I am completely in-line with you wrt long term goals: health (weight management included) is top, and cycling and racing is just a fun excuse to keep me on my toes wrt the first.
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Kind of in the same place as you are.
What did work for me over the last few months is to see a dietician for accountability. She gave me some awesome tips since my metabolism is slow:
- Eat your proteins every single day. It makes you full and not craving anything.
- Eat non-transformed food as much as possible, as well as whole bread/pasta
- Eat fruits and veggies. Tons (for me itâs 1 fruit on top of my breakfast, 1 portion of veggies + 1 fruit for lunch, a snack around 16-17h with nuts and fruit and veggies for dinner).
- No carbs for dinner: only veggies and proteins, when I donât train the next morning (I train before work). If I have training next morning I allow myself 2 slices of whole bread.
- Fuel on the bike to limit the cravings after
- No alcohol (or very very limited, like 1 beer/month)
- Keep in mind your sugar peeks: ie if you have a craving, donât eat just an apple, take an apple + some nuts or a yogurt or so. This will lower your sugar spike
- Walk during the day (7 or 8â000 steps as a goal) to move your body without too much stress
Focusing as much as possible on non-transformed food made me feel much better, and having lot of veggies and fruits makes my stomach and guts âlighterâ.
For now Iâm 180cm and 88kgs, dropped 5kgs over the last few months following that. For now, Iâm also in a sort of plateau. I started to add more volume to my training and letâs see how it goes.
Edit: added the last 3.
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If you are at a plateau, increase your carbs for several days (weight might go up a kilo or so, mostly water), then go back to your prescribed routine. You might find you drop weight again.
One thing easy you can try is to time your eating differently. One approach Iâve used is not to eat until at least 10AM. In the morning when youâre rested, itâs not as hard to fight off the hunger pangs and eating later can help you by perhaps delaying your lunch and skipping that afternoon snack. Second approach is to time your meals for after your workout. If you have the post-workout hunger pangs, a scheduled meal is much better than an unscheduled meal. Third, donât eat after a certain time. Say 7PM. Then you can eat mostly normal during that 9 hour window.
Thanks for the recommendations @russell.r.sage
I do my workouts early in the morning so I have to get carbs before that, so I do it with cereals with ground almonds and coconut flour, mixed with plain yoghurt and Iâll sweeten that with honey, some syrup or even plain sugar, to quickly top off the liver glycogen after the nightâs âfastâ, So delaying the breakfast does not work for my particular case.
Timing meals wonât work due to the former. Also, the hunger sensation after the workouts also depends on the intensity level: low intensity â hunger; high intensity â canât even think of eating anything for a while.
Not eating after 7 PM I already do. Although reducing intake at dinner yesterday for example made me wake up in the middle of the night due to hunger. So I had to somewhat give in or this nightâs sleep wouldâve been half toast.
pros and cons to early morning workouts. pro, lets you get the workout done before work or before anything else can derail your day. con, probably the worst timing for dieting.
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You might consider reducing the amount of nuts and cereal and replacing with less calorie dense foods. I also find that slower digesting carbs and fats can help quite a bit with staying full overnight, and I tend to save my fats for dinner. Also something like low fat greek yogurt before bed can really help as well. Itâs not very energy dense, and it helps a lot for me. Also, donât confuse hydration with hunger signals. Adding in something like LMNT throughout the day with extra water seems to help me as well.
Last, reducing caffeine was a big factor for me. I was doing a ton of caffeine throughout the day and while it did seem to lead to somewhat less hunger signal, I also had way less satiety signal. Iâm not sure how that makes sense, but my hunger and fullness cues are both really reduced when taking on lots of caffeine throughout the day. Going down to 1 serving only in the morning with breakfast was really helpful in getting my body back to being able to feel full again. Could be worth a try.
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true that. for me itâs either early morning or only once a week. ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
the cereals I do are plain flakes minimally processes, so i figure they take more to digest than regular sweetened kidsâ cereals. I get the point of cutting the nuts though.
hydration vs hunger â Iâve got that covered. 
caffeine â can give it a try; will have not to impede my ability to do my daily job, though. I am at 2 /day currently, both well before noon.
LMNT â I canât get it where I live, but could try other hydration mixes.
Thanks for this.
Donât eat to satiety or at least give it some time. It takes a while for your body to signal you are full and as you stated, thatâs likely a surplus. Iâd focus on portioning the food in advance, sticking to that, get busy doing something immediately after you eat and hope that the activity eliminates any further signalling that you are still hungry until your body can catch up.
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You might just be like me and have to closely track what you are eating in order to stay at your preferred weight. Iâm around 5â11 (180cm) and 185-190lbs (84-86Kg) and my weight always drifts up if I donât pay close attention to what Iâm eating. Itâs like my brain still wants me to be the size I was when I was an o-lineman in university over 20 years ago - 272lbs was my heaviest weigh-in!
Unfortunately staying at a preferred weight is more challenging for some than others. My weight has drifted back above 200lbs when I havenât been diligent about tracking my food intake.
It seems like you know what to do - get enough protein and fibre, and carbs to fuel your workouts - so unfortunately I donât have a good âhackâ to suggest for you. Maybe you can just experiment to see if certain foods make you feel fuller than others at a similar amount of calories.
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I think maybe you were never as light as you may have thought, but chronically dehydrated, so you are chasing a ghost when you believe you need to get back down to that weight.
I think 85kg at 185cm is a healthy weight. Iâd change the foods you eat before you change the diet. The keto thing and the other stuff you mentioned is quite extreme and unusual, so itâs unsurprising that it hasnât brought long term success. Itâs a âcrash dietâ in a different disguise. Iâd eat a balanced diet of whole grains, full fat real foods (meat, cheese, yogurt, etc) with no sugars added to anything. Learn to read food labels to identify the pesky loopholes food companies use, like adding juice concentrate to avoid listing the added sugar formally as âadded sugarâ in a US food nutrition label, among other things. To really be long term healthy, youâll have to basically reprogram your mind to survive on more bland food (bland relative to enhanced foods w sugar and butter, seee oils, etc). Basically, to be âhealthyâ sounds like it sucks and is boring and hard. That is why extreme fads are so much more popular (tho unsuccessful). In other words, the secret is no secret, eat boring bland Whole Foods and suffer through cravings for junk until they eventually go away
For what length ride are you having this? Calculate the calories in all of this. Sounds like you have it regularly so it should be consistent.
What youâre describing sounds sufficient for 3-4+ hr rides. Complete overkill for anything 90-120 minutes or shorter, unless itâs like a super intense 2 hr workout.
I cycle at 6 a.m. 5-6 days a week. I have the same breakfast nearly every day. The only day it changes is before my long weekend ride and races.
1/2 cup steel cut oats- 160 calories
1 scoop vanilla whey protein mixed with oats - 120 calories
Sugar free maple syrup- around 20 calories.
Thatâs about 300 calories. Before every ride except my long weekend ride, I eat 1/2 before my ride and the other 1/2 after. This includes 90 min hard interval workouts.
During my rides sub 2 hrs I may have around 150 calories/hr of simple carbs on the bike.
3 hrs and longer and I have 400 calories per hr.
Before long weekend rides and races I eat my entire serving of oatmeal and also add a banana and quite a bit of honey. Thatâs a couple hrs before and may have another banana right before the race starts.
Nuts are about the most calorie dense food in existence and the first thing everyone should cut out thatâs trying to lose weight. 1/2 cup of almonds has 400+ calories, more than my normal breakfast. I could add 1000 calories of nuts per day to my diet without blinking, and gain the weight that goes along with it.
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Aside from the part about playing football, you just described me to a T. My brain clearly wants to be 196 lbs- fighting tooth and nail to try to get below 180. Have to track my eating or it drifts up, slowly but surely.
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Hi Agabor
At 97kg youâre still not obese, by any definition so maybe need a little work on your self esteem and at 85 youâre in a ânormalâ range.
I think age group podium is a good indicator that you donât have any major issues!
Itâs a tricky one that does seem to be individual, but Ive not found success in the generally discussed advice posted.
I agree with @ArHu74 and look to a sustainable diet centred around appropriate protein and fat intake.
Good luck and donât be too hard on yourself!
A question for the folks who promote fat because itâs âsatiatingâ. Where does this idea come from? I could literally eat a who can of nuts or a massive bowl of guacamole and still be hungry. Am I misunderstanding the point?
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Misunderstanding, yes. We are not suggesting eat only fats in some extreme sense like the keto diet. Instead, we are saying to eat a Whole Foods diet and do not substitute foods with natural fats for their âlow fatâ or âfat freeâ alternatives. These companies just basically add sugar to make the now gross food taste palatable. And even if they donât, the presence of that fat would add to satiety.
So no donât go eat a can of nuts. Eat a bowl of oatmeal (whole grains) with a handful of nuts added to it, plus fruit, etc. if you want a dollop of yogurt, use whole milk yogurt (5% fat).
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Right, but the couple of nuts in a bowl of oatmeal arenât whatâs âsatiatingâ my appetite, itâs the bowl of oatmeal. Iâm asking why people say fats are âsatiatingâ when in my N=1 examples, they are not.
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Fats have the highest calorie per gram (9 as opposed to 4), so they would be more satiating in that sense (over twice the calories).
Feeling full is produced by just filling your stomach to the extent that your body is used to (this is why they do surgery to shrink the size of a morbidly obese persons stomach).
If you filled your stomach with only whole food carbs (like oatmeal) as opposed to a mix of oatmeal and nuts, your body would be sated for longer with the higher caloric content of the nuts plus oats than only oats. Thatâs the general idea.
So in your example, that can of nuts isnât going to fill your stomach to the extent that your body is used to. So youâll get alot of calories but still feel full.
You could also drink lots of water during a meal (calorie free liquid) to contribute to that âfullâ feeling of the stomach
Sure, but again, if I eat the equivalent size of a can of nuts in oatmeal, Iâm getting filled up and âsatiatedâ on maybe 300-500 calories, whereas if I eat the whole can of nuts, weâre talking about something like 2,000 calories to be the same amount of âsatiatedâ, so to my thinking, the fats are FAR less satiating than the carbs. So, if Iâm trying to lose weight, I donât see how upping the amount of fats consumed is beneficial. It seems like itâs the exact opposite.
Iâm not arguing that fats donât have health benefits, btw, I just donât see them as âsatiatingâ at all.
Edit: just to add another example, if I put 500 calories of Olive Oil on a plate and mop it up with 500 calories of bread, thatâs 1000 calories and the bread would have completely satiated me, while the 60ml of OO would barely make a difference.
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