Originally Posted by
gregf83
When you ride your body burns a combination of carbs and fat depending on the intensity of your ride. The higher the intensity the higher the % of carbs burned. If you ride all-out for an hour you'll be burning close to 100% carbs. For myself, hunger seems related to how many carbs I burn.
As your fitness improves your body will adjust to burn a higher % of fats while riding at moderate intensity. A reasonable test is being able to ride at a reasonable pace for 3-4 hrs without eating and still feel decent at the end of a ride. You might try lowering the intensity of your rides and see if that affects your hunger. As others have mentioned, you're likely overestimating how many calories your burning. Many estimators based on HR are off by as much as 100%. For reference I weight around 75kg and burn approx 40Cals/mi based on powermeter readings which provide a fairly close estimate of energy used. If you're not trying to lose weight you'll need to replace the calories you burn otherwise you're going to feel hungry.
Best advice, My experience is the same. Get your body tuned to make better use of available nutrients. Takes time to adapt. If hunger after the ride is making you gain weight, seemingly unavoidably, during the adaptive process try eating more carbs, and only carbs, on the bike, not less. That will make you less hungry after. As you begin to feel better, gradually cut back on the on-bike carbs until you get to zero for 30 miles, but based on your post-ride hunger. That'll take a while.
You'll need more protein if your legs hurt on the bike, otherwise not. A handful of walnuts is a very effective post-ride hunger stopper and they're good for you.
I weigh 70kg. On a recent 153 mile, 10,000', 10 hour ride I burned ~4100 calories, based on my power meter. Because of the ride length, I rode as hard as I could which was not that hard, and ate ~1500 calories on the bike, less than half my burn. As Greg says, I can easily ride 3 hours, even hard, without eating and not be particularly hungry after. Drink lots, though.