Calorie Question
 

I’m on a calorie controlled diet and find I don’t have the energy to do 30 minutes on the bike in one session anymore. So is doing 3x 10 minute rides the same as one 30 minute.

They are if you do them with the same effort.

My guess is that splitting your workouts isn't quite the same, but 30 minutes is barely enough to get your body interested anyway.

That doesn't sound like a good diet to me.

Thanks I did 3x 10 minute sessions. Overall I burned about 200 calories according to my bike. Same as if I did 30 minutes in one go.

By calorie controlled I mean I’m no longer having a whole pizza and cake or brownie from the takeaway every night.

Is fruit part of your diet? I like to have some fruit (banana is always good) before I ride on the trainer which gives me some good energy for a 45-60 minute ride. Any longer than that and I like to have some drink with electrolytes handy to replenish the gallons of liquids I lose. Especially during a climb.

I would budget some calories for before your ride. Riding fasted is a thing people do, but I find it somewhat unpleasant.

you get used to it.

Yeah if the diet does that there is some deciding to do.

On my diet I can go days without eating with little or no impact on my ability to perform my usual physical activity or even more.

Starving would impact the ability to do stuff, but I'm not sure that the OP is actually starving?

In 2019, I rode the second half of a 400 km brevet on almost no calories because I managed to get my stomach upset. Not for lack of trying to eat, unfortunately. There was one point with 20 miles to go where I didn't think I could ride up another hill, but I did, albeit slowly. So all the fasted riding I did payed off, and that's why I did it in the first place. But the OP doesn't seem to be able to handle 30 minutes of probably not so fasted conditions. In general, however, I'm less worried about what harm he might do to himself and more about making the small amount of riding he is doing worthwhile.

It could be a nutritional issue or you could simply be having a hard time with a 30 min session ndue to.. Fitness

FWIW I do all my riding fasted. Caloric deficit alone shouldn't cause the inability to do some work.

It lowers your performance though, and this is easy to measure. I am not saying you can't exercise while fasting, and have no idea if it's harmful to you. But your performance fasted doesn't match what you could be doing with proper eating. Which will mean that the exercise you are getting isn't as beneficial. In the extreme, it will cause muscle wasting. I need to keep all my muscle because I'm old enough my body doesn't build muscle as fast any more.

Not arguing extremes. In my personal experience I tend to gain weight on fasted rides of 100+ km/day when I eat OMAD, at approximately 1/5 calories consumed vs cycling computer guesstimates of calories burned. Haven't done it for more than 3 consecutive days and I don't race. Gaining weight on a significant caloric deficit doesn't sound like muscle wasting to me. fat wasting for sure! Again - nothing extreme, no extended anaerobic efforts.

For me, this *is* "proper eating" as I don't tend to react well to combining eating and riding (or any other heavy exercise). I used to be able to do it when I ate carbs, but can't now. Good thing I don't need to. :)

While on the subject, is there any good resources (books, sites, videos, etc...) on nutrition and riding? I'm not talking about training for the TDF but to prepare for short ride and/or long ride with the understanding I am in my 50's, some what fit. I play hockey, worked out (when I could go to gyms), ride, used to run, etc...

I was watching a recent GCN video where two lads (Hank and Connor) go out on a 140 km ride, while one ate nothing the entire ride and the other consuming loads of energy bars and drinks. They were analyzing their glycerin levels to see how it affected performance and how long it would take the rider fasting, to crash from low sugar levels.

sounds like you want to burn calories, and that begs for "long, slow, steady." don't think 3x10. think 30 with 2 breaks, long as you want. gradually shorten the breaks. gradually increase the effort. reeeeeally gradually. let your body learn to like it (it will, given its own time). in a few weeks, you'll be in a very different place and will laugh at how far you've come. in a few more, you'll say "wow, I couldn't even do 30 back then..." just stay at it with small, incremental increases and, really, nature takes care of the rest.

I'm not a nutritionist, so this is just my understanding. Splitting a ride (of any length/duration) will incur extra warm-up and cool-down times that will cut into your warmed-up riding time, so you'll be expending less energy during those warm-ups, than if you rode all the way through. And on longer rides, say 3 hours, if you split that up into 3x1 hr rides, in those 1 hr rides you will also not be depleting the glycogen in your muscle and liver stores, since that typically takes about 1.5 hours of contiguous riding to deplete those stores, which is the typical point your body will start burning more fat for fuel. So if you only ride for 1 hr, (instead of the full 3 hours) you won't get the best fat burning benefit that occurs after 1.5 hrs of riding (if that's what you're going after).

I rode an organized century without eating any food once. I actually made it all the way to 99 miles in fairly good form and then I couldn't move and went to sleep on a median. It took me a couple of decades to realize the people I was riding with were poaching the ride, so that's why we didn't stop at the rest areas. Those were the days when we called a century a two banana ride, so I'm not sure why I didn't bring anything with me.

Nowadays when I'm well trained during the season I often go 100km without eating. Anything more than that is not a good idea for me if I intend on continuing.

https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/con...ex-sandilands/

My first instinct is that this isn't an issue about calories, it's an issue about fitness. I do have a caveat though: if the OP is just starting this diet and has suddenly dropped from say 3000 calories/day to 1000, then I could see it might be a problem for a while. Radical changes in calorie consumption require radical changes in metabolism and those can take maybe a month to sort out.

OTOH, if it's not that radical, it's just a fitness issue. Your body has to learn to get calories stores from your body and move them into your bloodstream. It'll do that just fine. Only thing is. . .your body won't get better at doing anything unless it's stressed. It responds to stress, no stress, no response. So definitely do not split the workout up into 10 minute rides. Might as well do nothing. 30' isn't long enough to do much either, but you're way better off doing 30' than nothing. Really, on the bike nothing much happens for the first 45' of moderate riding. An hour is a better minimum. But if you can only do 30 now, do that. Just do it, don't take mild discomfort as a stop signal. That's a signal that something good is maybe going to happen.

What to do instead of counting calories? 9-18-18 Dr. Jason Fung

How Calorie Counting Wrecks your Metabolism Dr. Jason Fung

A Calorie is a Calorie, but that’s not the right question Dr. Jason Fung

I am controlling my calorie intake.
I’ve reduced the intake to permit weight loss.

In order to exercise on a bike I need calories to fuel muscles.
I snack every 20mins while riding.
I burn ~25cal/mile on flat ground as determined by a power meter.
This calorie intake is in addition to my regular daily intake.
That way I don’t bonk (run out of fuel) while riding.

If I were to ride til I Bonk, my weight loss goal would impact my fitness goal.
IMHO Fitness goal first, weight loss goal will follow.

Barry

I posted this link above, but I didn't comment on it. It makes sense to me that riding in a fasted state and intentionally "bonking" is a bad idea. It might not even have the desired effect, which in most cases people theorize that it helps burn fat. I don't think I will quit a ride because I can't eat, but I'm no longer doing it on purpose. I had a difficult time recovering from over-training a few years ago, and it makes me wonder if part of that was riding fasted.
https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/con...ex-sandilands/

It's been fairly well established that not eating during a ride of over an hour will backfire, causing one to eat more after the ride, more total calories that if one had eaten during the ride and avoided becoming ravenously hungry.

That said, the OP is proposing a 30' moderate ride which won't even be enough to get warmed up, much less cause hunger. If the OP wants to be so calorie deficient they can't even ride for 30', that's their problem. One loses weight long term by lifestyle change, not by starving oneself.

I haven't "bonked" since I stopped eating carbs. Riding fasted does not equate to intentionally bonking - if you're fat-adapted there is essentially no bonk as you can't run out of fuel that the body expects.

Not for everyone but for the riding I do it's almost magical.

Maybe that depends on the diet? I've ridden 3-day, (300km, 4100m of climbing) rides where the calculated calories burned were north of 15k, and I ate ~3k calories total for the three days. I wasn't able to eat any more, and it didn't hurt my performance or ability to do the ride.