like definitely for most people that would be the case. Um or that energy deficit is like really big and you really reduce your muscle mass. But um I think on the whole and for most people you wouldn't really use the um power that much. Um you would need to really going to extremes to see that. Um so what are you guys using at tutor for nutrition? Are you using hexus athletes kitchen? Um Excel. Excel. You guys are old school. Cool. Kick kicking old school. I I had uh Sam Impy on the podcast, Dr. Sam Impy H not too long ago and his I think it was 2016 paper fuel for the work required seems to be one that's you know talked about quite a lot when we're talking about fueling these demands but for amateur writers who are listening to Sam I impy and fuel for the work required and we're very conscious with matching our fueling to the you know our training plan for that week but we're also maybe 5 to 8 kg overweight. How do you think about creating a smart deficit while also you know to use that differentiation of term we had there a minute ago was drop in power versus ability to access that power. If we still want to access the power so fuel the work that's required but create a smart deficit. How do you think about doing that? Yeah, like fuel for the work required is like a great example of how it probably should be done um in terms of like oh you have an easy session. You can make it actually bit higher but but under fueling it or like fueling it a bit less but then when you have intervals coming up the best thing that you can do for intervals or the most gains you will get from the intervals is to push really high numbers and this means you need to fuel for those intervals um in the hours before and during. So perhaps you might not want to actually have any deficit before doing the intervals, but you create a deficit on the days when you have an easier training session when you basically can afford to be a bit lower in energy because you're not going to sprint at that session anyway. But so if you take a session like you know I guess we're characterizing easy as zone one zone two rides. If we we're characterizing them as easy how do we know where the tipping point is? I'm assuming there's a threshold there at some point where it's like I'm under fueling this session versus I'm massively compromising my ability to do tomorrow's session. How do we understand where that line is between fueling to make that session a little bit harder and create a deficit versus fueling that's almost creating jeopardy for one of a better expression. Yeah, I mean it's a tough one because like when you have amateurs they would be training for like an hour or two hours. I think you can like it's a difference to when professionals are doing like five hours. So for instance like for an amateurs I would be happy to basically skip the breakfast do the session and then relocate this calories to after the session um to basically fuel the next one. But then for the professionals because he would go easy for four hours zone one zone two I would not do fasted because otherwise I would create too big of a deficit um in the day. So it's a bit of like how much actually of a deficit we are making and I probably wouldn't advise to go more than like 500 six to 700 max of a deficit in a day. um especially if you have the next day or the next session is hard because you would really like probably make too much damage and you would not recover for the next one. And when we're talking about deficits, is there a way other than estimating to figure out what our base metabolic rate is? Yeah, when it comes to those estimations, it's just like I guess a big like a it's just a guessing game. It's a bit of a lottery. um because there's so many things we don't know when we do the calculations and I see this daily on a daily basis to the riders I work with um I use the same equation same type of calculations for one rider um they will be perfectly fine and then I go to the next one and it would be a disaster either he would be gaining weight or reducing the weight so it's basically like super complex because you you need to know that like the total energy demand for the day consist consist of exercise energy expenditure which is probably in riders the biggest um amount in a day and we have the power meter we get the number of calories or kilojles that the rider produced on the bike but we don't really know how much energy turnover he actually went through on a bike session because we don't really know the efficiency um so basically when is the efficiency sorry the jump in just got clarity on that so is efficiency is there some of this stuff like is the efficiency from the lowest end to the highest end is that bucket narrow enough that we can make assumptions around it or is there huge variance from rider to rider in efficiency level I think it's quite a big variation and like when we measure it in the lab um when I deal with like amateurs I see the numbers everything from 18% to like 23 24% um And when you basically look at a 4h hour ride um I don't know 200 250 watts that would equate to like even to like five six 7 800 kilo calories of a difference massive that's a lot uh and that's yeah and even though like let's take a rider we bring him to the lab we measure the efficiency that rider might be the riding indoors for the first time so his efficiency would actually be much lower than actually outside because that's not his home territory.

Estimating metabolic rate without bro science

So I think even the efficiency would change dayto day um during the ride. So towards the end of the hard day it might drop um or might change. We don't know how the changes different intensities um so it's everything is very very like fluid and we don't really account for that. So we have a big error there. So this is a first part of the error we're making. Then the next next one is what happens outside the cycling. Um does the rider have kids at home? Um the riders that have kids at home usually spend or do way more steps um than the riders that are just playing PlayStation. Um so you have also like even if you like estimate the um resting metabolic rate relatively correctly uh you would have this nonex exercise activity uh levels that would be massively different between the riders and again you need to estimate that. So it's a lot of trial and error. You need to kind of get to know the rider and then after that you basically can be comfortable with the calculations. is the post exercise burn what's the ter epoch or something like that I can't remember what the acronym is for it is is there variance as well in that or is again we're trying to make assumptions for quite a wide variance group yeah I don't there could there definitely some because of the protein synthesis and a lot of like yeah metabolism going on but um it's kind of interesting when you look at the scientific papers that use this um method doubly labeled water to estimate the energy needs or demands in professional riders and you see the numbers um that are super high um and when I compare to what I feed the riders um my numbers are way lower and if I was to basically feed them based on these equations derived from this method they would get fat during the grand tour. Um, you know this idea online, uh, it's like someone has a scientific fact they pull out and then someone be like, "Source and the source is like, trust me, bro." It's like the mad bro science. If we were to set up a non broc science protocol here for somebody at home who was trying to determine their metabolic rate to create a smart weekly deficit, how would you go about building that weekly protocol? Well, I basically like how I do it usually for the writers and it's like super simple. Um I basically if I have a spreadsheet um in Excel, let's say that we just like simplify everything. Um I would get the number of calories that you burn on the bike from basically Garmin or um Straa. These numbers are usually very similar. Um usually the efficiency they are assumed is around 24% which is quite high. Um is that built into the calorie count that they'll see on their trainer peaks or their stra or basically if you um you get an output of kilogjles and you translate directly one to one to kilo calories you will get 24% efficiency because of these conversions it basically comes out as the same number. Um, so that's very easy. Then the next thing, I'm still with you. I'm still with you. I'm still here. You haven't lost me yet. Then the next thing you do is basically take one of the equations you get on the internet for resting metabolic rate. Um, and the most simple one is Harris Benedict equation like known for I don't know how many tens of years or how many decades. Um, you get that number and then basically that's baseline. That's you lying in bed. um doing nothing um and for the 24 hours. So what you then do is you have this number resting metabolic rate and you have the exercise number um you can't during exercise the number you get already assumes or takes into account the resting metabolic rate. So for instance if you are for on the bike for five hours you only have the resting metabolic rate for the 19 hours of the day. Okay, interesting. I didn't know that. Uh because you've explained why I've been fat my whole racing career right there. And yeah, the more you train, the bigger of disproportionate already is like so the bigger error you're making. So basically, that's a huge difference, Tim, because I don't think people know that. I think people that ride for six hours, look at their garment and go, okay, I've or their hammerhead or whatever they're using and they try to replace the number they see on the screen with intra ride fueling. Then they look at their metabolic rate and try and eat that for the rest of the day when they get off the bike. But that would put them in a surplus. Yeah, could be. But the the as I said earlier, the uh resting metabolic rate is just the resting metabolic rate. Um so once you like taking into account just 19 hours of that, I usually apply a factor of 1.2 to 1.4 on top of that, just the resting one. um to account for like digestion to account for like going to the toilet, cleaning the bike, washing the stuff.

Daily vs session-to-session fueling

And then the number is like 1.2 for someone that's super inactive or 1.4 that for someone that is playing with kids um doing some walking in the afternoon um around the house and things like that. And then you basically get the number. And would you then try to create a daily calorie deficit or would you zoom out and look at weekly, monthly, where do you think about creating that deficit or where's the smartest times to create that? If if we assume we're also trying to maximize the adaptation from the sessions. Um yeah, there are two different like kind of ways or like few different ways how you look at it. Traditionally, it would look from midnight to midnight, which is basically a the day in question. Um, but this theory doesn't work really well. Let's say that you you're training always in the morning. You have an interval training session or a hard day um planned and you can only afford a small breakfast. Um, you do a big session and then for the rest of the day basically you can eat a lot because oh yeah, I've done a big session. But previous day you had a rest day and you couldn't eat anything because it was like an easy day. Um so what I usually or like very often do is instead of like looking at midnight to midnight actually look from one training session to the next training session. So basically 24hour period becomes when you end the session on Thursday um in the afternoon until you finish the session on Friday in the afternoon. And then basically take that window as like the way how you calculate the calories. Um because this way basically fuel for the work required of the upcoming training session. When I started this podcast, I wore every hat imaginable. Producer, editor, designer, marketer. For our first merch drop, I stitched together this total Frankenstein system. It was one site to build the page, another for the cart, a separate payment solution, a different email tool, and a spreadsheet to keep it all from falling apart. I spent more time exporting CVS files than I did riding my bike. If I had Shopify as my business partner from day one with one login and one dashboard, I'd have saved myself a world of headaches. Here's what I'd wish I'd known. Shopify powers millions of businesses from Mattel to Gym Shark to day one startups with hundreds of templates. Your store looks like your brand from day one. It has built-in AI draft product descriptions. It polishes headlines and it helps enhance photos so you're not spending your whole evening color correcting and trying to copy and do tweaks. Getting word out, it's just as clean and simple. You can launch email and social campaigns from that very same dashboard. And behind the scenes, Shopify handles those unsexy bits that nobody wants to do. Inventory, international shipping, returns, analytics. You can spend more time on the other fun stuff of running your business. So, if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk/roadman. uk/roadman that's shopify.co.uk odm. Okay. So then the correct me if I'm wrong here but the smartest places to create a deficit it's zooming out and not really thinking about the daily deficit looking at gaps in my training where I don't need where I can afford to be underfueled. So for a traditional, you know, amateur working Joe, we'll say Saturday, Sunday is the bulk of their endurance training. Monday's a day off. When I come home after Sunday's riot, I could look to start creating a deficit that evening. Yeah. So basically that's when you can like afford to be like in a 500 600 or 700 kil kilo calorie deficit. But the problem what happens is people mostly when you go out for a weekend ride think oh yeah now I will eat less because I don't need to. But then they don't fuel during the ride because they're like well I need to lose this body fat. So let's be strong and not eat on the bike. And then they come home and open the fridge and empty the fridge because simply they've made a big hole by not eating probably on Friday afternoon for the session on Saturday. they didn't feel during the ride. So liver and muscle glycogen will be completely empty um when they finish and then that will translate into them being super hungry. So you can you always need to kind of have that in mind that like oh okay you have to fuel for the session it's coming and you also need to kind of have an idea of like you shouldn't completely be dead after the session because otherwise you will basically open the fridge and eat everything even though at the time when you're thinking about it doesn't feel like now I will survive with a calorie deficit but that's not going to happen. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then if we shift to intraride fueling, you know, and continuing that fuel for the work required idea, we've seen a real change from where fueling was an afterthought really.

Can you overfuel a race

If I chat to some of the writers in the last generation, your Christian Vandervel's, Mike Barry's, that generation are like just stumbling in the door, totally glycogen depleted. Now we've moved to, you know, minimum 60, probably maximum over 200. some people. But surely there is as we move into kind of individualization, surely we need to have a more nuanced conversation around carbohydrate intake. Surely absorption rates vary from athlete to athlete. Can we measure absorption rates or what affects absorption rates? Because to my bro science understanding of this, it would matter very little how much fuel I put into the tank. It's how much fuel I'm able to actually use. Yeah, that's like kind of like really important question and this is something like I kind of I'm scientifically working on at the moment. But before like we move into that perhaps just like to give you an example that like fueling a lot always doesn't always make sense. And I'll just give you an example from a race recently. Um on a world tour level um the rider came to the finish. He reported 120 or just about a bit more of carbohydrates per hour. Um and well as like what we would perceive this would be a good fueling right for the session. Um but then when you do the calculations for energy balance what ended up being was that um for calculations for dinner were actually showing um your suggest the rider suggested intake of carbohydrate as minus 2 grams per kilo. So the race was whatever happened dynamics of the race wise the brake went early the race settled so he overfueled for it. Yes. So, and even to run with that as well, is there like if I look for what's the adaptation I'm looking to get from the training session, I could surely overfuel and blunt the training response to a zone one zone 2 session by over fueling it. Well, I don't really think it's there is not that much evidence to suggest at least on my mind that intra uh session fueling will have a massive um response on the adaptations. Um but one thing is for sure if you basically bulk all the carbohydrates during the session then this will mean that the you will either start the session relatively empty in glycogen or you will go into the next session relatively empty of muscle glycogen given the fact that there is not a lot of evidence that there is gly muscle glycogen sparing with a lot of carbohydrates during exercise. Okay interesting. So back into the idea of different absorption rates, have we studied this? Can we figure out what determines absorption rates and is there stuff that speeds up absorption or inhibits absorpt absorption? Yeah. So absorption basically in the the best world like we can actually measure it. We can do a lab test um with using the isotopes like special labeled carbohydrates um because carbohydrates are basically carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. And when carbohydrates are broken down uh they come out as CO2 and water. And if you know if you label the carbohydrates um like the carbon for instance is labeled like has a special tag on it. Um, and if you analyze the breath, the CO2 at breath, you can basically figure out how many of the carbohydrates you put in actually came out. Um, and you can measure the yeah, the oxidation rates of ingested carbohydrates. This means that you basically were able to see how many were oxid absorbed and then oxidized during exercise. So, how wide a variation are we seeing from what riders are able to absorb? Oh, it's massive. um probably like we would be talking about 30 grams for like small females um relatively not super powerful ones and we would go to basically the ceiling um and I'm talking sorry about glucose only so only one component of carbohydrates um we during exercise all the way to probably um I don't know 90 grams of glucose per hour so we would have a range of when you add glucose and fructose goes from like recommended intake of like 50 to probably 170 180 grams. And what's the limiting factors here? Like gastric emptying, intestinal absorption. Um gastric emptying doesn't seem to be the um limiting factor. At least that's what the evidence kind of points at. Um seems that it's either the um absorption um and perhaps even the muscle or like the the the body how it deals with carbohydrates. Um but at the moment like intestinal absorption seems to be the most the biggest limitation in most scenarios. Is it trainable? Um good question. Um nobody has actually done a proper study looking into this. Uh we have some studies from rodents. Um you know putting them on a low carbohydrate diet and a high carbohydrate diet and seeing what happens to the transporters. Um and the evidence is not really strong for glucose. Um but it's pretty strong for fructose that you can or like there is some evidence that fructose um can be trained or the number of transporters can be increased and it would actually make sense because athletes uh would be exposed to glucose all the time because glucose we find in like pasta, rice, potatoes, but fructose we only find in like probably sweet products and there are many riders or many people that don't eat a lot of sweets.

Fructose tolerance and fat max explained

So they are not exposed to fructose on a daily basis as much they are for glucose. So fructose is like probably big variation between individuals. When you hear some of the writers like I chat to some of the gravel guys from Lifetime Grand Prix and racing Unbound. And I think Cameron Jones who won Unbound this year was telling me there was periods where he hit 200 grams of carbohydrates. actually uh your writer who came second uh forgotten his name who was a tutor ladder came second sorry this was this is bad I don't know but I don't know me I can't remember his name uh but yeah he ran out of food but my question was more around Cameron Jones where he's like if he's having 200 grams of carbohydrates per hour without understanding his absorption rates like is there a downside to this can you back up the system yeah so clearly he has a tolerance to basically have all these carbohydrates. Even they are not absorbed, they're probably sitting in the gut and they're ready to be absorbed um when either the end of the race or perhaps during the descent the absorption might actually go up. So he might actually be absorbing higher amounts. Um so this is kind of one of the the things and the second one is yes uh there are actually I think at least three papers out there that show that if you go like really high carbohydrate intake during exercise well above the capacity to absorb you can actually increase the use of muscle glycogen which is the reverse of what you actually want to achieve. Okay interesting. So to slightly switch gears and go to our other fuel source and move into like fat oxidization and metabolic efficiency, the kind of an old school approach to improving that fat oxidization was like fasted zone two rides with the idea that you could change fat max. Actually maybe to start out can you explain what fat max is for someone who's not sure and then what's the modern thinking around how you manipulate or train fat max? So fat max as a concept is actually the exercise intensity at which you burn most fat whereas usually we use it as like fat max the maximal capacity to oxidize fats in terms of grams per minute. Um so how good you are at using fats. Um when you look at like cycling race four, five, six hours um or even like if we're talking about gravel even more than this definitely your capacity to use more fat becomes beneficial because this means that you use carbohydrates which are highly limited at a lower um rate. Um so fat oxidation rates are really important in my opinion um in modern cycling um just as they were like years ago. The difference how we look at it at least how I look at it is that I don't try to actively increase the fat oxidation rates. Um so I will not go and recommend the rider like oh now we will train your fat oxidation rates by doing faster training or not giving you any carbohydrates for this session. Um because fat oxidation rates will increase naturally with the fitness level. So okay, if you take someone that is eating a lot of carbohydrates, uh but also trains a lot and has a really high V2 max um so higher high capacity to use use oxygen, this person's capacity to use fat will be way higher than somebody on a low carbohydrate ketogenic diet in his BMAX is like 35 or 40. Yeah. So it's the fat oxidation is a byproduct of just an effective training plan. But even if it's a secondary goal in terms of training adaptation for the day, is there any considerations for you when you're setting a session for somebody even in terms of fueling where you'd go, okay, we're going to fuel at the lower end, maybe today for a zone 2 ride, we're going to fuel at 50 to 60 grams of carbohydrates as opposed to 80 to 90 because we have this secondary goal of fat oxidation. Um, I would not like just look at fat oxidation. I would be thinking, okay, it's a zone two, right? It's an easy right. How do we make most of these right? And by making most of the right is like in for instance like during intervals the power output and the like the stress on the muscles will be the biggest um impact and the stress on the cardiovascular system. Whereas on a low intensity ride it will be metabolic stress in terms of like um the flux of energy through these five hours or six hours. and um the basically lack of energy in the muscle. Um and this way you can basically potentiate the adaptations. Um so perhaps if you kind of reduce the energy availability for this particular session, you might get bigger adaptations. The question is how well you recover from such session. um which if you do it wrong, you can perhaps finish up right 5 hours fasted with no carbohydrates um you will get great adaptations but the problem is that you will not recover. So it's always a balance between kind of adaptive response and the recovery.

Haribo, ketones and team budgets

Um so you need to basically find a balance between minimal fueling so that you kind of create this metabolic stress that will increase the um molecular responses while not making the rider not recover for the next session. Haribo. Good or bad? Amazing. My homie, I'm flat out on the Haribo. It's like everyone's on their, you know, little packets of gels and I just there's so many problems even with even just a waste of the gel wrappers alone kind of annoys me. It's like one bag of Haribo, you're the the size bags we're getting, I think, are 95 grams of carbohydrates for roughly €150. I'm like, it's just value. It's just value. Yeah. Um, I think it was a couple of years ago or three years ago during one of the tour to Franzas and I was like trying to find out what to give the riders because they were so flavor fatigued and we ended up with giving them different flavors of Haribo into the musett. Um, and I think it was received pretty well. Um, they always the little fried eggs. Oh, they're magic rebels. And if you're I'm sure you spent some time in Jerona. Uh, but they've the little Haribo factory just outside Jirona on the way into Banles. What a what a place. It's like Disneyland for cyclists. Yeah. I mean, you can't overdo them because they're like so easy to eat. So, like when the riders are trying to lose the weight, you probably need to stay away from them. Um, but when it comes to like hard days in the mountains and you just need them to eat like I don't know in a day 20 or 20 one grams per kilogram of carbohydrates and you're like yeah Haribo are the best friend. Is there any role for ketones? Um yeah good question. Um I'm personally not a fan of them. Um I just don't see that big of a value in them. um especially given their price because I feel in my experiences that professional cycling is professional. They earn and they make a lot of money. Um but when it comes to like the stuff and the everything around like how things are organized um there is never enough money. They would always try to invest more money into like getting better chefs, getting better food quality. Um, and I feel like the money you spend on ketones can be used elsewhere. Um, bet and get better results than ketones for like improving recovery or training adaptations. But if you have everything ticked, all the boxes ticked and you're like, this is the final thing that you can do, then perhaps ketones can give like that 0.1% um, at the end. And we talked about fat oxidization. And to tag that back into the very start of the conversation, we were talking about rider leanness. Is there a change in fat oxidization rates when writers get exceptionally lean? I wouldn't expect and wouldn't say that. No. um perhaps when they're trying to reduce the body mass um in that period fat oxidation rates will obviously be higher just because they will be less fueled in carbohydrates. So um you might see like somebody doing a V2 max test in the lab like a recreational cyclist and his um fat oxidation during the test would be really low and you're like what have you eaten the previous day and they will be like oh yeah like I have was not eating a lot of carbohydrate. Oh, this explains these values. Um, and sometimes they're cooked basically being on overtrained and you also see this because they're simply not recovering. fat oxidation rates are up but yeah and do you see body composition changes throughout a season because you know previously it was quite extreme you know you take like who's the most extreme example probably big Yan Yanick back in the day would come into January training camp maybe 10 kilograms overweight race all the way through and you'd see him gradually on front of your eyes from tour Swiss to do a to France changing physique and then again you see him in January and he's massive again. It was like his training was periodized, but his body composition was almost periodized as well. Are we seeing riders just staying lean all year round now or is there a coating process? Yeah, they're kind of relatively lean all year round, but they definitely put on weight. I think Demi Bing um just made a really good comment about this how she's kind of like tried to like reduce the body mass for the tour to France and the peak of the season but then her body mass would go up and I think it's pretty much for majority of the riders similar um the problem becomes for the riders that are like supposed to race the whole year. We are not talking about like the GC riders, but the helpers, their fat um content or like the amount of fat they have on the body will probably be a bit higher than for GC riders um just because they need to basically sustain um and race for like pre probably for like five, six months without a proper break, proper like training camp.

Guarding riders against going too lean

Whereas like GC riders can afford to basically like just nail this like peak of the season and be super lean in that part. Um but everyone is kind of picking with the body mass and playing around. Um there are some riders that yeah gain more weight. Um but definitely not to the extent that yeah was doing it. What do stage slayer Mads Patterson and half the professional pelaton have in common? Well, they're all turning to Nomio, the natural performance enhancer proven to reduce lactate buildup during intense efforts. In the 2025 Jiratalia, Person's form was undeniable. The Danish star surged to four stage victories. This was a major leap in form from his previous season. And a key part of this preparation and performance was Nomio. Developed by the same researchers who discovered the performance power of dietary nitrate. You know those beetroot shots that half the pelon were using. Nomio is clinically proven to lower lactate levels, reduce oxidative stress, improve training adaptations, and deliver a noticeable boost from the very first time you take it. Riders are reporting bigger threshold power, fresher legs mid race, and quicker recovery. All from a formula made with just three natural ingredients: broccoli sprouts, lemon, and sugar. Whether you're racing at the front or you're smashing local segments, Nomio helps you get more out of every ride. Take it before key sessions or races for an immediate edge or take your training to the next level and get more out of your hard work. Go to drinknomio.com that's n o m io and check out this gamechanging supplement. Details are in the episode show notes or description down below. But when when you look at your you know not even your GC runners but even just your guys who are competitive in the hills like even thinking like uh Alf leap like you know can go up especially the punchier climbs super super well when he's looking to optimize body composition for someone super motivated lighter always seems to be the better option going I'm just going to take an extra kilogram I'm going to take an extra kilogram off how do you think about building guard rails around their own personal ambition so they don't get too Are you tracking stuff like hormonal markers or or how do you approach that? Yeah, it's something that we like usually one of the routine tests is like testosterone levels. So, we have usually have an idea of that. Um and together with like it's really nice to have a history um of like skin fold. So, we basically are able to see like and track what the rider is like. And the good thing about skin folds um is that um we usually get the um results from previous teams as well. So you have like a really long historic database for the rider. Um which means that like you can see when the rider was performing the best, what the skin folds were and that becomes then a goal. Um, and with the young rider, you slowly develop and try to basically experiment a bit and then figure out what at what skin folds um, the rider is behaving the best um, in the terrain. Is there any data points that an amateur could track to know if they're sort if their deficit is too aggressive? Like would you look at sleep data, heart rate variability? You mentioned testosterone. Is that worth checking out? Yeah, all those kind of things. But like just looking at the body mass in the morning because um it can be an interesting thing. So for instance, if you like track and have an idea of your um nutritional intake um and then you see in the morning that your body mass is like like 1 kilogram lower than it usually is um then probably you're empty. Um, and it's the same way like if your body mass increases uh suddenly, um, even though it was like the week after like 500 600 grams lower and you were sure that you didn't overeat, that probably also means that you were under recovering. Um, because you start to accumulate water. Um, so I see this with myself all the time. For instance, like I write probably on average like 15 hours a week and the fluctuations goes both ways. Um, if I'm under fueling and feeling fine, um, then the weight will drop. If I am under fueling and not feeling fine, my weight will actually go up. Um, that's interesting. Is mad. Also, you ride 15 hours a week. Like, who coaches the coaches? Who coaches you? I have a coach. Yeah. So, is he a world tour coach? Uh, no. So, yeah, I I I would struggle to to coach you. I think it would be h on that. And just to slightly change gears as we finish up for one last question. I'm kind of fascinated at the moment with the the consequences like the the rewards for performance at the highest level like tour to France win the stage can totally change your life. So the stakes are going up for coaches. The gap between stimulus and adaptation is very wide. How do we close that gap and understand a little bit better if X rider is going to adapt to Y stimulus?

The limits of tracking adaptation

Like you know to use the thresholdy example like you take two riders, you give them both a a protocol of two by 20 minute sessions. It's going to be 6 8 12 16 weeks before we measure if they've adapted to this stimulus versus would we have been better off giving them four by 10 minute threshold sessions. Is there a way to close that gap or is there much research been done into closing that gap? Well, we could do biopsies, but nobody wants to do biopsies. So, I think we are still like it's a lot of trial and error and experience. Um, and like the experienced coaches will yeah have their own methods. Um, I'm not a coach. Um, I I avoid being a coach because there is a big discrepancy of like what science says and like what is measurable and does something that is not. But I kind of have a feeling that still one of the best things and to basically look and track the rider is just asking him like oh or asking them how are you feeling, how are the legs, how are you in general? Um and basically on based on that you can basically get a really good idea of um how you feel. Um I remember a few years ago I tried to track my heart rate variability. every morning on the phone I was like tracking how I feel for China. Yeah. And uh what it was was that my heart rate variability uh was the other way around that it should be because when um I had intervals on plan um I was scared of them. So my heart rate variability dropped and when it was an easy recovery day I was like well it's easy so I'll make it and the variability went up. So yeah um yeah it's I I don't envy the job of a coach. I sat down h in the studio. Steven Barrett was here yesterday to coach for as she does there the catalon and we were talking a lot about this and so much of it is around like modeling what happened in the past but we're so complicated even professional athletes who live quite a sterile life. It's like that stoic saying like a man never walks in the same river twice because it's never the same river and it's never the same man. You're not going to get the same adaptation to the same stimulus that you did last year because you're not the same person. Yeah. even like where the rider is trained, you know, like because I do a lot of like environmental physiology research like it's amazing how much just the humidity in the air will make a difference on how much like how the rider will feel on that particular session and how what will be like. So I think these are all the those factors that like it's so difficult to control and like it's just like an art in the end coaching it's not just science it's an art and science um and it's just like amazing what these guys are doing and sometimes like coaches or athletes need to change coaches just to get a different perspective a different stimulus a different way of thinking and it's just normal I think that sounds like a follow on podcast we need to do about those environmental factors for China stimulus Tim, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

how do pro cyclists stay so lean while riding so much+

According to Tudor Pro Cycling nutritionist Dr Tim Podlogar, WorldTour riders apply an asymmetric fuelling strategy: they create a calorie deficit on easy, low-intensity days while fuelling fully around hard interval sessions. This preserves training quality and recovery while still producing a net weekly energy deficit. Podlogar notes that even classics specialists now match climbers for leanness, with sprinters the only category that remains an outlier.

why do cyclists lose power when eating in a calorie deficit+

Dr Tim Podlogar argues that power itself does not drop in a deficit, but access to that power does. When glycogen stores are depleted through under-fuelling, riders cannot express their full output during hard efforts. The fix is to fuel properly around interval sessions and place the calorie restriction on easy days instead, so training quality is never compromised.

what is fuel for the work required in cycling nutrition+

Fuel for the work required is a periodised nutrition approach where carbohydrate intake is matched to the demand of each specific session. Hard training days receive full carbohydrate fuelling before, during, and after the effort, while easy recovery rides are completed with lower overall calorie and carbohydrate intake. Dr Tim Podlogar uses this framework at Tudor Pro Cycling to help riders lose body fat without sacrificing performance.

how do amateur cyclists calculate calories for weight loss without losing fitness+

The most common mistake, highlighted by Dr Tim Podlogar on the Roadman Cycling podcast, is applying a uniform daily calorie target rather than adjusting intake to match each day's training load. Amateurs end up under-fuelling hard sessions and over-fuelling easy ones, which impairs interval quality and stalls fat loss simultaneously. The correct approach is to set a larger deficit on rest and easy days, and treat fuelling on hard training days as non-negotiable.

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CHAPTERS

Key Takeaways

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CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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