McBTC

Been a long while but I can remember, gravy and biscuits in the morning and fried chicken gizzards sold like popcorn at the register of a
roadside liquor store were on the menu...

Paul Barnard

Being from Mississippi I am more than a little embarrassed that you got out in front of me on that one.

conspiratemus1

By the placement of the italics in the original, I think the point was they should be called "over-as-little-as-possibles". Or "cover....."

conspiratemus1

Don't over-estimate the energy expenditure it takes to bike-tour. It's no more demanding than what used to be common occupations in the days before most jobs were done sitting down. A lot of the data in Whitt and Wilson (which I have given to my son so don't have at hand) came from coal mines where the heat released from all those toiling bodies working underground had to be ventilated to the surface. To design the draft systems they had to know how much heat to handle. You're not racing (where high speeds require exponentially higher power outputs) and the bike is carrying the weight -- you're not lifting it with every step like in a pack. While really long climbs are taxing, you get some of it back as you descend, again unlike walking with a load where descending is much harder than walking on the level. (Bicycles were invented to exploit this biomechanical superiority over walking. They are optimized on good roads and it was bicyclists who advocated for better roads, right?)

Working a long shift digging coal by hand or ploughing a field behind an ox from sun-up to sun-down or pitching hay and manure is hard, taxing labour. I doubt if most tourists burn half that in a typical day in the saddle. (Long, i.e., >10 hr brevets excepted.) I do recall one Whitt and Wilson data point that riding 12.5 mph (a century in 8 hours, so respectable but not outstanding) requires the same power output as marching without a pack at 3.4 mph. Faster than a stroll but not race-walking. The Roman army marched across the empire at this pace, carrying their own gear including armour and weapons, and set up a fortified camp every night.

Leptins and ghrelins will balance intake and output more accurately than you can do by counting calories, especially with unfamiliar food of unknown ingredients....if you're habituated to listening to them. If you rely instead on mental cues, like "Well, I'm riding so I can stop at every ice-cream and pastry shop". or, "It's 11 a.m. and by now I'd have had a mid-morning snack....oh, look, there's place with a special on BLT + homefries. Excellent.", then you'll probably continue to gain weight on a tour just like you do at home.

From volunteering at supported charity rides, I'm amazed at the stuff some people eat at the stops during a 100 - 150 km ride. And they guzzle sports drinks loaded with high-fructose corn syrup. We don't typically eat anything at all on 80 km and if we stop for coffee at a longer ride we usually eat something just to support the coffee shop. And we're neither of us ravenous at supper.

Two slightly chubby young women we know and love dearly rode their bikes across Canada a few years ago, unsupported. They were strong enough that they did a few "accidental" centuries (miles). Lots of rust (Canadian weather joke) but they didn't lose any weight. (Not that they "should have", just that if they had, it would have been easy to see.)

Finally, consider that if you were in energy deficit by 500 kcal/day every single day, after a two-week tour you would be just 2 pounds lighter. Your fat reserves will carry you a long way.

indyfabz

I agree. Several years ago I came to the conclusion that I was eating too much during tours. I have tried to cut back. Rarely do I have a big breakfast out, for example. That used to be the norm. I don't feel I have suffered because of it.

And I agree about the charity ride thing. I did the same one for 23 consecutive years. Rest stops every 20 miles or so. A pretty much flat 75 miles. Lots of eating and drinking of sports drinks. Then more food at the finish.

Stadjer

Mmm, I was just looking into a Flanders bike tour next summer to because of the food and drinks and the flat land. How do you think it compares with a sedentary lifestyle with about 2 times sport a week? How much more can we take in, is it in the 150% region without hard cycling, or is that way to optimistic?

Yes, I always look at words in their literal or initial meaning too.

conspiratemus1

Depends. If you are lean, just listen to your body. You probably already feel just a little bit hungry all the time -- that's really why lean people stay lean -- and if you increase your activity on a tour, you will probably still know when to stop eating and will always feel just a little bit hungry like you do even when you are sedentary. I'm one of those lucky people (my mother was too. my father was not....but she only outlived him by 2 years, so go figure.) I have some self-knowledge about why I stay lean but I never actually count or measure anything. And I do eat desserts, but only what my wife makes.


If, on the other hand, you have been slowly gaining weight every year since your adolescent growth stopped, your brain long ago stopped hearing messages from your body about how much to eat. A flat tour centred around food and beer will tell your brain to eat even more, and you will certainly gain weight. Maybe only a little but not zero. If you don't want to gain weight, you should actually try to eat less on such a tour than you think you do at home. Reason is you eat more than you think you do at sedentary baseline and you will eat more than you plan to on the tour. But then there's not much point in going on a tour featuring delicious local food. (I'm assuming the attraction is not lentils and kale.) So eat and enjoy.

Rob_E

That's surely true, but these days many of us do have those sitting-down jobs, especially those of us posting on internet forums in the middle of the day. It's certainly easy to over-estimate your calories, but it's also possible to do the opposite. Bike touring may not compare well, calorie-wise, to day in the mines, but it sure uses up more energy than a day of printing up your TPS reports. I've been tracking my calories pretty carefully over the last year in an effort to get back to a healthier weight. I track what I eat and what I burn. On a day when I bike over 30 miles, I can eat almost 3 times as much as on a non-biking day and still lose weight. It's a pretty drastic difference because on a non-biking day, I pretty much do nothing.

Even so, there are more variables to consider. I've only been tracking calories in/out for a year, but I have about 3 years worth of weight data that is interesting. Each year for the past three years, I've taken at least one bike-camping trip of a week or so, on my own, because my wife does not camp, and I've taken a trip of week or so with my wife, my aunt, and my uncle staying at hotels or BnBs (and typically riding shorter days). Thanks to my weight data, I can see that I come back from my self-supported tours 3 to 5 pounds lighter. And I come back from those credit card tours 1 to 3 pounds heavier.

So how your touring can make a big difference, at least for me. If I could take a month off for a self-supported tour, I could probably eat whatever I wanted and be at my goal weight at the end of it. But if it's one of my wife's, BnB tours, I better pack some clothes that are one or two sizes up, because I'll need them by the end of the trip.

conspiratemus1

Thank you so much for posting that, and for keeping such good records when you couldn't really have known what the information might be useful for someday. Fascinating and well put.

Since I retired, I find I hardly ever eat lunch. I or both of us go riding nearly every nice day but when I was working I was on my feet almost all day walking around and avoided the elevator as much as possible. I'd sit down to write a long note but sometimes I'd stay standing if it was brief. I rode my bike 15-30 km each way to the train station(s) and was really hungry by lunch time. Now I have less required activity to get through life. Although perhaps more of it is vigorous aerobic activity, the basic humdrum walking around is less. So an apple and a small piece of cheese suffices, even if we went for a 3-hr ride in the morning. I don't recall consciously deciding to stop eating a chicken sandwich, two cookies, and an orange every noon hour, I just didn't feel like it. As I say, I take after my mother. I think she ran on photosynthesis.

saddlesores

keep in mind there is weight, and then there is weight. length of tour and strenousity is important as well.

hot and humid here in tropical hainan.....on a half day ride through the countryside i can lose a kg or two, even drinking lotsa fluids.....and will take a day or two to return to normal weight.

on tour don't worry about calories. i let my body decide as i wander thru the grocery store. stop often to eat snacks.......cookies, chocolate, donuts, tater chips, peanuts, family-size pizzas, lots of sodas.

short tours.....a couple weeks to a month, don't see any major difference afterwards. just have to be careful the week or so afterwards, so as not to continue the heavy dinners followed by the large bag(s) of junk food.

long tours.....4 months to a year, same. have about the same weight at the end but different distribution. fat cells have shrunk, but muscles expanded. after a really long tour, can't pull my tight jeans up past my knees, and my relaxed fit fatboys are squeezing my thais.