3000 kJ means 5000+ calories for the day. If that’s easy to hit then you have a gift! I can do it for a day or two, but eventually struggle to do it.
That’s only 1 bottle with 90g carbs per hour. Not that hard to do.
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For sure. I typically switch between potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rice for carbs. I was just giving an example. That said I have been doing rice a lot more lately and seem to be struggling more with just rice. I’ll try to do more potatoes and see if it helps.
I see chicken and rice and they are great but do you have any room for dietary fat in your diet like avacados, PB, etc? That will add calories to your macros.
I’m not sure if you are trying to avoid dietary fat or just didn’t list it in the post.
I do eat avocados and olive oil, plus almonds and pecans, as well as salmon and steak a couple of times a week. That said, I do stick with a lower fat diet per my nutritionists guidelines. I keep fat and protein fairly flat, and adjust carbs to meet the demands of the training. I may add in more though on bigger days just to see if it helps.
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Probably worth listening to the most recent podcast
Like the whole thing…
Also for packing in the carbs, breakfast cereal. The farther out from your big ride or workout, the higher fiber and then taper that down the closer you get. I think @Nate_Pearson jammed a ridiculous amount of carbs down prior to Leadville with cereal.
but then again go back to the podcast as it will give you some ideas.
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Usually when folks report this as they hit high volumes, one of the easiest and most performance-enhancing solutions is to fuel with more carbs during training.
350g carbs for a 5-hr, 4k kcal ride is at least 100g less than I’d recommend, given the need for more calories and inability to eat them later. I see no harm in bumping your fuel intake up to 600g carbs in 5 hours, if your gut can handle it.
In general, beverage-form kcal are easier to get down than solid form, both in and out of training. Most especially in training though.
Usually when I hear folks talk about their consumption in terms of calories per hour, it means that it’s not purely carbs. If that’s the case, I’d consider moving your fueling to pure carbs, and seeing if you can push more fuel per hour. Usually folks who can hit 300-400kcal/hr with a ‘mostly carbs, but some other stuff from solid foods or whatever they find in the pantry and along the route’ approach, can end up bumping up to 400-500kcal/hr if they move to just glucose and fructose.
The common theme for why they have not ever done that is that when they don’t eat something solid on the bike, it just feels either like they ‘need something solid’ or they have ‘energy swings up and down.’ That’s the result of inadequate carb intake. In all honesty, lots of these folks that fall into all the above categories end up reporting back 'I’ve been intaking like 110-120g/hr and feeling great! I had no idea I needed that much," once they switch to a pure liquid carb approach.
I could be 1000% off track here but figured I’d just call out some of the common themes I’ve seen over the years with clients and folks online. n ≅ 1000-ish.
Okay one last tidbit, just in case it’s helpful. Find tastier foods. The last common theme I’ve seen among folks struggling to get it all in is a slight internal (or strong internal) resistance to eating what are typically considered “less healthy” foods. More processed, lower nutrient density, high kcal density, super-high-palatability foods. ie. kids cereal, poptarts, donuts, chocolate milk, low-fat ice cream en masse, etc. Those foods are all very unhealthy consumed in large quantities for a sedentary person. But when you’ve got glycogen stores screaming to be replenished, they’re absolutely the most healthy option, when we look at holistic health. (including psychoemotional health, long-term training success and satisfaction, daily happiness, etc.)
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Pretty sure that unless you’ve got back to back long rides then it’s usually not the goal to replace all calories burned within that 24hrs.
As other pointed out, the obvious thing to do for calories is add fat to your diet. Chicken and rice clearly isn’t cutting it. Add some cheese or something like that. Instead of chicken breast get some chicken thighs, etc. You cannot eat ‘healthy’ while consuming 3-4x the amount of calories that a typical person is recommended to eat in a day
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Thank you for the response, Alex. 300-400 calories / hr is in fact pure carbs, specifically maltodextrin & fructose in my bottles, and I generally trend towards the low end of 300 (roughly 70-80g/hr). I guess the biggest issue maybe isn’t necessarily the carbs itself, but how much water comes along with it, especially in the winter when I simply don’t sweat or get thirsty. Do you have a recommendation for the max (or min) grams / oz I can aim for? Is 240 grams / 30 oz too much? I’m doing around 160g/30oz at the moment.
I’ll also consider more of the “junk” foods as well. My post-ride ritual has been boiling rice and microwaving potatoes while I hit the shower, and then I stuff myself before laying on the couch and stare at MyFitnessPal wondering how I’m going to get the calories in. I’m sure pop tarts would help a lot!
As someone who cooks for a living, food/ palate fatigue is quite common for myself.
I would suggest to anyone that variety is king, eat whatever sounds good (even if it’s “bad”). I have days McDonald’s sounds great, I gave up calling food bad because sometimes it’s a good change to have some greasy food.
If you’re following some type of diet or have dietary restrictions, it’s harder to just eat whatever. I would then ask myself why I’m following a diet. Is it to lose weight? Health reasons? Depending on each person being very strict all the time is a recipe for binge eating.
Eating chicken and rice all the time can get really boring. Try different sauces, different starches, use chicken thighs instead of breast.
I could write a book on recipes but sounds like you just need some variety.
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None of these is going to be particularly calorie dense and while mixing in potatoes would be great from a variation perspective they are pretty starchy so can be hard to eat a ton of.
It’s great to try to eat 100% “clean” but when you need to eat 4000+kjs it’s going to be extremely difficult.
The best thing to do to be calorie dense while easily digestible would be a smoothie of some kind. The blender does some of the digesting for you so the gastric emptying is very fast. And it’s easy to throw greek yogurt, peanut butter, honey, maple syrup, OJ, etc into it to boost the calories.
Also, if you’re consistently putting in lots of big days like this there’s no harm in having a bowl of ice cream or some other really calorically dense food.
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Great point. I asked this same question in the forum here a couple years ago, looking for what folks had been able to tolerate in cool environments.
For me, I can easily handle 25% solution in when it’s cold out. My wife routinely does 30-33% solution.
(That’s 250g/L and 300-330g/L). I just never sweat so little that that concentrate becomes optimal for me.
I believe there were numerous other forum users who did as much as 30% solution on low-sweat days.
We’ve actually found in our app (Saturday) that we don’t even need to set an upper concentration limit and that folks tend to do okay with as much as 35-40% “solution” (usually from a gel plus a little water) on their lowest-sweat training sessions. Of course, when you’re operating at concentrations that high, there is less wiggle room for error. Overdoing carbs beyond what’s needed in the moment can turn into a revolting stomach if intensity is high too.
During all our initial testing we had a hard concentration limit at something like 20, then 25% and then we backed it off to 30% and eventually up to 40% now, I think. It turned out, when a ‘limit’ like that is in place - especially below 25% - it results in either: 1) under-carbing or 2) over-drinking. It becomes hard to get oneself to actually consume the fuel because of lack of thirst!
Sweet sauces go a long way for me.
- Teriyaki (you can add straight sugar to teriyaki to make it more of a sweet teriyaki glaze)
- Sweet and sour
- Orange glaze
- Mango-anything chutney
- Plum sauce
- Honey soy
- Sweetened coconut curry
Of course, if you add some oil to the mix, it’ll make it higher-palatability and be less of a nauseating sweetness-overload after drinking your malto+fruc mix for 5 hrs. 
If I’m being honest though, I’d opt for pancakes or bread + jelly post-ride, before rice or potatoes, which in my post-ride fatigue state, are too much effort. I’ve found that walmart makes a nice run of berry syrups that go great when used copiously on pancakes with a little smear of PB first.
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I mean, honestly, I think it would be pretty easy to make a 500 calorie PB&J sandwich that is way less filling than a large potato and effortless to prepare.
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Thank you! I’ll try increasing to 250g/L for now on the high kJ days. That should definitely reduce the amount of eating I have to do pre/post ride.
I’ll take a look at your app as well. I didn’t even know something like that existed.
I’ll try the pancakes and berry syrup (I’m not a maple fan), maybe even mix in bananas with it for flavor. Sounds easier to consume than my rice and potato bowls. I have recently started mixing in sauces lately, which helps a lot, but the pure volume of the food is what holds me back at some point.
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Like a lot of other people here, I can CRUSH cereal. I swear there are days I eat one of the large family size boxes of Cheerios by myself in a day. Had to stop buying it because I was putting on weight, even during my peak volume…
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Same with Rice Krispies or Cocoa Krispies. Can put down a box in a day without much effort
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Back when I was doing triathlons, I would eat damn-near a full box of some sugary kids cereal everyday…and I was still hungry all the time!
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Here is an easy 1000 calories as soon as you finish your ride that won’t make you feel stuffed and will provide around 200 grams of carbs: a 12 ounce can of coke, a bagel, and a snickers bar. If you want more protein swap a protein bar in place of the snickers. Figure 10 minutes to eat then have your main meal an hour later.
I hate eliminated all processed foods from my diet after reading and hearing how it’s not just the calories / sugar, but the other ingredients that are not natural and can cause cell damage, etc. tbh I don’t fully understand the chemistry at any level to explain it…so hopefully that makes sense.
Curious how you’d respond. Like why is a donut the healthiest option over a raw honey or a few pieces of fruit? Are you not worried about the extras in the donut?
Curious to hear your thoughts
Thank you!
I’ve been reminded on occasion that sometimes the food I eat has to be treated as straight up fuel and nothing more. Nutrition will temporarily take a back seat. There are times where it’s not about nutrients, quality, eating clean or being precious about additives or corn syrup, I just need to put calories in my body. Did I put in a big day on the bike and plan to do it again the next day? I can and should go slam a couple pop tarts and polish off half a box of Honeycombs (my personal kryptonite). As long as I don’t do it chronically.
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