Don't know a cyclist that's not trying to lose some weight
I don't know a cyclist that's not trying to lose some weight. Even cyclists that are pretty close to peak from and are at 5-6% body fat, everyone in cycling is obsessed with losing weight. Today I want to talk to you about the calorie miss. Let's get into the intro. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long changes. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman! I'm back for another Roadman Bites podcast. My vocal range is just so amazing. If only people love to listen to me sing as much as I love to sing I'd be rich and famous. Well man, thank you for tuning in again. Today it's a topic I know is on the tip of everyone's tongue, it's nutrition and it's the calorie myth and I'm going to give you one really simple nutritional change you can make which is easy, easy, easy to do and it has a huge profound effect. The problem I find with nutrition is people are militant. People have almost political like views with nutrition where we're absolutely married to one nutritional viewpoint. And I don't know why nutrition elicits such emotional response from people. I suppose that's because food is one of the things people derive a lot of pleasure from. So they're fiercely defensive of any information, the challenges, the way they behave at the moment. Hopefully this information challenges you, but challenges you in a way that you're open to adapting it and not just immediately dismiss it because it doesn't line up with your views. Because what I will say, what you've done all along has got you to where you are now. So if you're absolutely 100% happy where you are now, great. You don't need to listen to the rest of this podcast. Or maybe you do to confirm that, okay, I was on the right road all along. This message is for people who aren't 100% happy, who still feel there's room for body composition changes, still feel there's room to improve their energy, to improve their power on the bike. That's who it is podcasted for. And I would encourage you to jump on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's the way you can buy me a coffee, you can buy me a point, you can tip the cap and say Anthony thank you for coming day in day out with this podcast. I'm deriving a lot of benefits from the wards you're bringing me or maybe you're deriving a marginal benefit. Really the question is, are you deriving enough benefits to buy me a coffee to say thanks? And for me that really keeps this show on the road. So I do thank you for your kindness and your generosity.
I've called this podcast the calorie miss because I think that's what…
I've called this podcast the calorie miss because I think that's what it is. We're under the assumption that calories are created equally when they're not. And we have apps like my fitness path where we look to measure things like calories in for a day and by not having calories weighted, like for example, 10 calories of carrots is the same as 10 calories of chocolate. A 1000 calories of ice cream is the same as a 1000 calories of steak. Now, immediately when you're listening to this, you'll go, well, that doesn't sound right. But that's the basic premise for how apps like my fitness power work and how a lot of us have have been looking at nutrition. So if you're looking to lose weight, a lot of people count their calories and then have some sort of caloric restriction where they are taking in 2,500 at the moment and I'm at 80 kilograms. Now I'm gonna move back to 2,200 and over a period of weeks, hopefully my weight comes down from 80 kilograms down to 78 kilograms. That's the underlying assumption most of us go with. But folks, calorie is just a number. It's a completely arbitrary value to measure the amount of energy in a food. The number itself is meaningless. We need to think about the food and what effect that has, what message does that food send to the brain. So I want you to think for a second about a 2000 calorie day and we're going to contrast two different types of 2000 calorie days. So first we wake up in the morning and we have porridge with honey and maybe a glass of orange juice and a croissant. And then at lunch we have some, we have a pasta bake and for a snack later on the day we might have a bar of chocolate, then we come home for dinner and we have, you know, spuds, a big normal potato dinner with some beans and I don't know, a bit of meat. So we'll say that portions are whatever they are to the point that it adds up to a 2000 calorie day. Now we contrast that day with a different 2000 calorie day where you wake up in the morning and instead of the porridge orange juice cross on breakfast you have Scramble eggs smoked salmon avocado breakfast then at lunch you have fish and salad and at dinner You might have a sweet potato with a steak and some vegetables So both 2000 calorie days we're gonna say for the sake of this but the signals from The first example I gave the high carb day they're actually preventing your body from burning fat because what they're doing is your body's being forced to release insulin in response to the carbs and insulin blocks the fat-burning capabilities of your body. Insulin turns off those fat-burning systems so we have the exact same calories split up on different macro nutrient distributions and in example A it's turned off there's no fat-burning capability, but with the different macro set up in the second day that I gave an example of, we have the fat-burning turned on, insulin is not present, so fat as a fuel source is possible.
Is food for thought, if you're looking to block your fat-burning…
So that is food for thought, if you're looking to block your fat-burning pathway, you need to be going with example A and that high carbohydrate day, which I suspect that a lot of us are doing, but I suspect not a lot of us are looking to block our fat burning pathway. If you're looking to utilize fat as a fuel source and start shaving off body fat, getting a little bit leaner and have a slower energy release, you need to start gravitating towards the second example I gave of a day where your micronutrient composition is fat and protein as your two main fuel sources and not carbohydrates. So calories should not be their focus for you. You should focus on the quality of food you're eating and in particular you should focus on the curb content so as not to block those fat-burning capabilities. So I hope this short podcast has got you to challenge a little bit of your thinking and one of the overarching goals I have for this podcast is for you to be a little bit more mindful of everything you're doing. Mindful when you go out the door as to what training sessions you're doing and why and the response you get from them. Mindful when you're putting stuff on your plate as to why you're eating it and what response your body's going to get for it. Did it switch on insulin? Did it turn off insulin? Is this allowing me to burn more fat? Is this blocking my ability to burn fat? It's an overarching goal I have and today's podcast was just to get you to be a little bit more mindful around your diet. So next time you're shoveling something into your mouth, just think to yourself, is this switching on my fat burning or is this switching off my five-boarding. Is this in? Is this line to open my goals around body composition? Or is this working against me? Now, it's definitely worked going back and listened to the podcast last Wednesday where I interview ex-world horror, ex-BMC nutritionist Barry Murray. Barry has a fascinating insight on diet and he's one of the world leading experts on diet body composition, sustainable energy. Definitely worked less than that. It's a fascinating podcast. This is one of the tippets that I took from that and it's something that's been very powerful and transformed for a lot of clients that I'm walking with. Hope you enjoyed the podcast and I'll see you tomorrow. Enjoy your day and be safe out there.