Your personal best way to lose some fat - anecdotes / experiences / examples of what kicked your ***

During workouts I also use the SiS electrolyte tabs. Minimal calories and tastier than water.

I only use gels on harder workouts of more than 60 minutes. For 2+ hour workouts I will skip a gel and have an energy bar.

I tried the SIS recovery drink powders, but stopped as I suspect the extra calories (200+) offset any potential recovery gains unless I’m doing 3-5 hour rides.

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By the way, are you familiar with this tool. Personally I just found this and felt this could be really helpful planning a diet.

And please tap expert mode.

NIH body weight planner

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Agreed with this. I only use recovery drinks for rides >2000kj currently.

I’ll pop a gel for a 2nd hour of a sweet spot work where I have 2 or more intervals left and I’ve been using the SiS gels every 90 minutes on longer endurance rides.

I lost 8 kg in 4 months (75 kg to 67 kg by 180 cm) by elimating processed carbs and upping the fat. No counting calories and no hunger. At first I was kind of strict with a really low carb intake < 25 g a day. Insulin was really low, not much hunger to talk about. I had to remind myself to eat sometimes.

This was 6 years ago and I’m still 67 kg. Back then i didn’t work out, all weight lost without training. Now I train 8 hours a week and still eat moderately low carb. Probably around 100-200 g a day from sources as vegetables, sweet potatoes, rice and fruit. This provides better and quicker recovery from high intensity workouts.

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I choose it by the work I’ve done. Indoor trainings followed by dinner : no shakes. Outdoor slow shorter rides: no shakes. Hard Intervall work without a real meal within the next hour: shake.
As Indo my workouts right before dinner I’m mostly well fueld by breakfast and snack/lunch so I’m not really a while-workout-fueler.

I have this at least once a day, although I go further - natural/ plain yogurt mixed with a scoop of flavoured whey (either strawberry or vanilla in my case). I used to have a whey shake made with milk, or a smoothie, but this is lower calorie, higher protein and eating a bowl of something is more satisfying. I generally top with something for a bit of crunch - muesli/ granola/ cornflakes even.

Also, while I used to be fit in granola bars for snacks, the last few months I’ve switched to apples. There’s a cliche that if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not really hungry. Seems to be true for me!

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For anyone who does well on an equal macro diet, the Labrada Lead Body meal replacement shakes have been a good breakfast item for me on days that I’m not doing any significant workouts. They are by far the best tasting shakes I’ve found (especially Strawberry and Cinnamon Bun)

A homemade cappuccino with whole milk, and then a shake with two scoops of the Labrada mix, some unsweetened almond milk, ice, and a banana blended together is 18g of fat, 48g of protein, and 45g of carbs.

This will keep me satisfied until lunch time pretty easily.

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Impressive work!

I’m the same height and I’m shooting for around 67-68kg, although I’ll be happy with anything under 70kg.

This is interesting to me - I might give it a try. I enjoy the flavor of the fresh fruit and am getting plenty of protein already but am always looking for a little variety

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I probably over shoot on my protein intact compared to the recommended for endurance “athlete’s”, just to be sure. The strawberry whey/ plain yogurt mix is really really nice though! It works well with vanilla, but disappointingly with chocolate whey it isn’t quite as nice as I hoped.

With my usual brand of 0% Fat Greek Yogurt and Strawberry Cream Whey, it’s 164 calories for 30g protein (based on 100g yogurt and 25g Whey). The shake made with 200ml of Low Fat Milk and the same whey is 194 cals for 25g of protein, and perhaps more importantly gone in seconds and I’m looking for something else to eat…

Overshooting protein by a little when in a calorie deficit is okay, as long as you aren’t going crazy. 1g per pound of lean body mass (i.e. subtract body fat from 1 then multiply by weight) is recommended to maintain existing muscle.

I’ll also use BCAA drink supplement while on a deficit since it has been shown to prevent catabolic breakdown and also prevents DOMS from workouts.

I’m so far over that with protein it is kind of comical. This morning I was 167 lbs and 42% muscle mass (per my scale), so roughly 70g of protein. With my calorie burn for today + my workout I’ll need to consume around 3700 calories (2200+1500) - of which I’ll eat about 173g of protein (575g carbs and 94g of fat).

How does that formula for protein work?

Rough math;
Typically you want to shoot for around 40% protein intake so if you’re 167 your standard caloric intake (not accounting for workouts) should be around 1670cal/d
Of that you want 1g per lb of body weight so that’s 167g, each g/protein equals 4 cals so 668cals. 668/1670 = 40%

When you scale that up to your 3600-3700cals given the workouts you are doing that’s closer to 1450cals from protein. You could on days like this shift to more carb heavy % and maybe drop to like 30-35% but you dont want to drop it too much. You’re still looking at like 1250cals from protein. This isn’t too hard when you look at greek yogurt, chicke, eggs, protein shake, etc as part of your regular meals.

Sorry, let me edit. I should have written (1-bodyfatpercentage)*bodyweight. So if you are 20% bf, (1-.2)*167 = 133g protein

That makes more sense, but is still a very generic formula. I’m at ~10% BF, so for me it’d be 0.9*167=150g protein/day - doesn’t seem to track well.

That is very low caloric burn for a day for me (or most people I’d suspect). I’m a 6’3 167 lb 10% body fat male with an office job (sedentary except when I’m on the bike) and everything I’ve read puts it somewhere around 2100-2200 calories/day + workout.

Where did you get the ‘weight in lbs’ * 10 = ‘expected caloric expenditure’ formula? It doesn’t seem to line up with anything I’ve read previously or found in a quick refresher search

All methods of calculating BMR and TDEE are going to be close approximations, a good place to start. You still will have to manage the variables as best you can, put your plan into practice, measure the results and adjust as needed.

I like this calculator as it’s pretty easy to use (you can find quite complicated ones) https://www.muscleforlife.com/tdee-calculator/

For someone at 167 lbs, 10% body fat who exercises a lot (over 6 hours a week), BMR is a shade over 1800 and TDEE around 2700. If you’re trying to shave a few lbs off that, aim for around 300-500 calories per day under that, so somewhere in the 2200 to 2400 window.

Very interesting - thanks for posting.

I prefer to track it a little differently than putting in the generic ‘exercise X hours a week’ values. This is because everything I do on the bike has power so I know pretty precisely what my energy expenditure is from my workouts. I’ve been working under the assumption that it is better to take my normal daily activity level minus the bike and then directly add in the bike calories from the power meter numbers.

Thus I figure somewhere between 2000-2200 depending on the activity level of the day + whatever kilojoules I burn on the bike. This would mean on days I don’t ride I can eat around 2k and be fine, and on riding days I can step up my intake based on the ride burn (today will be around 1,450 kj for doing Tallac+2)

It was linked previously in one of the earlier posts and I cannot seem to get quote on quote working in this forum. The “multiply by 10” is basically for a sedentary individual, hence the comment to add workout(s). Either way, don’t stress the base number of cals, pick what you want. Point was to scale in an appropriate fashion your protein intake.

I think the more traditional way to think about calorie usage is:

  • The energy required to make all your organs operate (BMR). This would be your energy needs if you slept and then sat on the sofa all day
  • Plus the energy required to live your normal life; walking the dog, washing the dishes, do your job, exercise (TDEE). Even this statement has a huge variability, your energy needs are vastly different if you work at a desk all day compared to someone who works in construction. Equally, 6 hours a week of VO2Max intervals clearly is not comparable to walking on a treadmill while checking Instagram.

So, you might want to look at your BMR, add a few hundred calories for daily life, then some kind of average daily exercise amount. If you know you burn 7,000 calories in a normal week across 5 cycling workouts, add 1,000 per day. So, you might end up with something like 1,800 (BMR) + 1,000 (daily average cycling expenditure) + 200 (daily life) - 500 (calorie deficit) = 2,500 average daily consumption.

I’m using daily averages here since weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint. I think trying to calculate daily energy needs based on workout days vs non-workout days is too granular to manage easily. You will have variation no matter how tightly you try to manage it: your workout that you cut short, the 1/2 cup of oats that’s slightly overfilled, the long walk with your wife that you didn’t account for, the tablespoon of olive oil that was actually 2, etc. I know that if I exercise consistently and pay attention to my rough nutrition plan and do my best to avoid indulgent snacking, over the course of several weeks I’ll see my weight tick down and visually see changes in the mirror. When I don’t, the opposite happens.

Ultimately, you have to find your own way to make it work for you. In my experience it’s very easy to overestimate your energy needs and the impact of unaccounted for food intake leading to frustrating plateaus or even weight accumulation.

It’s impressive. Could you give some examples of some of your meals, @stekla79?