I bought a Withings fancy scale. It told me "womp womp womp, you suck". Or more accurately, the scale says I don't know what the F I'm doing with my nutrition.
There is zero way to claim it's fitness. Trainingpeaks shows an average of over 3000KJ/wk on the bike last 2 years and 3500KJ/wk in the last 3 months. So, it ain't the "expenditure" side of things.
It's gotta be the timing and quantity going into the pie hole combined with the type efforts done when working on the bike.
The brief timeline in general is:
2016- Topped up at about 181lb, starting to ride from "nothing", a bit of gym work weekly
2017-Down into the low 170's, doing some fitness riding and a couple random workouts
2018-Serious riding begins......sometimes a training plan, volume up, down into 160's
2019-Serious riding/race continues.........lowest weight reached and held most of 2019.....155 to 157 routinely
2020-MORE KJs this year than last year, but have gained about 4 to 5 lbs.......all FAT.....per the Withings I just bought. And my jeans are a hair tighter. I'm at 16.8% fat and 57.2% water, in the morning after eating breakfast (that was Trainingpeaks recommendation for a Withings, morning but not before breakfast, after)
So, I have eaten, snacked, drank alcohol all the same from 2018 through today. I'd say in 2020 we've eaten "cleaner" in terms of better mix of veggie, protein, etc.... as homemade stuff in 2020!
But, I'm up 5lbs...........100% of it fat.
I'm adding back in a pair of weekly 30min strength sessions to go with the bike stuff. I read that could be an issue. A physical is in order with the general practitioner also.
Only other thing I can think of is intake near and during workouts, and after. I read the body can really do weird stuff if you get that wrong with hoarding what you eat later if you don't fuel correctly. I've always been under the impression for an hour or less.......just a light snack before and go at it. Glycogen stores should be enough as-is for an hour.
Arrrrgghhhhhhh..........