rumrunn6

I use plain water & take these supplements

• sodium
• calcium
• magnesium
• potassium

pepperbelly

I take Centrum Silver multi vitamin every day.

Jughed

Time is your friend. Time and consistency.

Along with "keto", I've also being IF for 4+ years now - like I said above, the first year was rough figuring out what works/doesn't work.

I did and still do take food with me. May not eat it, but there is always a cliff bar and some jelly candy in my shirt pocket.

"keto" - If I wasn't T2 and didn't need it to keep my disease in remission - I don't think I would choose it for a diet/way of eating. It's extremely difficult to maintain, especially if you travel for work or eat out - its mentally difficult to avoid just about every food product on the market... I would opt for a lower carb, whole foods diet. Something more sustainable like the Mediterranean diet.

Calsun

I would time your carb intake to precede your ride time. For most people carbs are less of a problem but rather carbs with no exercise over a long enough period of time for the body to shift to burning fat. Keto makes sense for the sedentary individual but not someone who is active for an hour or more each day. Lots of information available in this regard.

Best foods for bicycling are bananas and dried fruit. I also make carob brownies that use peanut butter, rice flour, steel cut oats, etc. and no added sugar (or honey). Lots of recipes online and a single batch lasts me a couple weeks. Rice flour has less than half the carbs of wheat flour so something to consider.

downtube42

Don't over-think it. Ride, see what happens, adapt.

rsbob 

I don’t have any dietary restrictions but my heart goes out to how challenging it must be for those that do.

I typically ride 30-50 miles and load both bidons with SIS carb and electrolyte mix with water. I also take GU gels for an extra shot of energy when the legs start to complain. Have been known to take a PB and honey sandwich along for destination rides. Today did a little over 50 and went through 2 gels and 2 bottles/bidons and a handful of peanut butter pretzels from Trader Joe’s.

locolobo13 

Most of my riding is in town. There's a convenience store, fast food, or grocery store within a few miles. Sometimes I'll carry some nuts or a cliff bar.

andrewclaus

I never leave my nut sac behind. Plus an apple.

pepperbelly

My riding is also in-town, at least for now.

DirePenguin

I find that I don’t need to eat at all for a ride less than two hours. I just take water.

Longer than two hours (and, my longest ride ever was just over three hours) and I’ll take about 100 calories worth of gummi bears (Albanese are my favorite) and eat them at about the 2/3rds point of the ride.

Classtime 

Pretty impossible to gain weight eating fruits and vegetables and riding 20-30 miles a day.

pepperbelly

My problem is that I am overweight already and am losing weight. I am not riding that far yet. The more I lose the further I should be able to ride, although our current weather in Texas is making it difficult.

Classtime 

How long are you riding now? Your diet is having a positive effect on your weight so far so keep it up. If you are only riding casually and less than two hours, you do not need to eat on the bike. Increase the time of your "long" ride each week. Go increasingly plant based whole foods. Get off the meds. And put your nice bike to good use -- Train for a century. But yea. Texas heat is brutal. I ride when I visit my brother in Ellis County I try to leave early this time of year and avoid stopping. Without that breeze from rolling along, it is awfully hot.

pepperbelly

I am definitely a casual rider right now. We have a tricky schedule most days but I will be working around it.
I have been doing keto/low carb. I don’t think I am eating enough fat to qualify for being in ketosis but I am losing about 10 pounds per month.

andrewclaus

The one and only successful dieter I know lost 100 pounds in 100 months. Slow and steady, a major lifestyle change. I've know the guy for 20 years, the last ten years as an active thin man.

pepperbelly

I have been doing keto/low carb plus intermittent fasting. I started February at 305. This morning I weighed in at 246.
Once I reach my target weight I will be able to sustain the weight loss by keeping carbs low-ish and getting the carbs I do eat mostly from veggies. There are keto options for bread so I will be avoiding the regular bread and avoiding sugar as much as possible.
I only did 5 miles this morning. Riding on an empty stomach with 82* and 73% humidity is tough. I really need to acclimate to it.

arex

Water, fig bars, maybe some jerky.

grcolts

Keto does not work for me as my body has a hard time with lots of protein. So, I usually take a gel with me and depending upon how long I am going to ride a banana or an apple. For a very long day I will throw in a granola bar too.

pepperbelly

I will figure out something to eat before riding. Riding on empty isn’t going to work.

Calsun

Every body is different and so no single approach is going to be the best and the conditions when we range is another important variable and important to consider. High humidity reduces the heat loss from sweating and heat stroke is more likely. Family practitioners often treat numbers instead of patients and will proscribe blood pressure medications that are to strong or proscrible multiple BP medications and the patient can be hypotensive and have too low a BP. The result can be fainting or falls and is more likely to result in harm than "high" BP. The new AAFP guidelines reflect this.

On multi-day trips of more than 100 miles each day on hilly terrain and I have found my weight does not change from the beginning to the end of the ride if I stay hydrated. To lose weight a low carb diet is important and also the type of carbs and their complexity is important. Same amount of carbs in a snack bar or a banana for very different effect on the consumer's body. The recommendation to feed the gut microbiome for health is a good one for ones physical and mental health.

Multi-vitamins are worthless as the IU is not based on any scientific evidence and there is wide variance in terms of the ability of people to absorb nutrients from food. I know from my own blood work that I need 7000 IU of vitamin D to have my blood serum level in the middle of the "normal" range. No multi vitamin provides anywhere near that amount of vitamin D. It is worthwhile to have a comprehensive testing of ones blood to learn what deficiencies exist for the individual with their ethnic and genetic background and their age and level of activity.

pepperbelly

You do multi day trips with 100 miles each day? Awesome!
Are you riding in the Tour de France?

wolfchild

My favorite snacks during the ride are: chocolate milk, chocolate chip muffins, oatmeal cookies, granola bars, banana cake and plenty of black tea.

Jumpski

I don’t normally eat before or during a ride unless 50 + miles. I do stay hydrated with water and electrolytes.

Mtracer

Until a few months ago, I wouldn't eat anything on rides of 2.5 hours or less (< ~ 40 miles) other than a weak Gatorade mix used mostly to hide the plastic taste of the water bottle. But I was noticing that I generally faded towards the end of the rides. Not bonked, just dragging. And even when I did eat various carb heavy bars, it didn't seem to help that much.

So, I started drinking a carb mix that is mostly maltodextrin with some Gatorade for flavor, for essentially all rides. This has been working very well. Keeps the carbs trickling in throughout the ride without requiring extra effort for digestion. And no messing with wrappers or trying to chew and breathe deeply at the same time.

Also, I'm not replacing all the energy I'm burning. I'm consuming about 25-30% of what I'm burning. So, I'm still relying quite a bit on glycogen stores. If I were doing rides lasting all day, I would of course have to eat a lot more.

I know you can do rides without eating carbs. And I've heard that some people can perform at a high level without eating carbs. I do wonder what the point of that is. On the bike, if your putting out some real effort, you need a lot of fuel. I'm no nutrition expert at all, and maybe I'm wrong on this. But I think pretty much any food ultimately gets converted to a form of sugar in our bodies to burn. Proteins just go through a more complex cycle to do it.

So, it would seem to me that if your eating to fuel relatively high intensity exercise, and this fuel is going to be used immediately, why not eat what can be used the easiest? I understand digestion and various food cycles are complicated, and maybe eating carbs, even if burned immediately, still screws up the keto diet thing.

teacherman62

Great to see this. Back in the day I found I could go indefinitely at about 70-75% throttle (heart rate) without food when in ketosis. A good way to prevent overtraining as well.

That said, on a long ride, a Twinkie is almost immediately assimilated without residual belly bulk, and affords about 15 minutes of sprinting before it evaporates. For what it's worth.... I wonder if a body at full exertion just runs all the junk through the metabolic furnace without harm, rather akin to the high temp trash incinerators that break down toxic materials to their constituent elements. I'm no expert, but to me a Twinkie is experientially akin to the NOS used by street racers in their cars.