Originally Posted by
pepperbelly
I went from 305 to 227 last year from the first of February to the first of September by trying to keep my carb intake to under 20 per day. My weight loss flattened off and I actually gained some back to 233. I didn’t ride regularly though.
Now that I am riding as often as possible I am sometimes feeling a lack of energy at under 20 or 30 carbs per day.
Someone here mentioned oatmeal as a healthy carb. I will try and see if eating a bowl before riding helps. If so when I start riding longer/farther I will take carbs with me. I am just really tired of being fat.
Good for you on that weight loss. Leveling off is quite usual as I mentioned. So the next thing is to normalize your diet, i.e. go to a mostly plant-based Mediterranean-style diet. That'll better support your riding and be healthier and you can still control your weight just by eating portions sizes that will still cause slow weight loss.
Your lack of energy is due to a lack of glycogen, which is basically carbohydrates stored in your muscles and liver. You're eating so few carbs that your tiny glycogen stores get burned quickly and then you feel weak. So you have to eat the carbs necessary to form and store glycogen. If one's glycogen stores are full, one can do a brisk ride of about 3 hours and eat nothing before or during, just burning that glycogen. A low carb diet is high in fat and protein. Fat is 5000 calories/pound. Carbs are 2000 calories/pound. So cutting way down on fat will allow you to eat carbs while still losing weight, again partly because you'll be able to do longer rides.
In any case, eating a bowl of oatmeal before a ride isn't be best strategy. You want to just eat more carbs in each meal, which will increase your glycogen stores. Then you really won't have to eat before, during or after riding, just eat normal meals and ride say 30 miles every other day.