heysushil

Intermittent fasting is a good practice. I've done it in the past for a long time (I'd say a year and a half) but due to change in shifts this changed as well. Would love to get started again.

Even if you're not doing it for weight loss, it's recommended to stay within your daily calorie limit. Also, if possible, only drink water during the fasting period. Which means no coffee/green tea as well. Since coffee is acidic in nature, it could lead to acid reflux; as per my personal experience, of course.

MinnMan

1. This has not been my experience. Perhaps you should rephrase, as in "for some, depending on how the fasting period is timed during their day and depending on their personal experience, it may not be wise to drink acidic beverages during the fasting period, as it may lead to acid reflux".*
2. If you read the OP (me), you'll see that I fell into intermittent fasting in part *because* of issues with acid reflux. But here the key was food intake before sleep. in the morning, when I'm upright, acid reflux is not a issue.
3. I'm not giving up my morning coffee.

*I'm tired of people taking something that may be true in some circumstances and turning into a directive which they imply applies generally.

Seattle Forrest

Drip coffee on an empty stomach gives me this stomach rot feeling I've always assumed was low level acid reflux. A latte doesn't do that. In my mind is because the milk neutralizes the acid. That's not exactly fasting, but if you're doing it by accident there aren't really any rules to break.

work4bike

I don't have a problem with coffee on an empty stomach. I've done it a lot on the Appalachian Trail. However, before my thru-hike I did need something in my belly before drinking (and not just coffee), but that was before I got into intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting has taught me not to give into that empty-stomach feeling. That feeling does go away, it's almost as if it's more psychological, than an actual signal that your body is telling you, you need food.

MinnMan

i know that feeling, and though I am not certain, I doubt that it is acid reflux, which presents higher up - in the esophagus or throat. That raw stomach feeling of coffee or anything else on an empty stomach is something similar to those hunger pangs on an empty stomach. I think it's just peristalsis starting and having nothing in your stomach to work on. Maybe not pleasant, but probably not reflux.

caloso

Tolerating black coffee on an empty stomach is the thing that makes IF possible for me.

MinnMan

Totally agree. I don't mind going without breakfast at all, but going without my morning coffee would be MUCH harder.

MinnMan

Some more notes on my experience with IF. I've been doing it for about 6 months now.

I initially was doing something close to 14/10, and then I found it easy to transition to closer to 16/8.
I've reached my weight goal (which wasn't a stretch, really. And my blood sugar (A1C) is well within normal indicies.

I was doing IF 5 days/week, but not on the weekends, when I do long morning rides.

A) But now that the days are longer and the weather nicer, that's become more of a challenge because I go to club rides in the evening 1 or 2 nights/week. My regular IF schedule begin with lunch at 11 AM and ends with desert after dinner at 7 PM, but If I'm riding from, say, 5 PM to 8:30 PM, I'm going to be eating dinner late. I adjust by having a later lunch the next day, but the fast ends up being closer to 14 hours on those days.

B) Also, now with the warmer weather, I am doing some longer, more challenging rides. Not only do I want to eat breakfast on those days, but I also want extra calories the day before. It makes a difference to my strength and endurance for hard efforts of 4+ hours.

C). I'm not a keto guy, as I've stressed repeatedly in this thread. I choose IF because it's good for weight control and for keeping my blood sugar under control. For me, an important feature of IF is something that I think others know well. If I'm not eating, it's easy to not eat, and if I am eating, it's hard to stop. So I wake up in the morning, have my coffee, and I don't find that I'm too tempted to eat. Ditto in the evening when I'm following my rule and it's past 7 PM. But once I start eating something, the psychological drive fo have an additional snack (and then another and then....) is very strong. IF limits the portion of the day when I will consume calories, and so I consume fewer calories. And the snacking I do in between is not a big problem for somebody who exercises as much as I do. As I said, I am at and am maintaining my target weight.

Just my experience. YMMV.

MinnMan

Oh yes, my original step into IF was about acid reflux. That has improved noticeably, also.

Bearhawker

I've been IF for years. Lately 14/10-ish. The past week I've been back to 22/2 and have lost 5 pounds in that week, with an increase in my riding as the weather gets decent. Getting a little lighter and a little faster. Going further, too.

All my riding (all my exercise actually) is done fasted.

MinnMan

What are your maximum riding distances, and at what intensity?

Bearhawker

Intensity is a subjective thing as I don't have a power meter. I basically have two modes - full gas and slightly less than full gas if I'm going longer.

My stats would be embarassingly low for most. On my current bike my longest rides have been ~100km, but sometimes with 1900m climbed in a day. I tend to average 20 km/h no matter the distance. The effort required to do 20 km/h vs even 19km/h over a 2 hour ride for me is non-trivial.

I'm working up to being able to do 150km (~94 miles) in less than 7.5 hours to make a Gran Fondo doable this fall.

Things to keep in mind: I stop short of calling myself disabled although I would qualify for an "accessibilty parking" permit if I applied due to the limitations in one of my legs - and the fact that I ride a fatbike with a 28T chainring. LOL

So for me losing weight and getting (fractionally) faster while being able to ride longer is awesome.

caloso

How many days per week do you do 22/2?

Bearhawker

I'm into week 2 on this round, could be indefinitely, but I try to stay flexible, On days when I ride all day every day (like when I did the Cabot Trail) it's hard to consume enough calories if not impossible but on that trip I ate 3000 calories over 3 days where my Wahoo Roam claims I burned north of 15k over those three days. Interestingly I *gained* a few pounds even with that level of caloric deficit. The wonders of being fat adapted

If I am still trying to lose some weight and plateau, I will go off 22/2 for a bit to shock the system. Maybe fast every-other-day, or even just expand the eating window a few hours - then go back.

But after the 1st week I'm back to no longer looking for food just out of habit. If my wife wasn't coming home from work looking for supper, it's conceivable I'd not eat at all some days.

MinnMan

I wasn't meaning to challenge you on your riding accomplishments. I appreciate that you do solid rides like that. Because you said that all your rides were done fasted, I was wondering what you manage without bonking. For example, if you ride 100 km averaging 20 khr, then you're riding for 5 hours. Does that fall under the "all my rides are fasted" umbrella? Even at low intensity, I personally wouldn't do a 5 hour ride without fueling in advance.

Bearhawker

I didn't feel challenged on the riding... I was just trying get across that despite pushing for all I'm worth for 5-7 hours some days, the distance is paltry compared to many others on go-fast bikes. LOL

Yes - that is *all* fasted.

I haven't bonked once since I gave up carbs. As long as I keep the electrolytes up, I can go until the legs give out. Since fat is my primary energy source it's essentially impossible to run out of energy. I can literally go for days without eating anything with no effect on performance (keep in mind I'm not racing but I *do* stand up and hammer up some hills like I'm trying to get away from something )

All my cardio is done fasted - riding or heavy bag workouts.

Bearhawker

Today's ride, fasted:
40km, 480m climbing (two hills had short segments more than 13 & 15 %!)

Only averaged 18km/h but happy with that considering the hills where I was losing traction on the gravel and the winds, especially along the coast.

Strava claims 2415 calories burned. Not bad on a fasted system. 1 hour eating window today.

Carbonfiberboy 

Ignore his calorie burned estimates. However it's totally possible to do what he does. Due to the magic of the cube relationship between power and speed, he only needs to ride at 82 watts to average 12.4 mph on an MTB. 82 watts = 295 kJ/hr.

It's possible for the average person to burn .5g of fat per minute or 30g/hr X 9 = 270 calories. Athletes can burn up to .75g/hr or up to 405 calories per hour. So if we assume he's fully keto adapted, he can ride pretty much forever at 12 mph. That also explains the big jump for him from 19 km/hr to 20 km/hr. He probably does have some minimal glycogen on board to help getting up those climbs.

So a 5 hour ride = say 40g/hr X 5 = only 200g of fat burned or less than half a pound. Thus it's totally easy to keep up with that and even gain weight because he's not burning what he thinks he's burning, i.e. what his Wahoo says he's burning.

Bicycle Speed (Velocity) And Power Calculator
https://www.sciencetimes.com/article...ean-re-fat.htm

Bearhawker

The big jump from 19 km/h to 20 km/h is some combination of the worst-possible aerodynamics at play on a fat bike, a 28T front ring and wind. I think a 20-ish km/h average on a fatbike is pretty decent. Bike, rider, accessories (racks etc) - all in I'm hauling north of 250 pounds.

On a road bike the average would have been over 20... mph

The calorie estimates are what they are. I have no idea if they are accurate, but they seem to be consistent.

Hopefully I'll be in a position to get a power meter in the near-ish future...

Carbonfiberboy 

If and when, and you upload your device to a website which gives you results in kilojoules, 1 kJ of energy expended is approximately equal to 1 kCal burned, which calculation allows for the inefficiency of human biology.

Iride01 

Don't use Calories as a means to derive your power or wattage on a bike. IMO, Calories has only been intended from the get go to be for dietary information. And they are often inaccurate from one person to the next because the way they are calculated is based on averages for multiple sets of varying data.

For certain the Calorie burn will only be useful for the entire ride and not for instances where you will segment out a portion of your ride to look at climb or sprint data.

Get a PM before trying to do any type of power training or interpretation of data. A brand new crank based PM is less than 300 bucks now. Used wheel based PM's probably less if you can find them still.

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​For what it's worth, I did a ride of the same distance and elevation profile today. About 950 kJ. Strava is being very generous!

Seattle Forrest

1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1* Celsius.

Iride01 

Ha ha!

Did I really need to state that I was talking about Calories displayed by a cycling computer so you didn't think we were down at the base level of what a Calorie is? However I did capitalize C in calorie. And generally that has in the US been taken to be a dietary Calorie.

MinnMan

Well, if we want to be precise about it, you are describing a calorie, but the unit used to describe food and exercise energy is actually the kilocalorie, (sufficient to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of H2O by 1 *C), also known as the Calorie.

This is why we interconvert between work in kilojoules (= 1 Calorie/4.184) and Calories by the efficiency factor of approximately 1/4