What’s your fat percentage? I did not put it in a program to calculate but off hand — as long as you are eating on the bike — it seems that you need more fat in the diet.
Consider your use of smoothies as a snack. Liquid forms of food allow you to consume more energy without triggering satiety. So perhaps limit smoothies to post-workout where replenishment is critical, there’s a gap to your next meal and you don’t have time to prepare something more food-like.
You haven’t specified what time of day you are training. You should take this into account with the timing and structure of meals before and after, depending on the proximity.
OP, sound like a bird diet TBH. Quinoa?! Gross.
Keep eating a meal until you’re full. Then you won’t feel hungry after a meal (obviously). None of the food is bad that you listed, so just eats lots more of it until you’re satisfied. If you eat ‘whole grains’ and most of your plate is carbs and vegetables, you basically can’t eat enough of it to get fat or sick. It’s when you start adding ultra processed foods to your diet that your body starts to balloon.
Also a pro tip is to drink lots of water and you feel full.
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Reduce the fat and increase the carbs, stop restricting food. High carb low fat will improve insulin sensitivity, along with many other biomarkers, and will in fact improve or reverse T2 diabetes. If you’re hungry, eat more. Try eating so much plain rice and potatoes that you are sick of eating, then do it again, and then do it again. At some point your body will stop being hungry, and you will literally stop craving foods because your body is consistently getting what it needs. Food restriction is the problem…
I don’t know if that is the solution. When I read the original post I see someone who is a bit of a hypochondriac - a 29 year old doing a mid-volume plan and thinks they have diabetes? They also come across as a bit carb/sugar phobic - maybe slightly eating disordered as well?
The guy is ramping up to mid-volume and is starving. His body is telling him to eat! Forget a few jelly beans before bed: start eating bowls of oatmeal, rice, cereal to support 8-12 hours per week of training. That much training represents like 40 extra bowls of rice per week!
I don’t advise ditching your doctors when they give you the cold hard truth that didn’t align with one’s self diagnosis.
I’m wondering more abut the nutritionist who cut the guys calories for no apparent reason while he is trying to ramp up to mid volume training. Was this a sports nutritionist? The OP hasn’t filled in some key details like whether they are trying to lose weight.
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Assuming you have also been assessed medically and a physician has no clinical concerns that you have diabetes or anything exotic…
OP. Don’t overthink this. If you have increased the amount that you are training, and concurrently decreased your daily calorie consumption, and feel hungry, the solution is usually to… eat more. Shocking, I know.
Your sample meals are all… very light on calories, especially carbs, though it really depends on how much you’re eating.
What’s your height and weight, how many calories are you eating in a day, and has your weight changed at all in the past weeks to months?
If you’re on a MV plan and are relatively average sized person, you would be looking at eating 3000-3500 calories a day to maintain weight. That’s like 500+g of carbs a day to eat.
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Agree. OP hasn’t given quite enough useful information, but reading between the lines that was my concern as well.
The story of “I started exercising more, and eating less, and now I don’t know why I feel really hungry so I’m worried I have diabetes even though my doctor said no,” is kind of eyebrow raising at best.
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Well I wanted to reply individually to some points but I haven’t had the time.
For some more information, I am 29 year old, I started taking structured training seriously for a year and a half ago.
My height is 1.82cm, and when I started cycling I was around 61kg 71kg, and never had problems with weight, since I don’t particularly like to eat. Right now, and the past few months, I have been around 69kg 79kg. EDIT: Somehow I wrote the weight wrong.
From this time I have tried many things, because it started way back a year or so ago. I tried initially increasing protein, by quite a lot, because all the nutrition education I had was from my failing attempts at going to the gym.
Then I started fulling quite heavily on the bike 30g of carbs min even for endurance sessions.
This to say I tried several strategies to deal with hunger, and I have yet found one that works, but what bothers me more is when is just too much and causes this side effects I mentioned.
–
Some people asked feeling on the bike. Since the weather is not good I have just been indoor training, either 1H for Vo2 / SS / Endurance or 1:30 Threshold day. For the 1H workouts I eat some carbs, in form of fruit and ontbijtkoek (dutch sugary pastry) + muesli bar or bread, before my workout (about 1H-2H), and nothing during the workout. For threshold day I do 30g of carbs on the bike and 50g of muesli after. As recommend by my nutricionist.
Before I was doing more carbs, and was also wondering if that was what was contributing the my hunger. - Because it could just be sugar spikes?
–
For food during the day I have summarised the plan from the nutritionist with an LLM (I just didn’t want to dox anyone).
Breakfast:
- Option 1: Oatmeal with milk, fruit, flaxseeds/chiaseeds, and raisins/dried fruits/berries
- Option 2: Quark/yoghurt with muesli, fruit, flaxseeds/chiaseeds, and raisins/dried fruits/berries
Lunch:
- A big meal/salad OR 4 slices wholegrain bread with toppings + vegetables + fruit
Afternoon snack:
- 1 piece of fruit
Dinner:
- 100-150g meat/fish/eggs/tofu/legumes
- Large portion of vegetables
- 100-125g wholegrain carbohydrate (quinoa, couscous, pasta, rice, potatoes, tortillas)
- Herbs, spices, salt, and other flavorings
Before sleep:
- 200-250g low-fat quark/skyr (or lactose-free alternative)
- 1 piece of fruit in the training days
–
I want to go back to the thread when I have some more free time to answer some questions separately.
Seriously, I have no idea why you are eating so little. One fruit for a snack? Yoghurt with muesli for breakfast without any added carbs? 4 slices of wholegrain bread for lunch? 30g carbs is “a lot” for an endurance ride? There’s so much to unpack here…
You are 70kg and do serious endurance training. If we go by the standard 8g/kg of bw of carbs, that puts your need of carbs at 560g. That is A LOT more than you consume right now! I am larger than you at 84kg, but here is an example on how I would eat on a day with one light 2h endurance ride (I generally ride 12-15h per week, ftp around 350w).
Breakfast:
- 150g oats, topped with 30g of raspberry jam
- 250g quark with 50g berries
Lunch:
- 150g rice with lots of vegetables and some lean protein. For example, yesterday I did a tofu wok with around 250g tofu and 300g assorted vegetables, fried with oyster sauce, soy and chili.
Afternoon snack:
- 4 large slices of bread with jam, two bananas, apple and clementine
2h endurance ride:
- 140g sugar in a bottle
Dinner:
- 150g pasta with homemade chicken arrabiata sauce with ~300g vegetables
Before sleep:
- Two bananas, four large slices of bread with margarine, whey shake with ~35g whey isolate
You get ~250-300g of carbs from the pasta/oats/rice, 100-150g of carbs from the bread (depending on the slices), another 100-150g from the fruit / jam / berries, and 140g from the sugar drink.
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61 kg at your size is underweight, me thinks. Even 69 kg is on the light side. Another reason to suspect it is not diabetes.
It sounds as if you are not taking in enough calories to sustain your training.
That is not “fueling heavily”: current recommendations are that you fuel with up to 90-120 g/hour on the bike. That is 3-4x what you are consuming.
I am not surprised you feel hungry all the time, especially given how little you eat off the bike.
It took me 1-2 years to learn this lesson: I tried not fueling my workouts, because I have all the carbs I need on board. Besides, I (unlike you) wanted to lose weight. But then I was ravenous in the morning and ate up to half a loaf of bread. Consistently fueling with 80-120 g/hour fixed that for me. My breakfast and other meals depended less on my training sessions. And there was less weight gain in the offseason.
Make sure to try out different foods (stroopwafels, spelling?), liquid and solid.
Are you actively restricting your intake? Or do you just not feel like eating properly (to the point you are satiated).
TBH it does sound like you are on a bird diet; which is fine until you consider you are doing structured endurance training.
Eat more rice and pasta - eat as much as you want until you feel 80% full at least; you’ll feel better, less hungry, performance on the bike and in the gym will improve dramatically.
Also, 30g of carbs isn’t a lot - I’d suggest you bump up your intake to 60g per hour even on endurance rides.
I probably eat close to 3k calories a day - I’m 65kg… and I still do find myself hungry from time to time. I don’t restrict my diet, eat as much as I want but I do try to avoid processed snacks - although I still probably have some chocolate etc everyday. I think if you were pushing mid volume you’ll need to get use to eating a good bit more.
Sorry just quick update, I wrote the weight wrong. I’m 79kg currently.
I don’t disagree I’m not eating enough I’m just going by my nutricionist recommendations.
What I shared is more or less my plan, sometimes specially for lunch. But dinner should be around that.
When I went to the nutritionist I had increased after a long time of eating very little (my whole life), and the objective was just to have more energy for training. I do have to say, when I starting eating more my weight jumped to 71kg (which I felt was high for me at the time, because I was skinny all my life) to 79kg in a couple of months, so I was scared I was eating too much, still constantly felt hungry and more or less the same issues as now.
I think it’s good to forget about weight when you’re consistently training.
Your body will find it’s equilibrium and it might be a lot heavier than you anticipate.
I’m 175cm and 64 to 68kg (68 during winter). Im always surprised that a lot of pros my height are also around 65+ kg which is in the lower middle BMI. Seems in cycling people are prioritising overall health which has a performance gain rather than dropping weight. So I recommend you ignore your weight. Eat enough so you can train well. Eat more carbs. Especially on the bike. Hopefully in afeww months you’ll be pushing more watts and feeling better about this whole thing
If you have to force yourself to eat even though you’re hungry then I suggest you seek advice from a professional
Does your nutritionist have any experience with athletes? If your description is according to her recommendations, then your calorie intake is way too low.
A 90-minute workout at your FTP can easily increase your caloric needs by 40-60 %, depending on intensity. (I included a back-of-the-envelope computation in an earlier post.) In my experience, it is easier to consume 80-120 g/hour on the bike so that the portion sizes of all other meals vary less depending on training phase, workout type, etc. Even when you take in 120 g/hour, you will still be in a calorie deficit at your FTP, except for super easy recovery rides perhaps.
Regarding macros, one approach that (former) pros follow is to take in your recommended amounts of protein and fat, and the add carbs as needed.
Probably not great, not to use it as a crutch, but I have ADHD and I find it quite hard to go to sleep on time, since I get burst of productivity late at night. Nothing that I want to prfioritize fixing, I have found I’m better just flowing with it.
I do think so, I will try to follow and try to get a professional to look at it, mainly because of the symptoms part.
I have to say I used the app last time, for a 1:30 workout I consumed about 90g of carbs and I have to say I felt quite well afterwards, and didn’t peak from hunger into ravenous hunger. I will think about increasing carbs. My concern is as I have explained, I was using high quantities of carbs before but was feeling some of the same side effects I noticed when I had the gummy bears, which lead me to belief I was eating too much carbs.
I do wonder if it could be along these lines, I don’t feel like I’m going so much lower in carbs. These is on my mind in last few months.
Yeah I was eating much more before, and was still feeling pretty hungry. I tried going high protein, then really high carb, that’s when I went to the nutricionist.
Thank you so much, I will read more on this and compare to my recommendations.
I think I need to look back into this. The one I got is linked to sports nutrition, but I’m not super sure it was understood the efforts that were done on the indoor sessions since her recommendations for carbs on the bike were a bit lower. Could just be that her preference is to fuel before and after. So I will still have to look around but I didn’t find many speciallist here in NL so I might start looking into Europe in general.
On your other points, I do wonder if it could be fat too. I started eating more fiber and whole grains because of this, also more veggies but didn’t really look into fat.
No sure, but since I started gaining weight, from 71 to 79 I think lots of it was actually fat in my belly 
It doesn’t really work like this for me, I will be full and stead down and will be hungry within 10min. I think this is one of my major struggles.
Isn’t it the other way around? Fat increases stability? High carb will increase spikes?
I don’t disagree with you. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac.
My point was not to self diagnosse, I know the probability is small I just want to understand my body. I wasn’t carb phobic before, I used to eat alot more carbs specially gumies a few year ago, and that was my main fuel when I started riding.
I honestly just stopped on the sugar because I was constantly hungry and wanted to avoid it because of spikes. I just really looking to feel better with my diet, and bit frustrated that I haven’t found a diet that I can just chill and not thing too much about. I’m not a professional, I don’t want to be, I just want to fuel the the rides well so I have good energy afterwards, and have cycling as a hobby. I don’t want to cut anything from my diet.
Think of it this way: 90 minute ride is roughly 1000 calories (depending on ftp). 90g of carbohydrate is (90 x 4) 360 calories.
You can fuel with healthy carbs: brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, etc, etc. It takes some planning. Those foods aren’t calorie dense so you have to eat a lot to fuel workouts.
Personally, I only drink/eat sugar on the bike during an interval session. If the ride is endurance, I’ll just drink water and fuel with food before and after.
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Keto will actually decrease insulin sensitivity, where high carb increases insulin sensitivity. Keto only minimizes blood sugar because you aren’t having any carbs. But insulin sensitivity goes down, so after some time when you do have carbs your blood sugar regulation and subsequent insulin spikes will be even higher. It doesn’t fix your metabolic issues, it masks it and can potentially make it worse.
I’m not talking about Keto, I was referring avoiding fat in your diet. As others mentioned it helps with feelings with satiety.
Increases satiety compared to what though? 1000 calories worth of baked potatoes would increase satiety more than 1000 calories of bacon. Thats 1100 grams of potatoes vs 180 grams of bacon for size reference…