2015 is here and with it are new goals and challenges. While training may be vastly different for each of us depending on our genre of racing/riding, it’s safe to say we are all striving for a certain “race weight” that we want to be at as we charge into the new season. As endurance athletes, trying to lose weight is never as simple as just cutting calories. We must take into consideration the precious power:weight ratio and make small, calculated steps towards our goal weight. As a professional cross country mountain bike racer, there is no ratio more important to me than power:weight, and I’d like to share with you a few of my secrets in reaching race weight without losing power.
Never Sacrifice Training Fuel
Never, never, never shave calories before a big workout. I understand the reasoning behind this incredibly detrimental weight-loss tactic, but let me explain why this can end up doing more harm than good.
By going into a workout hungry, you’re hurting the way you’ll perform that day. This is because the body has many mechanisms in place to “slow you down” when it knows fuel sources are low in order to protect itself. Even if you’re able to will your way through and still get the workout done, at what cost was your effort? Hungry training equals unpleasant training and can quickly wear you down mentally and physically and lead to burnout.
Further, depleting your body of fuel during a workout can lead to a “starvation mode.” When your body is in this state, any fuel that it receives thereafter will be immediately turned into fat and stored because the body thinks you are going through tough times, so to speak, and is planning ahead. While this may not lead to weight gain under normal conditions due to the caloric debt you’re probably already in when this state is reached, it greatly hinders recovery, so much that it makes the workout almost pointless.
What to do:
Fuel your body regularly before, during, and after workouts. Enjoy a regular meal, rich in complex carbs and healthy fats before, consume adequate carbs every hour during (if a multi-hour workout), and avoid “light” recovery products. Remember, protein needs simple carbs in order to be more efficiently utilized so “low carb” or “sugar free” should never be on the packaging of your recovery drink or meal. There’s a time and place to limit calories and on the bike is neither.
Timing
When you eat is just as important as what you eat when it comes to losing weight. Many attempts to reach race weight fail despite a drastic cut in calories due to this fact. By timing your nutrients correctly throughout the day, you can optimize your metabolism for optimal energy throughout the day as well as fat loss.
What to do:
First thing in the morning, start the day off with an easily digestible protein and carb. It’s important to get this into your system immediately after waking up. This will help jumpstart your metabolism while also getting valuable amino acids and sugar back into your bloodstream to charge you up for the day. A good option here is oatmeal with nonfat milk or greek yogurt with granola.
If it’s a training day, continue to fuel as you normally would for the ride ahead. If not, try to eliminate any feelings of hunger with fibrous foods like fruits, vegetables, or raw nuts. Fiber is your friend when it comes to losing weight since it fills you up but doesn’t stay with you.
Finally, avoid eating 3 hours before going to bed. As the day progresses, your metabolism naturally slows down, reaching it’s lowest levels as you sleep. Calories taken in just before turning in for the night stay with you and hinder many physiological processes that take place while asleep. By going to sleep on an empty stomach, both the digestive and endocrine systems are able to rebalance and recharge themselves for optimal function the next day. Further, important hormones like growth hormone are released as you sleep which help you recover and build muscle and other tissue, but this process happens most efficiently on an empty stomach.
After just a single week of “jumpstarting” your day early with protein and carbs and then going to sleep on an empty stomach, you will start to feel your metabolism picking up. As this happens, the fat starts melting.
Avoid Sugar
This is the one big dietary restriction I would recommend when it comes to getting your weight down. By simply following the first two tips I’ve provided you can make some significant progress. However, when it really comes down to dropping pounds, you need to drop sugar.
What to do:
First off, there is a time and place for sugar. This includes during a high-intensity workout lasting over 2 hours, as well as immediately after a workout with some kind of protein recovery supplement. As discussed above, simple carbs (sugar) drastically improves the rate of which protein can be utilized.
However, when you are not training sugar should be avoided entirely. Even in fruits like berries and apples, sugar content is extremely high. You can get away with this early in the day due to the high amount of fiber that is also in these fruits, but this should be avoided entirely in the late afternoon/evening.
The reason for this is that the metabolic fate of sugar is largely fat storage. Further, the insulin spike that comes with sugar intake can greatly unbalance the endocrine system and interrupt other metabolic processes throughout the body. While simple sugars can work miracles under certain circumstances, they really serve no purpose in day-to-day life.
These are the pillars of my yearly descent to race weight and I hope they help you reach your best power:weight ratio ever in 2015.
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So when do you limit calories if you have a regular workout routine and are trying to cut back on consumption? I workout in the evenings most every workday. At what time of the day should I reduce the ~500 calories I am reducing every day. (500 calories off my maintenance intake, including the workout effort). Do I reduce breakfast? I get that we perform better when we fuel properly, but if weight loss is the primary goal, or at least at equal priority with performance, then when do you reduce. From your piece it basically sounds as if weight loss and performance are incompatible (which probably is true), but I have to lose weight.
That’s a great question, Neil. Here’s what I would recommend… Don’t eat a huge breakfast, but definitely eat first thing in the morning. Like I mention in the article, it’s very important to get your blood sugar up and get some amino acids into your system first thing in the morning. Unless you feel unbearable hunger, try to keep this limited intake up throughout the day, still consuming small/nutritious amounts of carbs, protein, and healthy fats throughout the day in order to simply keep your metabolism going and to maintain the body’s physiological processes. This is the time, though, to limit your calories in order to start burning fat and losing weight.
Depending on your schedule, I would recommend planning a substantial/healthy dinner before your workout, preferably 2 hours before. After your workout, have a small recovery drink (some kind of protein/carb beverage) and then just drink water for the rest of the night. Like I discussed, you shouldn’t be starving when you go to bed, but your stomach should be empty if you plan the early dinner and your workout correctly. Hope this helps!
Hi Trevor – Nice article. I like how it’s simple. I have a question about timing. Due to my schedule, I workout during the week first thing in the morning (get up at 5:30 and pressing start on the Garmin/TR app around 40-45 minutes after the alarm sounds). What’s your advice for fueling timing in that situation?
Thanks, Paul. I actually find myself in a similar situation quite often when I do strength training early in the mornings during the winter. The trick is to eat as quickly as possible once you get up in the morning, and find the right balance between adequate fuel and not eating too much that it upsets your stomach during your workout. With shorter TR workouts, you will be good with a small breakfast, but it needs to be adequate in carbs in order to quickly get sugar into your blood. For me, I like a cup of coffee, a banana, and a handful of granola. To help get this in as quickly as possible, set everything out and get your quantities figured out the night before, so as soon as you’re out of bed, you can eat.
After the workout, I like to have one substantial meal still early in the morning, but then start limiting my intake for the rest of the day.
Very informative blog! Honestly, I want to lose weight, but I don’t know what and where should I start. Thank you for this blog, for sharing and giving me some ideas what to do.
My pleasure, Michelle. You’re not alone with this challenge.
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[…] my post on eating to lose weight, I’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding the specifics around what should and should […]
Hi Trevor, thanks for the article.
I’m following the TR workout plans and I have a big climbing race coming up in July (Marmotte in the Alps….16,000ft climbing in 1 day!!!).
I’m currently 162lbs and I reckon I need to lose another 14lbs. I have 10 weeks. I’m going to have to cut the Climbing speciality phase by 1 week as I understand the build is more important (please advise on that if you can….which should I chop, build or speciality). I’ve done base and now I’m on build.
My issue is I’m struggling with the business end of the workouts as I try to balance the continual weight loss AND build my ptw ratio for those hills (mountains). I think my nutrition is the issue.
I’ve been eating early in the evening AND training whilst fasted. My last meal in the evening is at 6 and then I don’t eat until AFTER my training session the following morning but I struggle with those workouts and sometimes bomb out. Is it simply because I don’t have enough fuel????
Like another responder, I climb out of bed at 5.30am and 15 minutes later I’m on the turbo. Do I need to give myself an extra 15 mins to get some fuel inside me? And will it really have an impact THAT quickly???
What sort of quantities/mix should I aim for for my pre workout fuel?
Thanks for your help – this is starting to stress me out!
Peter
A very good article. I agree that it is best to avoid extreme behavior changes. If we are in our weight-loss phase (adjusting our BMI to it’s correct index) we are just going to choose our calorie number so it’s less than the daily requirement to maintain our current weight. For example, if we weigh 175 lbs. and we want to weigh 155, we are going to choose fewer calories than the height/weight table says we need to maintain that 175 lb. weight. For most of us, a daily caloric intake restricted to 1400 calories will result in steady, painless, weight loss.
Excerpt From: Mike Stair. “200 calories Every 2 hours.”