OldTryGuy

Great job and GOOD LUCK ON THE DOUBLE

Happy Feet

You know, once in a while people (well my wife mostly) will ask me why I spend time on forums but since getting more serious about being able to crank out longer distances I have learned a lot about sports nutrition and training here, or have been directed to good sources. I've always long distance toured but trying to push for faster timed distance sure reveals the weak points like nutrition.

I used to long distance run when I was in my 20's and 30's and developed some pretty bad food habits from being able to burn almost any amount of calories consumed. Big portions Carb carb carb carb. Pro athletes like football players often have the same issue. It has been very hard to break that over consumption pattern in my 40's and 50's after slowing down (raising a family) and thankfully re entering long distance via cycling has been like a re awakening - but with a little more thought than in my youth.

I still ride to work etc... but this winter I am hitting the spin cycle to work on upping my base cadence and working on my core and am doing a keto diet to try and break through the 200 mark weight wise. I haven't been less that 210-220 for about 15 years no matter what I do and no matter what strategy I think I want to use for riding faster longer carrying 40-50 lb's of weight on my frame isn't helping at all. I think calorie restricted and keto will do something (I'm at 203 this morning) but I am sure going to try and be more methodical about what/how I eat going forward.

One problem I have developed is eating the same way after as I do during and probably the best advice I have heard here is to eat smaller portions more frequently. If your gut can't process the excess it just passes through or gets stored. It also helps to shrink your gut and get the fullness volume in proper perspective. In the past I could go long periods without eating but then would need to consume double (or more) portions to feel satiated. Feast or famine. That's a bad cycle for slower metabolisms.

Another thing I am still learning about is what types of foods to eat. I knew that the body processes sugars and carbs more efficiently than fats and protein but ddn't really tweak to what that would mean for someone who primarily consumes moderate sugar and mainly carbs in their diet. I don't have a sweet tooth but did like sugar in my coffee and ate a lot of carbs so my body got very used to replenishing my daily glycogen needs via those routes and never really touched the fat stores I have. In hind sight no wonder I never lost any weight. I'm not really a fad diet guy but I have been learning about the whole keto thing and seeing how it kick starts the body into becoming more efficient at processing body stores of fat. It's very interesting and fun to experiment with over the down season and I'm hoping that by (hopefully) cutting some weight now I will be able to take my long distance game to a better level this year. Very curious how to reintegrate carbs/sugars while maintaining fat burning capability when my output begins ramping up in the spring.

Anyways, just some rambling on a Sunday morning. If we are the engine it makes sense to consider the fuel - Thanks all for good discussions

Tourist in MSN

Figure out what your daily average caloric intake is each day for several weeks. Then set a goal of averaging 500 calories less per day. That means lots of tracking everything you eat, but it is the best way to really figure this stuff out.

Cutting 500 calories a day on average should result in cutting about one pound per week. That does mean sometimes checking your status mid-day to see how much you can eat at supper time. It does require will power.
Several years ago my doctor told me that it would be best if I only tried to lose a pound a week, no more. Thus, the 500 calorie reduction for an average day.

And once you get to your desired weight, the only way to stay there is to keep watching your calories every day and holding to it. I am not saying every day has to be the same, some averaging is appropriate. Once you have lost several tens of pounds, you will find that your metabolism has gone down some and that you require fewer calories a day too. So, once you get to your desired weight, you can't go back to your original diet that you had before you lost weight.

There are a lot of days when my supper is a small salad because by supper time I have had almost all the calories I want to have on an average day. I said it takes will power.

rhm

After January's 200k I picked up pizza on the drive home, ate one slice (which was delicious) and went to bed.

Two hours later I woke up hungry, went down to the kitchen, warmed up two slices, mmmm, anticipation!

As i bit into the first one I felt a just excruciating pain from both salivary glands, kicking into action after I guess completely shutting down. It lasted several bites into the pizza, then diminished. This happened after last year's 400k and 600k as well.

My wife says she had that too, many years ago, while nursing the babies. I can't imagine how that's relevant, but there it is.

Anyway, is this a common phenomenon? Is it bad, it is it a symptom of something bad, or is it merely unpleasant (and yes, it is very unpleasant)?

Whatever it is, it did not happen to me after yesterday's 200k.

jlippinbike

Get yourself a copy of "The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung. You'll learn how to lose weight there. I'm pretty certain you suffer from Insulin Resistance. You have to fix that before you can lose weight. And when eating little portions you are basically just having snacks between meals. That's a no-no. You'll see what I mean when you read Fung's book.

jlippinbike

This is bad advice. It is Old School. Get a copy of Jason Fung's book titled "The Obesity Code." You'll see what I mean.

Counting calories to lose weight will slow your metabolism. And any weight lost that way will be gained back when your metabolism goes back up to normal. Intermittent fasting is the way to lose weight. And you will supercharge your weight loss if you eat a low carb diet while you try to lose weight. Carbs trigger the production of insulin, and insulin is an old guy's worst enemy when trying to lose stored body fat.

Carbonfiberboy 

^OTOH, I've lost 25 lbs. and my wife more than that, simply by following this "bad advice." Yes, cutting meal portions is the way to go, while continuing to eat your normal diet, though maybe with a little added protein, depending on your normal diet. No, your metabolism will not drop off any more than the percentage of weight you've lost would indicate. In fact, eat for the weight you hope to achieve. Then after you've lost weight you can continue to keep eating exactly what you've been eating. Nothing could be simpler - or easier. It's just a lifestyle change.

kingston 

I lost 50 pounds and have kept it off for seven years doing the same thing. Eating less food and exercising more works. It ain't rocket science.

@jlippinbike, you have 5 posts and they are all confrontational. Can you please tone it down a bit?

GadgetGirlIL

^^^THIS!

In spite of a lifetime of going up and down the scale, I lost 45 pounds when I turned 50 and have been at a normal weight for the past 6 years. I count calories, I eat a wide variety of foods, I do not feel the least bit deprived. It was a lifestyle change.

Happy Feet

I agree that calorie reduction is the way to go long run. It just makes sense. The problem I created was developing every day eating habits based on a period in my life when my athletic output could sustain high calorie inputs.

The carb loading strategy before activity makes sense because one wants to saturate the tissues with glycogen. But if one is then not depleting those tissues on a regular basis the excess gets stored as fat. We all understand that the gut gets stretched by eating large meals but I think with sustained athletic output the minds conception of necessary portion size also gets skewed (or could). One begins to subconsciously think they need a larger amount to function. That is why simple portion control or calorie reduction is a difficult bridge to cross for some. rhm said he bought a pizza and ate one slice. I would eat 4-6 slices and think that was normal. I'm active and a guy and will burn it off. I routinely ate 2 times the amount of pasta than others and would often finish mine and part of my wife's meal when eating out. On the one hand that's easy to chalk up to gluttony (which it is) but on the other it stems from a time when those inputs were required on a regular basis. It's like visualizing yourself as a machine that requires X amount of fuel when you now really only require Y. Retraining the mind to accept smaller portion size is an interesting concept that I continue to address as I am still actually a pretty active person for my age though the heavier weight is beginning to show itself as a real detriment. I think it requires a period of experimental calorie reduction to observe how the body responds along with just reducing portion size. Otherwise the portion size seems too small. The brain itself has to believe it is getting enough.

I would be a little wary of diagnosing over the internet too. Im most probably not IR as I have an active lifestyle, normal bp and normal blood sugar levels. In fact, the problem is somewhat the opposite as I have become very efficient at deriving energy from carbs/sugars to the point of not needing to resort to lipid breakdown. If I were IR I would have suffered the effects of hyperglycemia on a high carb diet.

Machka 

I also lost 25 kg (55 lbs) by counting calories.

Machka 

@jlippinbike ... do you cycle long distances? Maybe you could tell us a bit about some of your nutritional experiences on rides over 100 miles?

Tourist in MSN

If the book works for you, great. But my doctor says that my numbers look better than 95 percent of his other patients. So, I am going to stick with the advice that I gave out above. And I am not going to buy a new book.

jlippinbike

Yes. I started doing long distance bike riding in 2017. It was my first year as a RUSA member. I learned in 2016 that I was gluten sensitive, and thus I cannot eat foods that contain wheat, barley or rye. That puts quite a limitation on what I can eat: no bread, pizza, pasta, muffins, or hoagies. So I am kind of limited on what I can buy at convenience stores when participating in brevets. I usually don't eat much meat in the middle of a ride. My body has to work too hard to digest meat during a ride. My favorite "food" during controle stops is a quart or half gallon of plain whole milk, but sometimes I go with chocolate whole milk. It's a good thing I'm not lactate intolerant. Milk provides me with the fat I need for calories. It provides the liquids and electrolytes I need for hydration. And it also provides some carbohydrates. I bring with me on rides a plastic bag of walnuts for solid food. And I sometimes I buy Reeses Peanut Butter cups to have with my milk. The milk I don't finish consuming at the stop I store in my knapsack and usually consume it before I get to the next controle. I also sometimes bring ripe bananas or buy they along the way. I try to eat a diet on and off the bike so I do not overly rely on carbohydrate for energy. I want my body to burn stored body fat during long rides as much as possible. I've found that the most important thing about nutrition during a long ride is what I eat before the event. The morning of the ride I usually eat a huge bowl of my veggie-dairy mix as i call it. It's made up of frozen veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, green and red peppers) along with a bunch of olive oil (I cook this in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes), plain whole greek yogurt, whole milk sour cream, and maybe some yellow mustard. My body can easily digest this food and it provides quite a bit of calories for my rides.

In 2017 most of my long bike rides were of the 200k variety. However, I did a 360k fleche event, an ACP SR series, a 1000k event, and a 1200k event. I wasn't a speed demon because I only had a 1000 miles of base from 2016. But I wasn't slow either.

jlippinbike

Interesting.

A lot of what you say is consistent with the way I thought about exercise and weight loss as recent as 2015. I have relatives on both sides of my family who have diabetes. As a kid I lived on sugar products. I loved cookies, cakes, gummies, chocolate milk, pink milk, Good and Fruities, Reeses peanut butter cups, pizza, etc. You get the picture. My mother would harp that I ate too much sugar saying I would get diabetes. I told her if I was going to get diabetes I would already have it considering how much sugar I consumed. I was a competitive cyclist back then. Jr National Team in the US, a national champion, yada yada. I was very good at burning carbs as a fuel source, but I wasn't so good at burning fat for a fuel source.

In 2015 I had been trying to lose weight for the past few years with no success. I was increasing my exercise time and cutting back on the processed carbohydrate foods, but the weight would not drop. This approach to weight loss had always worked when I was younger. I questioned why it wasn't working now that I'm age 55. So I turned my question into a research topic for me to study. What did I figure out?

To burn stored body fat I have to be able to regularly visit an unfed state with minimal to no insulin present in my blood. Insulin is an anabolic hormone which prevents the body from burning stored body fat. My research led me to the subject of Insulin Resistance (IR). When I was young I did not have IR, and thus when I went into the unfed state I didn't have insulin present in my blood. So I burned stored body fat and lost weight. Now that I am old I have IR, and thus when I go into the unfed state I have insulin present in my blood making it impossible to burn stored body fat for a time. I get very hungry when unfed because my body cannot access the stored body fat for energy.

How did I get IR? I got it from consuming way too much processed carbs and sugar over a long period of time. Insulin is a drug much like alcohol. If its use is abused, then the body builds up a resistance to it. That small glass of wine that gave you a buzz a year ago will no longer give you a buzz after you get used to drinking a glass of wine. The same holds true for a dose of insulin. A dose of insulin that used to move the sugar out of your bloodstream 20 years ago no longer is sufficient to move the sugar out today. The body produces more insulin to get the job done. Unfortunately, it now produces too much insulin to get the job done and when the food is all used up, then insulin lingers in the blood stream. By consuming too many empty carb calories over the years a person is going to get IR. Their blood pressure can be fine. Their sugar count in the blood can be fine. But what matters is how much insulin is in the blood when they eat, and when they are in the unfed state. That's what is determinant of whether or not you have IR.

So how does one cure their IR condition? Logically it's the same process as one would use to get a buzz from a mere glass of wine. Stop drinking wine for a while. The body will forget about wine and when one drinks a glass it will start evaluating wine all over again. People who drink caffeinated beverages regularly don't get much of a jolt from drinking them. However, when they stop drinking them and then drink one sometime later they will get quite a jolt.

IR can be fixed by cutting way back on refined carbs and sugar in your regular diet, and by practicing intermittent fasting. By cutting back on refined carbs and sugar the body has no need to produce much insulin. And by practicing intermittent fasting, the body has no need for insulin and thus no insulin is produced. This gives the body the break from insulin it needs to "reset" its perception of insulin the same way a break from wine or caffeine drinks allows the body to "reset" its perception of those drugs.

Carbonfiberboy 

^So the ketogenic diet advocate in fact eats pretty much like everyone else. Chocolate whole milk is 60% carbs, which is about the carb percentage that most of us shoot for. Bananas are over 90% carbs. The breakfast is unusual, but whatever doesn't make you barf. My breakfast is also unusual. However what one eats for breakfast is gone in the first hour or two. It is tough to get around the wheat issue at convenience stores. Ice cream is another good way around that. I eat a good bit of ice cream (~50% carbs).

Have you been tested for celiac disease?
https://www.realclearscience.com/blo...not_exist.html
https://www.realclearscience.com/blo...snt_exist.html
Because you can drink lots of milk, you don't seem to be sensitive to FODMAPs.

jlippinbike

Sorry.

Tourist in MSN

On average I get 35 percent of my calories from carbohydrates.

Happy Feet

Just to be clear, I haven't eaten large amounts of carbs for a while and am already into fairly healthy eating options.

Your understanding of IR is different than mine. Insulin is a hormone that works at the cellular level to allow uptake of glycogen (sugar/glucose) by the cells. When the cells become IR they do not take in glycogen as well and it (glycogen) remains in the bloodstream. That is the "resistant" part of IR. Cells becoming resistant to insulin's effect in allowing glycogen uptake because they are inundated by it on a regular basis. Thus high blood sugar is an indicator via a glucose tolerance test.

I also have no problem so far it would appear deriving energy from fats/proteins. I am on day 5 of an Egg only food challenge (not for diets sake - just a crazy challenge I do in February) and have not had a dip in energy levels (touch wood) including a spin bike workout on the weekend. That should have stripped all glycogen stores and caused a bonk but I did not experience that. It would appear I am transitioning well to fat burning. I began preparing for the challenge a week before by cutting most carbs and have cut sugar completely since Xmas. Two weeks ago I weighed 216 and this morning I weigh 202.9. Most of that being water I am sure but still..

I would say the main challenge for me is not sugars (I do not have a sweet tooth) or even carbs perse but portion size. I have a very hard time visualizing normal portions as being adequate and easily drift into larger portions as if am preparing for high energy output. I have partly defaulted to carbs in the past because I am also a long time vegetarian and doing a high protein diet that is also filling is harder (well, more time consuming and I am somewhat lazy when it comes to daily food prep). So carbs become an easy go to.

Anyway. I am already on the change side of food choices but wanted to add my thoughts primarily about portion control perceptions and how that can be skewed post long time athletic regimes if not careful. I imagine all those middle age football jocks with the big guts would agree, and how reading here about different strategies can help reshape that mental image.

Flounce

I say, go with whatever lifestyle/"diet" works for you and is sustainable in the long term. For many, counting calories works well.

I have trouble counting calories, but am able to follow simpler rules to keep me at my current weight, which I am happy with: I have one bite of anything for breakfast, two bites of anything for lunch (or a small portion of any salad), and a normal size dinner. As much unsweetened coffee and water throughout the day as I like, and I pee lots. Two corollaries are: I can break the rules for infrequent social occasions/events, e.g. breakfast or lunch with buddies or coworkers; and I'm not allowed to eat to satiety when alone, only when with people (e.g. dinner with wife and kids). All this works so long as I am riding at least 2-3 days a week, long rides on the weekends etc.

jlippinbike

@happyfeet. Thanks for your reply. Being able to use fat as an energy source is not the critical question. What is critical is whether you can burn stored body fat while in the unfed state. If you can do this, then you will lose weight. Burning fat from food you consume does nothing to help in weight reduction.

A 10 pound loss for someone who is normally 212 pounds is not a very big drop in weight. Especially if your glycogen stores are depleted. Glycogen is typically full of liquid in the liver cells and muscle cells. And liquid does weigh a bunch.

The only reason IR comes into the discussion is because someone who has it will have a problem being able to burn stored body fat while in the unfed state.

jlippinbike

Nope, I'm not a ketogenic advocate. Nope, I haven't been tested for celiac disease. Nope, I don't eat regularly like you say I do. You were citing what I ate during an athletic event. When I workout I eat more carbs because I am exercising at either moderate or high intensity which requires the use of carbohydrates.

From reading your comment it seems you think all carbs are created equal. In fact, they are not. Refined carbohydrate food sources and sugar are what I consider to be bad carbs. They are the ones to avoid. All other carbs are fair game. The worst carb of all is high fructose corn syrup since only your liver can process it. And when the liver gets overloaded with that slop it sends it to fat cells for storage. And guess what most ice cream cartons in convenience stores have as a primary ingredient. You guessed it: high fructose corn syrup. No, I don't consider ice cream to be a good energy source at brevet controles. And chocolate milk is not what I usually drink.

The important thing to keep in mind about nutrition at brevet controles is that you don't want to consume so many carbohydrates that you prevent the body from tapping stored body fat as an energy source. This is here IR comes into the mix.

Rowan

Oh dear. A preacher has mounted the soap box. And to think we have ALL been doing it wrong until now.

znomit

I can keep eating my pies though, can't I? Thats pretty much the only reason I do these stupid rides.

OldTryGuy

As long as you keep on waving.