Awesome! Thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping for! I bought the book but it’s next in my queue.
Your personal best way to lose some fat - anecdotes / experiences / examples of what kicked your ***
What is your experience with the DQS system? I read the book, too. But it still sounds strange to me. If you eat more you will be rewarded: if you eat crap you have to note -4. But if you eat 2 bananas it’s ok. But Bananas do contain a relative hugh amount of carbs. So it sounds to me like a good way to improve your diet, but not a good idea to get a caloric deficit. Or do I get something wrong in the calculation? @Jayacher
Key things for me if I want to loose a few lbs are to reduce/cut out alcohol and stop snacking in between meals (or at least replace chocolate with fruit).
On top of this I unusually have a big breakfast, porridge with fruit and a coffee, maybe a toasted bagel when I wake up prior to a training session then breakfast when I get to work. A largeish lunch (eg rice, veg, chicken) with yogurt and a handful of nuts for dessert. Then a very light evening meal.
I’ve been pretty happy with my weight this season and stayed between 77-78kgs, this may increase a bit over winter but I don’t want to go over 80.
The hardest thing I find is eating when not training, my appetite is still big but I’m not burning it off so it’s an easy time to get heavier.
I’ve found that the easiest way to create a moderate deficit is to fast between 18ish and 12ish during weekdays.
B
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I’ve also had good luck too with timer restricted eating, limiting my eating window to 8-12 hours/day. This really helped get those last 5-10 lbs off. The tricky part for me has been fitting this in with training. What I’ve been doing that has seemed to work is to do easy rides fasted, and on hard days have a carby breakfast before the workout. My workouts are usually in the morning, and my schedule is to delay eating until about noon. So hard (or long days) my eating window is a lot longer, but that seems like a good compromise. I haven’t been really sticking to a training plan during the time I have been doing this, but I have been riding regularly. I think I’ve been about maintaining my FTP while losing the weight. I dislike Vo2 work, along with FTP tests, so I haven’t tested recently. Being more committed to these hard workouts is definitely an area of improvement for me.
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Hi. I was referring to the DQS app by Matt Fitzgerald. However, you MUST read the book before embarking on the diet. See my reply to Turtlle_Express below for why…
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One of the main chapters in the book was about eating to satiation and re-training yourself to not over-eat and finish whats on your plate. Matt Fitzgerald even says in the book that if you ignore that chapter, then of course you’ll put on weight. As I said in my original comment, I have a score that i aim for on rest days, a score for race days and a score for days before big races. If I stick to it, it works a treat.
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Thank you.
The other thing to remember about the endurance diet is that it is about fuelling performance. The main portion of the book assumes that what you are trying to do is to fuel performance. There is a whole separate chapter about eating for special needs, which includes specific advice about losing weight. Apart from the foods / quantities that he recommends [cut calories], one thing stands out: do not try to lose weight and to do high IF workouts at the same time.
I feel like there is some nuance to this that would likely need a deep dive to explain fully. On the surface this statement makes sense:
You need to be properly fueled to get the highest performance during demanding workouts. If you’re in a sustained calorie deficit, then likely you’re not optimally fueled. That makes 100% sense to me in a scenario where you looking to lose substantial weight.
But what about being at a ‘good’ weight, but wanting to be at race weight at the end of Speciality? Surely it can’t be true that whatever weight you are at at the end of Base, that’s it, don’t lose any more? Fueling for your hard workouts and smart nutrient timing should still allow the ability to trim say 5lbs in the later stages of training as you are peaking for an important event without compromising your workouts. What do people think?
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It is often written that one shouldn’t count calories. However, for me this is the only way to stay low (and it was a good strategy to get low again after completion of two newborn breaks) .
- Track macros intake with Myfitnesspal (not on rest days or easy training days)
- Weigh myself every morning. I find this really important as a control.
- Set the lowest activity level for base metabolism in Myfitnesspall
- Use my powermeter reported work (kJ) as surrogate for energy expenditure (kcal)
Eating a mainly vegetables/high bulk food helps. Not drinking beer and eating junk food as well.
However, we’re all individuals and what works for one does necessarily work for someone else. Let my body tell me how much to eat does simply not work for me.
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What about the discipline? How do you maintain the discipline and willpower to resist that frosted mug of beer or that bar of Kinder Bueno?
I’m another Myfitness Pal user, when I count calories I lose weight. I have dropped from 104kg to 94kg from Easter this year, heaviest i’ve been was 112kg. My target is 90kg before Christmas.
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Right, I’m 189cm and my cycling adventure started in 2013 when I bought my first road bike. At my heaviest I weighed 110kg, at my leanest just a touch under 72kg. Image below to give you an idea, 2013 vs 2016 when I was at my leanest.
I have a hit and miss approach to weight loss, going down to 85 kg was actually pretty easy, I just started riding the bike and the weight was simply going down at a reasonable pace. 20kg in 2013, 10kg in 2014, 5 kg in 2015. This had me down to 75kg and this is where the issues started - I started gaining weight back even though I cleaned up my diet and was riding more and more every year.
In 2016 I decided to follow the M. Fitzgerald’s Racing Weight Quick Start Guide which yielded amazing results - in 3 months I went down from 78 to 72kg and definitely found my racing weight - this had me at an FTP of 4.8W/kg, and in the spring I was flying up hill. Unfortunately I did nearly all my workouts fasted and that somehow made my body reject carbs during exercise. I was doing pretty well in crits but all the road races I attempted were a disaster, I was crashing after 4 hours, I would literally have a breakfast, hop on the bike after 3 hours and throw everything up half an hour into the race. I’m still baffled at what happened during that year, but I kind of yo-yo’d between then and now, never able to get below 75kg again.
It’s the off season now and my master plan is to drop to 72kg again, only do it smarter - I will fuel my harder workouts and will try to eat mid workout too, I’ve been able to re-train my gut to accept food during exercise again, now I only need to make sure to keep it that way.
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Personally, I wouldn’t get involved in fancy diets and strategies. The only time I lose weight is when I use MyFitnessPal and count my calories. I’ve had McD’s on day’s and lost weight, its just a case of calories in and calories out and all other diets work this way when analysed. Make sure you hook up your Strava to it, so that it puts your exercise calories directly into MFP. Some find it bet ‘fuel your ride’ though, eat more calories before your ride in anticipation of the expenditure.
I was 210lbs and now 168lbs at best, my cycling has been transformed. I haven’t found it too hard tbh. When I stop using MFP though, the weight creeps back on. It also teaches you a lot of about calories and food. You can eat what you want but you naturally lean towards healthier stuff because it is more filling and less calorific. So much rubbish talked about dieting these days, people are getting very confused.
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Thats sometimes hard. The best way for me: there are days when eating small plates and just salad is very easy. This is the day to start. I don’t eat/drink any junk on this day and this leads to another day. Keeping this going at craving days is much easier when you are in a Flow.
Kudos on your extreme weight loss! What foods were you trying to consume during racing/exercising? I find hard foods almost impossible to consume even during endurance workouts. The best solution for me is gels or adding about 30 grams of pure maltodextrin to each of my bottles. Very fast carbs with very neutral taste, and as long as I just sip on my bottles I feel like I get a very steady fuel input. I have to supplement with one gel per hour, but you may not if your body is good at burning fat.
Regarding the vomiting: Have you tried just eating half of the breakfast? If your body is fat-adapted you may not need a big breakfast high in carbs. You could also try experimenting with macros. If the breakfast that made you vomit was mostly carbs, try switching to mostly fat and vice versa. I’d keep proteins at a max of 20 grams. Hope you find a solution!
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Personally, I’ve found 2 days a week of fasting to be the only thing that really works. In 2012 I went from 110ish KG to 70kg. I managed to keep that off for about 4 years until I did a Lands End to John O’Groats (South to North of the UK roughly 1600KM ride). I found after finishing this and stopping training so hard due to boredom and injury together with some personal life issues I went back to around 85KG. I’m still trying to repeat this loss, I keep starting then losing motivation life getting in the way etc, but when I focus on it I can generally lose 0.5-0.7kg a week with two fasted days. From a cycling POV it would really help I’m short at 169cm but have and FTP that varies between 270 and 305 so If I could get down to the middle of healthy weight for my height my WpK would greatly improve.
I find I can perform well for an hours TR workout on a fasted day (although my heart rate is much lower). Outdoors I can ride for up to about three hours on these days so I think it’s at least helping with fat adaption.
Not much to add from the others above, but a few things that work well for me:
Non-fat plain greek yogurt with some fresh fruit mixed in for flavor (add in some frozen strawberries when packing lunch before work and it’s perfect by the time you eat it as a snack) - very filling, tastes good, and gets that protein count up
Oatmeal - learn to love it. I put some Nuts 'n More flavored nut butters in it for taste and to get some protein and fat. Sometimes have it with a scoop of Skratch recovery post work-out to get quick calories in before I shower and get a real meal
Chicken breast and pork tenderloin - both are easy to make and very healthy sources of protein
Salads with balsamic vinegar as the only dressing. Throw some other raw veggies in there for texture (cherry tomatoes, broccoli, whatever you like)
Sweet potatoes - simple to make, delicious even without any toppings. Great carb source
Fresh. Fruit. Said lots of other places in here but it’s filling and not calorie dense
If you’re struggling - weigh everything you eat and track in MyFitnessPal - if you do this for even a week or two you’ll realize where all your calories are coming from and you can decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t
To figure out what I’m burning (and thus what I need to eat) I have power on every ride and use kilo-joules as my calorie burned proxy. I also use an activity tracker off the bike to approximate my metabolic rate. I try to eat less than I burn during base season but not when I’m doing build or racing. I eat to hunger then but still track what I eat to make sure I’m staying +/- 500 calories on a given day.
I find the most efficient calorie expenditure rides tend to be sweet spot base. I typically burn around 900-1000 calories an hour in a sweet spot workout, so on weekdays during SSB I’m actually struggling to get my calorie count high enough before the workout (done after a work day for me) so that I don’t end up eating 1500-2000 calories at 8 PM.
Typical day for me during that would be to try to get around 3,500 calories total (2k resting burned, 1,500-1800 burned on the bike) with at least 2,500 of them coming throughout the day and at most 1,000 coming during the ride and after
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