I’m trying to lose some weight in a slow, sensible way. My plan is to preserve lean mass, while improving performance and/or losing some fat in the process. Currently I estimate to be around 15% of body fat.
Coming from a “bodybuilding” sort of background, I’m counting calories on a daily basis and eating at maintenance; no more on training days, but no less on rest days. Caloric intake is based on healthy carbs (55%) to fuel workouts and lean proteins (0.9g per lbs) for muscle recovery. Paradoxically I tend to under-eat, so I count calories to prevent this as well.
In a month and a half, while training in the SSB/Low Volume I, I have lost around around 1/1.5 kg (while slightly increasing my FTP, or so it seems).
Is this a reasonable plan or should I tweak something? I don’t race, just train/ride for fun and I’m not on hurry for anything, just want to have fun when summertime will come, and longish climbs will be waiting for me (and my fitter friends).
Check out this podcast Special Guest: Amber Pierce – Ask a Cycling Coach 193 There’s a very helpful discussion on here about nutrition and the Q&A that @ambermalika did online (scroll down on the link above) provides some really interesting thinking on bike nutrition, particularly on fuelling your ride and post ride nutrition.
So far, that is on the trainer, the calories burned on the bike put me at a negative number of calories for the day.
As I start hitting the road, I will fuel pre, during, and post ride of course, but usually on road days I’m not so strict on calorie counting (since I can’t be 100% sure of how much I burned anyway).
it sounds ok. In my opinion you could reduce the protein to around 1,6g/KG Bodyweight. But that’s my personal view.
Maybe you could get some benefits from this topic and share some of your results later.
You will almost certainly do fine on the weight loss side of things by continuing along your current plan.
Eventually you may find that your performance on the bike is compromised if you are only taking in a ‘maintenance’ amount of calories on training days.
I would suggest that a potentially better way to work is to fuel for your training days by taking on extra carbs before/on the bike. Couple that with a fairly small caloric defecit (250 calories or so) on rest days and your performance should be maintained with a slow weight loss.
I’d second @willball12 and say your training days may be too restrictive in the long term if you want to gain/maintain watts while losing kg’s. Unless you’re doing a LV plan, that would seem more doable.
Ultimately if it’s working for you and you’re getting the results you want stick to it, just be aware and vigilant of the issues which might crop up if you have a lot of days per week with much more than a 500 calorie deficit.