It’s a good question. I havent really been at the point where losing weight is the best avenue to improvement. But…I’d wager if you wanted to keep/progress fitness while losing weight, repeating traditional base 1 until you’re where you want to be would be a good route.
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Im on a low volume plan builder set up. Its the no fun calorie counting way way just doing a small deficit for daily and weekly total then making sure have carbs before or during higher intensity work. I typically dont eat on easy zone 2 rides under 3 hours. I also mix in gym sessions. My daily target is around 2090 calories as base line and then adjust up based on additional work load from exercise for the day. Food wise im not restrictive for anything but try to focus on low calorie dense foods with multiple meals a day
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This – I avoid any of the SSB plans and go traditional base. However, I make a distinction between “training” season and “farting around” season. In the later I go for easy med-long easy rides (effort <= Z2) with just water and emergency gel packets. I hint at this in the OP. This worked out well for me and I had a long season of it last summer starting in mid-July when I gave up on racing and my knee kept from CX racing. When I brought it indoors, I started off with a new estimated FTP and started working out with Z2 rides increasing the progression level as little as was available. Again, drinking only water during the workout and if I woke up early enough the workout was fasted.
Then came “training” season when I took on Low volume traditional base and then I started taking in 40 grams of carbs per hour with the workout. This served me very well as I continued to lose weight and gradually reduce my body fat percentage. I also added in gym workouts focusing on legs, my glutes, and core to deal with my knee problems (successful too I will add). I made it through training season with modest gains in power, a decent loss of weight, and enough speed so that I expect to place in Strava segment top-10s now.
I’ll say this, the podcast crew understands they are not delivering a one-size fits all solution and state that we need to experiment to figure out what works best for us.
As others state the primary goal of TR is not to help us lose weight but for us to gain power. However, for many of us there is a mix of losing weight and growing power we need to achieve.
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Calorie tracking apps make many assumptions about the individual and those assumption may or may not hold for anyone. Plus it isn’t easy to guesstimate how much you are eating and exactly what you are eating.
Absolutely…those are some of the things that makes losing weight tricky. But you’re just identifying ways in which measuring the in or out is difficult, not disproving 100 years of basic biology.
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I appreciate this thread, between Chad leaving, and the “skinny twins” implying that anyone who has to monitor their calorie intake isn’t training properly or has an eating disorder, I had to stop listening to the podcast. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re great people, but we’ve all been dealt different hands, i for one, have a REALLY hard time managing power and weight, it seems I can’t have one without the other.
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I think their take has always been that fueling the work is not contradictory with dieting or normal eating. If you do a 90 minute workout that burns 900 calories and take in 150 grams of carb (600 calories, you are still in a net calorie deficit). Fueling just means you eat less off the bike.
TR’s business model is indoor training and making watts. Running calorie deficits equals making less watts or not progressing at all with your FTP so any suggestion of dieting would be counter productive to their business.
In any case, athletes need to periodize their dieting. One can diet in the off season or during base training but you can’t diet during build and race/ride season if you want to perform.
Based on comments over the years it sounds like one or more of the presenters is/was eating disordered. I honestly have rolled my eyes every time one of the skinny twins have given diet advice over the years.
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Yea I dont disagree…I just dont like them not painting the full picture.
I’ve not really been serious about dropping weight while on trainerroad until now. I’d LIKE to drop 10 pounds over 20-22 weeks…currently halfway through SSB 1. Would you consider this kind of pace incompatible with trainerroad? I was planning on front loading some of this over the next 6-8 weeks…dropping 2/3/pound per week, leaving just a few pounds over the next couple months. Is this reasonable you think?
Only you would know your body and if that would work for you.
Personally, that would not work for me at all. I’m 57 now and these days I can count calories for a solid month, lose 5 pounds, only to gain 2 back immediately after stopping counting. When I was in my 20s, I could start training in the spring and lose 5-10 pounds per month without even trying. The weight would just drip off with riding.
I’d say it depends on what your “season” is like and what performance you need. It’s May and it’s prime riding season for the northern hemisphere. You don’t want to diet if you want to perform. I don’t think there’s anyway around that.
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Yea fair enough. That said, I have nothing I care about until October - cross season. I’m not doing any racing or anything like that before October, and I’m making an effort this year to take things much easier than I normally do to go into the fall fresh.
Well, now is your base season so go for it.
Yea…for about the next 8-9 weeks my saturday group ride will really be the only truly challenging ride. I’m planning on slowly ramping up long zone 2 rides on sundays, plus the tue-wed 1 hr TR rides. Kinda planning on consistently turning 1 of those weekday intervals into something easier depending on how I feel.
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My simplest way of losing weight is to ride tons of Z2. Through trial and error, I have found that a minium of 50% of my energy expenditure at Z2 comes from fat. Which means that I if ride 15 hours of Z2 @ 250 watts I am able to lose 1kg of bodyfat per week, without feeling fatigued or overtrained for my other intensity sessions.
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I dont think where the fuel for exercise comes from makes any difference at all. It eventually comes from or goes to the same places.
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#humblebrag 
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Of course it makes a difference, because contrary to the 50% that come from glycogen stores I don’t have to replenish it (as long as I have spare fat stores ofc). Hence the sustainable caloric deficit.
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Who are the skinny twins? Jonathon? I believe he lost ~20lbs from his motocross days to get to where he is now (if recall correctly).
I don’t think so. If 100% of your energy came from one single source and you only replenished 50% of it, you’d still lose weight. It’s a pretty set that all diets work by calories in/calories out - the implementation can be hard however.
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Oh I see where you’re coming from…just that essentially because the work is fueled by fat, you can ingest less carbs during the ride?
Thing is, we are talking about sustainable caloric deficit. If I were to do higher intensity stuff with 80% of the energy expenditure coming from carbs and trying to run the same deficit, I just couldn’t do it for more than a few days due to constantly depleted glycogen stores compromising my energy levels / general functioning.
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