Hands down the best article and website I’ve seen this year. Thanks for sharing…legendary!
Your personal best way to lose some fat - anecdotes / experiences / examples of what kicked your ***
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Andreas, thanks a lot for taking your time to read my post and write a good reply. I was trying to keep my story short but I think it needs a little more background information. I had a bike crash and due to the injuries and surgery I was basically stuck to training indoors between November 2016 and February 2017. 4 months of perfect diet and structured training - first 2 months were following the 8 week program from the Racing Weight Quick Start (minus most of the strenght training as I could not move my upper body much), the other 2 were high volume SS base at TR.
Before this period I never trained on an empty stomach, but all the fasted rides during the base phase (I did 95% of them fasted) somehow made my gut very bad at digesting under load. So while I was leaner and stronger, I honestly couldn’t ride more than 3 hours at high intensity. When I finally could train outdoors I went to a training camp with a bunch of friends and as it was in Spain and I thought I needed energy, I hit the cakes and pastries HARD (as I normally do every year without any issues). I think my average Mallorca breakfast was at 3 pastries/sweet buns and a piece of cake, all of which I would vomit out after starting the ride. Then I would try to eat again with the same effect. Weird thing is I was still flying up hills and setting PRs everywhere, but the rides were long and hard and all I could hold in my stomach was basically water.
Just to give you an idea on how long these semi-fasted rides were:
After that disaster I ended up regaining much of the lost weight very rapidly, now after having read the Obesity Code I think I know what went wrong back then. I’ve had no refined carbs for 4 months and then just hit my system with a sugar overload causing a massive insulin spike.
It took me over a year but I finally managed to get my gut to digest during exercise again, but at a cost of being slightly heavier than before. 3 weeks ago I did an event in Luxembourg where I felt like I really nailed down the nutrition, 5 hours at an IF 0.9, no dips, I started and finished strong (fueled almost exclusively on clif bar bloks).
This year I’m planning to repeat the Racing Weight Quick Start, want to drop 7kg in 4 months, this should be doable. I’m now smarter with my past experience and will try to introduce carbs into my non-fasted workouts and eat less off the bike.
As you said Andreas, I will experiment with having a smaller breakfast and a different macro composition of it, I struggle with the idea of not eating enough and I tend to increase my food intake in expectation of heavy rides.
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I do pretty much the opposite. If i go to sleep hungry i wake up several times a night. I work out first thing in the morning and would have a lot of trouble completing them if i had a pretty light dinner the night before.
I can deal with being hungry much better during the day at work since i usually have a pretty good water habit there, drinking several liters during the work day and i only have the food i brought with me.
Happy to help! This website really helped me get a grasp on weight loss/weight control, and I’ve seen terrific results.
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Hi,
my second best approach was to sleep low. Empty the carb tank, eat low carb and go to bed. This made me go 83,3 → 76,5Kg
My best approach is to push resting metabolic rate as high as possible. And then try keeping it high. Fasting will lower it quickly, so regular food intake, regular exercise. Basically start a fire and try keep it burning. Go for high quality carbs.
Replace bad food with good quality, e.g. white bread → oats.
76,5 → 73,5Kg → 4W/Kg+
-JP
Hello,
check Faster Podcast by FLO S1E8. They had Dr. Stacy Sims on, and she refers to athletes overdoing carb restriction and basically yo-yo between catabolic and anabolic state. What she explains sounds a lot like this.
-JP
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Welp, I downloaded myfitnesspal and started tracking my calories. It works to prevent me from eating junk food. Thanks for the recommendation!
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.9 IF for 5 hours means your FTP is wrong
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I’ve lost about 15lbs in the last two months, and am halfway to my goal weight. I’m using intermittent fasting, so I eat once at noon and once at 6:30 after my ride, and that’s about it. I’m not counting calories or macros, and just making sure I limit my simple carbs to almost zero. Lots of sweet potatoes and quinoa, brown rice, salads. If I have a long hard ride I’ll use gels and simple carbs and fuel the workout as appropriate. So far it’s working, when it stops working or I feel I’m not getting enough fuel I will reassess. Cheers!
What you need, @konradkowara, is a big gulp of common sense 
Not only did you hit your system with a massive sugar overload, but also a massive amount of fat. Fat is so much harder for your body to digest during physical activity. Especially coming off such a long period with fasted riding. Correct me if I’m wrong, but being fat adapted doesn’t mean your body digests fat any faster. It just means your body is better at using fat you’ve already digested (and stored) as a fuel source. Personally I don’t think it’s just the amount of carbs that made you puke, I think it’s the combination of everything you stuffed in your mouth AND hitting the bike hard right afterwards.
If it were me, I’d stay away from the cakes for breakfast and rather go for some slow-release carbs at least two hours before my ride. I’m not fat adapted, though. You may fare better with just getting on your bike and start fueling during your ride, assuming it doesn’t start at race pace. Cakes and pastries can be taken in during your ride, when your metabolism is already going. In moderation, though 
I think that increasing food intake before big days on the bike is smart. But it’s something that should be done gradually in the days leading up to the ride, not as a 2000 calorie shock-breakfast right before you jump on your bike. Common sense, dude 
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Ha ha, common sense and moderation don’t seem to be words in my vocabulary. But I’m world class in excess and exaggeration 
. Hopefully my story will help prevent someone from doing the same dumb mistakes, suffice to say after 8 days of training camp and 28000Kj according to the power meter I managed to gain 5kg - while the rest of the guys I was with lost 1-2 kg each. We ate the same stuff, only I’m 10 years older than the guys I train with, pretty sure my age has something to do with this too.
But again, I know what to do and as I already mentioned I’ve recently had the best fueled ride of my life, 5 hours at race pace, taking in a steady 250kcal an hour. I think my gut is getting back to normal now.
I have a dexa scan scheduled next week and want to follow the Racing Weight Quick Start program for the next 8 weeks. I promised myself to be a bit more reasonable this time, I will not go back to cakes and pastries at the start of my build phase, but I will also try to keep my gut trained by eating something during the exercise - this seems to work best for me. I’ll do another dexa in December to check on the progress.
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I don’t think I would worry too much about the weight gain, although 5 kg sounds a bit excessive for just 8 days. The body holds 3-4 grams of water per gram of carbohydrate consumed, so I’m guessing most of the weight was water. Some of the weight will be muscle, and the remaining will be fat. In the end I’d rather gain weight than lose weight in a week of hard training. Your body will start consuming muscle tissue if you don’t fuel well, and it takes hard work to build muscle. Your riding mates may well have lost muscle tissue.
Your gut is likely back to normal if you are able to consume 250 kcal per hour. If we’re talking pure carbs that’s 62.5 grams, which is the max for a lot of people (depending on the ratio of glucose to fructose). In theory you should be able to consume 90 grams of carbs per hour if 30 of those are fructose, but I digress.
If I were you I wouldn’t stay away from fasted riding, but rather follow the general recommendation of 1-2 fasted rides per week. It’s not all or nothing, you know And I’d limit the fasted rides to the ones with the lowest intensity. That way you can train both fat adaptation and carb utilization during high intensity exercise. Yay!
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After 6-7 years of no exercise due to a new job with more responsibility and lots and lots of travel, I gained a ton of weight. Relocation and new job that lets me work from home, and I’ve now lost 60lb in the past year and am back to fighting weight.
Working from home is great for some things (no commute = two extra hours a day for training!) and not great for others (too easy to snack all day). I didn’t really diet - but I start tracking what I ate using MyFitnessPal - not going for uber-accurate; ballpark was fine - but I found that was enough to get me to avoid mindless snacking. Also made it easier to ensure I was keeping a small calorie deficit. I cut out beer on weekdays. That was the extent of my dieting.
The rest was simply getting on the bike for at least an hour 5-6 times a week. Once that became a habit, the weight just came right off, and it was easy because I never felt like I was ‘dieting’ - when meal time came around, I ate mostly what I wanted.
Neat little trick as I posted on the FB page recently - the stronger you get on the bike, the more calories you burn for the same workout!
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My story is pretty much the same as @WattsUp. I peaked at 210lbs due to a combo of loving food and beer, not exercising a lot (hated going to the gym, so hiking and skiing were my only exercise, which is hard to do the amount needed to stay fit when you work a fulltime job!) and working either at home or in the office where there are plenty of high calorie treats abound!
Decided I’d always wanted to get into road cycling, so I’d give it a shot. Bought a bike and a trainer for the winter months, and in less than 6 months dropped 30lbs, and in a year 50. Tried to ride anywhere from 4-7 hours a week, cut back beer on week days, and started cooking for all my meals (no more going out for lunch at work) and really focus on lowering my carb intake off the bike.
Once I hit a comfortable weight I relaxed my restrictions and have plateau’d which is fine, I enjoy the occasional beer / wine with dinner, and graham crackers as dessert past 8pm 
!
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What do you do for hydration during training rides? I typically drink nuun water and find that it helps. The caloric intake isn’t too bad for what I’m doing.
Using hydration mixes when they are warranted is fine, ie. during longer training rides over 1-1.5hr where your glycogen levels will start to deplete is fine. Drinking gatorade all day because you just like the taste when water would suffice is where people get into trouble with recovery drinks.
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I’m using Science in Sport electrolyte tabs
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As a physician I frequently give out advice I learned from Matt Fitzgerald’s book Racing Weight. These are simple, FREE tips that should really be daily habits and always help me lose fat.
- only eat when you are hungry
- keep a food diary
- weigh daily
- drink a glass of water right before every meal
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Absolutely agree. I don’t need Gatorade anyway. I only use the hydration when I’m working out or if I need a quick fix while I’m at work.
late to the thread… with a more athletic build (= I carry some body fat) its pretty easy to lose weight. We’ve always eaten ‘clean’ and I’ve always cooked. So losing weight is fairly easy - cut back on beer, crank up the burn a little bit, and it all works out. I’m ok with not being a gc guy on climbs, so take that with a grain of salt.