How to balance over-under eating for obesity-prone performance-oriented cyclists

Nutrition
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Hi Team,

First off: great product; great podcast!

I am a 41yo male, 185 cm, currently at 85 kg, unfortunately creeping up in weight. I just wanted to touch base with you WRT balancing over- and under-eating for obesity-prone performance-oriented cyclists.

TL;DR version in one line:
Beginning of 2024, following advice on this podcast, I deliberately stopped under-eating for weight management and started increasing the carb intake for fuelling performance; needless to say it worked miracles :D, however I couldnā€™t find the right balance as my weight slowly crept up during the year and so did my carb addition making me feel evermore hungry for bigger meal portions.

Long-ish details, please skip straight to question if this is too long:
My ā€œstableā€ weight is historically at 92-97 kg, creeping up, and during 2023 (may-october) I dropped from 97kg down to 80-81 kg by means of hunger and outdoor cycling. Once the season ended I knew I had to do smth dramatic to avoid re-gaining the weight painfully just lost, just like last times, so I did keto for 4 months (nov '23 - march '24) with no cycling and some weight training during jan & feb '24. Started a TR training plan in march '24 and only did indoor structured training with the only exceptions being the XCM races.

The 2024 season was great: 221 W ā†’ 293W FTP increase, 45 ā†’ 59 Vo2max increase, and even some minor successes (age-group podium or near it at smaller races)! Now, given previous winters success at keeping excess weight off with keto, I tried the same this winter starting oct 21st '24 right after the seasonā€™s last race (also wanted to ā€œresetā€ my carbs cravings due to high carb intake during the '24 season - pls remember overweight-prone person talking here), just increased strength training volume, added creatine and did some TR workouts (endurance & tempo). Cycling performance dropped as expected, workouts got unsustainably difficult, warmup was a nightmare, HR increased for the same RPE and weight slowly crept up beyond the creatine load pahse! I did not pay attention to meal sizes, hoping that with the carb cravings being shaked off, I would not need to do so anymore. (I was wrong: keto + indoor cycling + weight training = weight++)
So due to ā€˜lack of resultsā€™ beginning of Jan '25 I exited keto 2 months early and after 2 weeks cycling performance skyrockets again, can lift more, recover waay faster, HR dropped at same RPE, warmups feel effortless again, buuuut ā€¦ weight keeps increasing (both muscle and fat). (interesting case stody - pls feel free to check my profile(s) out)

I am at 85 kg now, whereas Iā€™d much rather be at 80-82, with weight platoeing nowhere in sight and while I know I can race with an ~300W FTP @90kg Iā€™d much rather do it at 80-82 kg due to a better W/kg, important in the XCM I do.

Question: how to balance the over-unders? (eating I mean :), pun intended) How to manage carbs craving and how to find a way not needing to constantly weigh food and how to generally avoid hunger rather than embrace it? all this while still performing well in races?

Please share your thoughts, it will help me and probably many others find more sustainable eating habits.
Alex

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You didnā€™t specify what a typical day of eating looks like for you.

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I find the podcast advice is for people who are already near a ā€œhealthyā€ weight. People at 10% body fat wondering if they can get faster if they get to 8%, who are probably stronger at 10%. So personally I ignore it.

My stable weight is just slightly over yours. Last year was my first year of training higher volume (~600 hours for the year) and I found the same as you. No real weight loss with increased training. I was not counting calories, but just fueling the work and eating when hungy.

Now Iā€™m counting calories, targeting .5 - 1 lbs per week of weight loss. Even that is mentally pretty hard while training, but Iā€™m about 2 months in and getting through it.

Some takeaways are to fuel the hard days the day before at least. Donā€™t go into an interval workout in a deficit, for sure.

Replace calories on the bike as much as possible.

The days off and the recovery weeks are the hardest for me for hunger.

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Diet is highly personal and requires significant experimentation

I find eating high fiber nutrient dense carbohydrates when off the bike and low fiber calorie dense carbohydrates when on the bike is a good way to curb hunger while still maintaining decent macro balance, but this wonā€™t be a universal path to success

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Similar to you with the cravings and not having the best portion control when eating. For those cravings I have upped my protein and fiber intake. I have pretty much lost the cravings for devouring a loaf of french bread or a dominos pizza on a Tuesday night. I aim for 150-170-ish grams of protein a day. Can be challenging at times. What also helped for me is just not having the food I shouldnā€™t eat at the house.

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Have you ever counted your calories for a week or more? In the end, if youā€™re gaining weight, youā€™re eating in a surplus. High protein, keto, etc etc are just tools that sometimes help people to get there (other than things like disease management). Without counting calories (or at least keeping a detailed food diary) itā€™s all guess work.

Itā€™s really not that hard (well as hard as forming any new habit, lol, so maybe it is hard). Especially if you eat at home a lot. Itā€™s hard at first because you donā€™t have the habit but after a couple weeks or so you just have a small scale on the counter and youā€™ve got most of your recipes built out in MyFitnessPal or similar and it only takes a minute to add them all to your diary.

After watching my wife do this successfully after several years of attempts I really believe that for most people, counting calories will be the most foolproof way of doing it. Even a short burst of it will inform you where you weak spots are. Itā€™s really surprising how unconscious food choices stack up throughout a day to add up to a large surplus or destroy a deficit.

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First of all, congrats on some really impressive work/results in 24.

Iā€™m far from an expert on nutrition and I do lots of dumb stuff with my diet/eating habits, but hereā€™s a few things that helps me from going completely off the deep end -

I keep events on my calendar for most of the year. Not events Iā€™m really training for, but just fun events that I still donā€™t want to be completely out of shape for. An event coming up keeps my bad habits somewhat in check and makes me think twice about what Iā€™m doing. My last race is usually early Nov. and I start training for my season in Early January, so I really only have a couple months to be really bad. I exercise during this off season with some cycling and cross training, but my diet absolutely goes sideways with the holidays and all. And I always pack on an impressive amount of weight during that period, but I can only do so much damage in 2 months.

Once the season starts, I try to adjust habits. Iā€™ve got a sweet tooth and Iā€™m always craving carbs, but I try to only scratch that itch when Iā€™m on the bike. When Iā€™m on the bike, any carb is fair game. I ride enough that Iā€™m never going to shove more in my mouth vs. what Iā€™m burning on the bike. Off the bike, I focus more on protein and try to limit carbs to healthy carbs only (not always good about that, but decent). The protein helps with feeling hungry.

And I try not to eat anything after ~8 pm. That can be hard. When hungry at night, a big glass of water is my go-to. Sometimes works, sometimes not, but always worth a shot before I give in.

Finally, some people say you canā€™t ride yourself lean, itā€™s all about diet. Iā€™m not saying they are wrong, but thatā€™s not what I experience. Iā€™m always at my leanest and lightest when Iā€™m hitting my biggest volume and highest intensity in training. Every year, Iā€™m absolutely dropping weight while adding watts during my build phase, and itā€™s not because my diet is getting better during that time. Some might say dropping weight during hard training is indicative of poorly fueling your workouts, but Iā€™m fueling pretty aggressively, not going hungry, and not struggling in my training during these times. I guess itā€™s possible Iā€™d be adding even more watts if I wasnā€™t dropping weight, but itā€™s just how it works out. Anyways, itā€™s all individual stuff and I figured Iā€™d share some things that work for me. As a reference point, Iā€™m 56, 6ā€™ tall, and pushing ~174lbs right now. I race at around 166-168. I was over 220lbs about 15 years ago before I got on the bike and quickly dropped into the 180ā€™s. I stayed in the 180ā€™s for years before getting more serious about my cycling and improving my diet a bit.

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Iā€™m sort of coming to the same conclusion. How much volume are you doing?

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Last couple years have been around 600 hours year, ramping from ~10 hrs/wk to over 15 while in season. I retired in 2023, so that allowed a volume increase. Before that, I was peaking closer to 12hours per week. Weight management and FTP havenā€™t changed much with the volume increase, just better durability for long events.

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Iā€™m also wondering about off-bike diet. With that much biking and calorie burning, I think itā€™s hard to put on a lot of weight with a ā€œgoodā€ off bike diet. Youā€™re likely burning at least 7500 calories a week on the bike.

The biggest reason why I started fueling well for every ride wasnā€™t for performance. It was so I wouldnā€™t be ravenous at night and eat everything in sight, especially crap food.

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Eat your protein first, 2g/kg (ideal weight), then 1 g/kg fats containing the essential fatty acids dha/epa (only found in animal sources). If you follow that you probably wonā€™t feel hungry anymore because that much protein with fats is just really satiating

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If I understand correctly your weight was around 80-81kg while doing keto, not weight training and not supplementing with creatine? I wonder if your 4kg of weight gain is just a result of adding carbs, creatine and weight training to your weekly routine?

Personally, my ā€œrace weightā€ is around 69-71kg during summer but when i enter off-season and start taking creatine and increase my weight training, my weight increases roughly 3kg. Add carbs into the mix (which hold quite a bit of water) and 4kg of weight gain doesnā€™t sound too bad. Maybe try keeping your nutrition stable for a bit longer and see if you weight stays where it is currently? From there you could cut calories very gently and see if your weight starts to drop slowly.

Drastic changes in calorie intake are quite hard to hold onto when simultaniously doing hard training. This then usually leads into big swings in weight and performance which makes it even more challenging mentally.

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Iā€™m in the same boat as grwoolfā€¦ but not quite as many hours on the bike.

I have my base diet to cover my macro needs for everyday, prioritizing my protein and fat needs, and topping up with healthy-ish carbs.

Then focus additional carb intake as needed before/during/shortly after my biking/exercise. If the ride requires it, Iā€™ll eat a carb heavy breakfast. I use powder in bottles and gels as needed on the bike. After the ride, I try to get my remaining carbs with fruit and stuff, but not opposed to some ice cream or cookies. But I CANā€™T keep a store of that stuff in my house, because I will binge on it.

And my new #1 rule, that has made a huge difference is to not eat those items that are high carb AND high fat after dinner. The carbs have a place to go that is productive (muscles), but the fat also has pretty much only one place to go, and that is into my fat cells/stores (I spiked my insulin and then am soon going to sleep). So, if I take a ride in the morning, Iā€™ll get my ice cream on the way home and eat it after lunch. There is also a calorie counting issue I have with eating high cal treats in the evening, and that is that Iā€™ve spent all afternoon getting calories in, and have my mind set on this dessert, but often by 8pm, a pint of ice cream will rocket me right past my calorie goal for the day. But if I eat it right after the ride, I have dinner that I can use to adjust portions and my evening snack can be some fruit for a whopping 100ish calories.

Oh, and I have a history of way overdoing the ā€œcarb upā€ the evening before rides. So, I make a point to be conscious of not going overboard. I donā€™t need it for my normal weekly ridingā€¦maybe up my carb macro a little, while still keeping the calories in check.

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DHA is present in algae, and one can buy capsules with algae oil that are a great source of those fatty acids without worrying about mercury and all the other stuff thatā€™s in fish these days.

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How much caffeine do you take per day? Are you sleeping 8-9 hours a night? What carb sources are you ā€œcravingā€?

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2-3 x 350 ml / day, 18-20 g coffee each, aeropress. Unsure how much caffeine that is.
7-8 h sleep per night during the week, 8-10 during the weekend.
I can resist sweets and seldom do I indulge, but the carbs we have generally at the dinner table are emptied by me whether pasta, rice, potatoes. Actually the protein as well. But the carbs ā€¦ man ā€¦ canā€™t stop finishing them off.
I could plan for more legumes, veggies, I know, I generally I donā€™t eat crappy food, everything cooked by me, no fast-food except once every 2-3 months maybe.
Although I could work a bit more towards quality food, the portion sizes are my problem. Generally I eat some 1.5-2x what people around me do (not as a bar I try hold up against, but statistically speaking). If I try to eat on par with the rest of my acquaintances I will feel hungry in 3-4 hours again.

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I did, last winter on keto. Was doing 2700ā€”3000 kcal / day. Used an app to track macros and it worked. But that is precisely what I try to avoid.
Surely I am doing a surplus, that why weight creeps upward. It seems that my body does not find its ā€œbalanceā€ where the satiety tells me to stop eating. I donā€™t want to under fuel as performance will degrade, so I eat ā€œto satietyā€ a mix of carbs, heavy on protein and I donā€™t shy away from (mostly animal) fat. Oh, pre and during workout I go carb heavy and during more intense raining periods I do high carb post workout as well, for speedier recoveryā€¦

But ā€œto satietyā€ brings me in a surplus it seems. Hence I seek a way to find a balance to keep the weight both stable and reasonable for cycling, while fueling adequately.

This perfect balance seems elusive to me, but I hope to at least keep the fluctuations small while not weighing food and tracking macros. Still searchingā€¦

This winter I tried keto ā€œon feelā€ but it did not really work. If I am to weigh food and track macros I will surely stabilise the weight, with probably minimal discomfort due to hunger, at least on keto this would have been the case for me. On carbs the hunger sensation would somewhat increase but probably still manageable.

Right now, on carbs plus training I estimate some 2700-3200 kcal/day.

Totally by feel I will likely go back to 95kg where it will stabilise, but that I something I am not willing to accept again. But counting weighing food and tracking calories and macros is not sustainable for me, medium and long term.

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Now that you mentioned it, I just went back to the weight record and it seems it somewhat does make sense.

Was at 82 at ā€˜24ā€™s last race, switched to keto and dropped immediately to 80-81 due to water weight and glycogen stores depletion. 3 weeks later I started the creatine load phase and the weight kept stable. After the load phase finished, the weight started increasing to 83 over the course of a week or 2 due to muscle water, and since then it steadily increased up to 85 these days, probably due to weight lifting.

The 1 week delay in the first kgs gained on creatine might be explained by ā€¦ dunno, probably me needing more time to reach saturation levels, maybe ā€¦ Does not matter all that much anyway.
But the kgs up to 85 and beyond are spread to both muscle and fat. According to my ā€œsmartā€ scale. Iā€™ll happily take the extra muscle but the fat increase I have a problem with. Honestly I was hoping to continue to drop fat, but the belt test says no.

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Thanks for the insights. I can totally relate to your take on food.

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I struggled with for a while, had a borderline eating disorder from trying to cut weight for collegiate cycling and it took a long time to be able to maintain a relatively stable and healthy weight without having to put undo stress and thought into it. I tried everything from paleo and carnivore (bad of course if training heavily), calories counting, being precise with replacing post ride calories, strict meal planning, etc etc. ultimately what has worked the most has been the long term lifestyle factors of staying hydrated, eating high protein, generally keeping sweets out of the house and eating out less, and generally using lower calories ways to make food taste better. That might mean using stuff like mustard, vinegars, pickled red onions instead of mayo on a daily sandwich for example (but of course Iā€™m not skipping any of that when I go to my favorite deli!). Iā€™ve also been surprised at how much a sparkling water can curb my cravings for sweets at times. But again, everything is personal and you have to decide what works best for you.
For me personally, the long term goal was to be healthy and not have to worry or put daily stress on myself regarding my diet, while still caring enough to make the changes. Experimentation and avoiding extremes were key for me.

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