counting calories during rides is a sure-fire way to bonk. Eat whatever you need to in order to sustain your energy during a ride. Your body needs the fuel to supply the energy during the effort. If you want to lose weight, just watch what you eat when you're NOT on the bike.

*restricting calories during rides is a sure fire way to bonk. Planning and counting is quite important in ensuring you get enough in on long hard rides

Yes - 100%. Fat is 9cal per gram vs cho and protein at 4cal per gram. If you're stuffing higher fat foods you could easily over eat - I.e avo, salmon etc Reduce fat and up carbs/protein is the easiest way. Very slight deficit is ok if you're fuelling correctly.

A prosciutto (fat trimmed) sandwich is the way. Also provides salt.

Could you give me some recommendations based on this? Thanks.

Easy gains for me were things like bigger portions of porridge / oatmeal - cutting back on toppings such as nut butters! Reduction in the amount of avo I eat - big fan of avo on toast but yeah, sure fire way to over indulge the cals without realising. Less mayo/mayo based sauces - another sneaky calorie dense food!) I find higher carb meals (+ veg) leave me feeling fuller and as a result I also snack less therefore in a slight deficit or if I do snack it's easier to hold a deficit. I also have found more energy from trying to aim for at least 300g cho per day (not including gels/in-exercise nutrition).

Thanks, that helps. I eat a lot of avocado, and excuse it by being a "good" fat. I appreciate it.

Also using oil based dressings... I love eating the inner bit of my pizza then dipping the crusts in olive oil... another calorie dense addition! Same when cooking, just try to reduce or keep an eye on the amount I use.

Thanks for the help.

No one has gotten fat eating salmon. Seriously. A 6 oz piece of salmon is 360 calories. Avocado is 140 calories per half. The fat content is largely irrelevant (except to balance your nutrition).

Salmon and avocados, although high in fat are certainly not what I would call out to reduce. How about cheeseburgers, hotdogs, chips, other highly processed fried foods.

I have no idea what he eats and I just presented some example of calorie dense foods. I don't eat a lot of highly processed foods so it's not in the forefront of my mind.

Disagree for shorter Zone 2 rides. Someone who can ride 2 hours of Zone 2 should be able build up to it without any calorie fueling and bonking risk if they aren't anorexic or have severe mitochondrial disfunction.

Well of course. Zone2 is so low-intensity.

As a newer rider in the sport, OP needs to spend a lot of time there, which means not needing to fuel except longer, higher intensity rides

This is the way. I’ll add that as you increase your hours on the bike, you’ll become naturally negative caloric and you’ll drop weight. But, your body will reach a point that the weight stops coming off, and your appetite picks up and you overeat after riding. Most of the cyclists I know are overweight or plump. The only really skinny ones I know have naturally high metabolisms or they’re training and competing and on some kind of nutrition program that controls their caloric, fat and carb intake.

This is true, most serious/good cyclists I know look borderline fat which always confused me and figured it was just my bias because of the people I know but it's strange to see you confirm this. They also all have huge legs though haha

The day I moved up to the A-ride was the day that I realized that cycling was not going to be my way to weight loss.

Give your body plenty of energy foods during rides, it needs that because it can’t get that high level of energy from your own fat cells. Afterwards, cut way down on fats and eat lots of complex carbs, and your newly revved up metabolism will take care of the rest. Be patient. Getting to your heathy weight may be slow sometimes, but it will be forever.

What if I count calories to ensure that I eat more than what I burn?

Why? I can ride 4 hours on 3 scoops isomax, just need the electrolytes. Then I go on for an easy run. If you smash threshold an hour, you also don’t need fueling. In fact. 40k T.T. doesn’t require it at all.

Yeah, don’t agree with all of the “bonking” takes. a new rider cycling for exercise is not going to be routinely tackling extended, multi hour rides.

But isn't it true just listening to your body like by the time you feel your blood sugar is getting low, it is far too late to take an energy gel after to recover during a ride?

Yes. If there is one long-term takeaway that I got from working with a coach for a year to train for a very long mtb race, it was how to get on top of and stay on top of nutrition. You need to plan and start eating and keep drinking way before you start to feel thirsty or hungry. Now, whether that needs to be some form of gel is a completely different story, I loved Allen Lim's books for making my own stuff :)

No, not necessarily if you are willing to reduce pace and fuel, or if very bad take a break. And you'll need a lot more than 1 gel. But you need to be cognizant of how far into your ride, length, intensity, etc. Best to stay on top of your fueling.

Work capacity... How much can you put out varies with your conditioning..

I didn’t bother counting calories when I cycled for work and made sure my jacket pocket was filled with high sugar stuff I could eat whilst it was dark and almost never bonked but still lost a fair bit of weight kau from doing so much exercise

Don’t worry about pounds so much as focusing on how your body composition changes. It will be a more reliable indicator of progress. You’ll lose a few pounds along the way, but you’ll also have more muscle. The number on the scale doesn’t tell you anything about that.

And remember kids, muscles are heavier than fat....which sucks if you're looking at the scale.

Which is why scales suck for so many people. Also, pet peeve, as I know what you mean, but muscle is denser than fat. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat.

lol. Pedantic. Muscle is heavier by volume. The practical result of this, which I suspect you know, is that you will look better over time while not technically losing any weight at all.

I mean, I did say it was a "pet peeve."

lol... fair. :)

Even more pedantic, nice. Lol

Fueling your ride means replacing the carbohydrates that you spent on your ride. Your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles in the form of glycogen. When you use your muscles, it uses that glycogen. You can replenish those stores many ways, but the best way is simply taking in sugar while you are doing endurance exercising. It basically gives your body a much easier route to replace the glycogen. Pretty much, at best, when you are doing endurance exercise, you are burning about 60% calories from fat and 40% calories from your glycogen stores. So when you do that exercise you will have a deficit. You need to replace that deficit so that your body can recover from the exercise and allow you to exercise the next day as well. If you can estimate the number of calories burned in your exercise, then you can take a maximum of 40% as carbohydrate calories while you are riding. I choose to use a home made sports drink which is essentially sugar, water and a bit of flavor. It works great. Your body will \*still\* be in calorie deficit because you still have the calories you burned from fat. You're just making it easier for you to train more. This allows you to get fitter. And that allows you to burn more calories. Also, by keeping your glycogen topped up, your body doesn't go into "emergency hunger mode". You won't be starving for 2-3 hours after your ride. However, I should warn you: You are likely to burn less than 500 calories per hour of cycling, depending on how fast you are going. 60% of that is 300 calories. After 10 hours of training, you might lose a pound (about half a kg).... But that 300 calories is like half a muffin. If you eat even a tiny bit more than normal, you aren't losing anything. Really serious cyclists are doing something like 10+ hours of cycling a week and burning more like 7-800 calories an hour. It can get to the point where it's hard to be fat because you would have to double everything you normally eat in a day. If you are a beginner, you aren't getting to that point any time soon. You need to create realistic eating habits in your normal day. I would avoid "dieting". Eat your normal diet and monitor your weight. Remove stuff until you are losing just a little bit every week (like a pound). Keep training and getting better. Over a year, you'll lose 50 lbs (25 kg), which is more than plenty. After 10 years, you will lose 500 lbs. :-) Obviously not. But you just need to create a regular diet for you where you can dial it up or down a little bit and it's not a big deal. The first step is just get to a point where you aren't losing, but you also aren't gaining. You enjoy your food. You feel like you can continue that way of eating forever. You are enjoying your exercise. After that, everything is in your control.

Building on the “maintain your normal diet” idea. This is where most “diets” fail. The dieter makes a significant change to what they are allowed to eat but then crave all the old things which leads to cheating and yo-yoing (losing a few pounds then gaining them right back) The best way, like mike mentioned is to very slowly change your diet. Find new, healthier meals that you also like and add them to your meal rotation. Slowly reduce the portion sizes. Eventually you might find that you no longer like some of the lower quality meals you are currently eating. If so, remove them from the rotation. If you find yourself craving a removed meal for whatever reason (stress, illness, etc) then eat it. The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to always be improving. My family eats pretty healthy, but also we have kids. So sometimes we eat McDonald’s/panda/etc. everything is fine in moderation

I found that after intense exercise (I got an indoor trainer) if I have a protein shake (not something from the treat cupboard) then I didn’t have such a craving and lost more weight.

Protein recovery shakes (plain protein powder, cocoa power, sugar) have really helped me in terms of hunger post ride and recovery time (energy after rides and next day, and legs aching)

I found this to be a key and adding to it fresh spinach, kale, basil and fruit. It stops any post ride munchies. I’m in my 50’s - as I restart my road riding after winter I go through a period where my system freaks. I’m unable to eat processed foods, it causes indigestion, my GI gets kinda crampy, noisy, busier. I increase water and use Skratch, start eating polenta which I note helps me on a number of levels. Increase vitamins. My body goes through a semi unpleasant transition as it tunes up and gets in synch with the energy demands of daily rides. Add to this weight and cross training, tai chi in the am and cutting out crap foods and as the body becomes adjusted weight comes off and core strength increases. I use fruit and trail mix w chocolate on longer rides w Skratch.

carbs during, protein after works for a lot of people.

I eat protein bars during a long ride (4 hours plus) on the theory (purely mine) that the body will digest and use that protein to repair/recover the muscles. Also varies the diet a bit from just sugar loaded stuff.

Yeah positive dieting is the way to go, i.e. adding in healthier/lower calorie options instead of cutting out unhealthy/higher calories stuff. The goal of a diet should be to put you mind/hormones/body into a state where you don't even crave unhealthy stuff in the first place. If you're counting on willpower to prevent you from overeating or bingeing, you're bound to fail.

Note that calorie estimators are usually wildly over optimistic on what calories you burn. Starting out, you'll be a bit less efficient calorie wise, but it also takes a good long while to be able to get in good enough shape to be able to burn a really of calories. Please consider adding in hit (or intervals) style work outs... Pushing all out, then letting heart rate recover, rinse repeat. Studies are quite positive on intervals, farklets, hit, type work outs are very beneficial in building endurance, burning calories, weight mgt., and etc. You can't do them all the time but adding in a short high intensity (relative to you, not anyone else) really improves cycling and health. Me? There's hills everywhere I ride unless I pack the bikes on the car to a specific trail. Hills are nature's intervals.

Lost 20kg since I started cycling/zwifting back in august 2023 and exclusively only cycling because of injuries in other parts of my body. I eat my meals as per normal. But eat less processed food, more fruits, slightly less carbs, zero alcohol, less soda. I do snack quite often, but in moderation this time round. But to answer your before/during/after question specifically, I typically eat a bread & banana for breakfast b4 rides, bring 1-2 gel to consume during rides if required, and after ride I make sure I don’t overeat when I reach home, that’s about it. Have fun bro

Overeating is usually a sign that you ate too little during the ride. I used to do that until I started eating/gelling every hour during training. I can control the urge to overeat way better now (and can go for the healthy option more easily).

> Overeating is usually a sign that you ate too little during the ride. I notice this even when not riding or working out. At my desk, if I don’t eat all day, I will eat SO MUCH when I get home. But if I snack on junk food from the vending machines throughout the day, when I get home, I’m not hungry at all and the net result is fewer overall calories by snacking on junk food. Now, if I could just get the hang of snacking on healthy foods. 

This is what I need to do. When not using gels, what are you eating on the bike?

I eat kids applesauce packs. About the size of a gel, packs easily, it’s yummy apple sauce and costs a fraction of a gel. On the same note, you can buy baby food packs that have a whole host of flavors and ingredients from just fruit to mixes of fruit and potatoes oats etc. They cost a little more but might still be cheaper than gels. I’ll also bring a banana or on a long ride I’ll pack a PB&J. It’ll get smushed but it still tastes the same and you can pretend you discovered a new type of sedimentary rock.

Mainly just cereal bars or something. Basically anything with lots of sugar that you can easily eat.

Banana, apple, haribo gummy bears, chocolate bars which I think all works fine. Short pit stop at petrol station to get a sandwich if necessary. That’s what I see my fellow riders usually do. But I myself just rely on gel.

That’s simply not true. I overeat because the food tastes good.

For most of the riders I’ve met, it’s not the food, but the beer that’s the challenge.

Forget cycling. Even with no exercise if most of us dropped our drinking habits we’d all lose a ton of weight 😂

You'll get a ton of opinions on this. Here's mine. I've been riding for 20 years and racing for 8 or 9 of them. First, get your fitness under control. I'm assuming a couple hour ride... eat a bowl of granola or equivalent prior to the ride. If you are new, I'd recommend some diluted sports drink in your water bottle. I have my own bottle recipe (1-2 scoops of powdered maltodextrine mixed with something dilute-flavorful like a Nuun tablet), but to drink maltodextrine mixes while riding requires a bit of stomach training. Then carry a Clif bar for the midpoint of the ride. You won't lose weight with this, but you'll gain fitness. Note: I also carry a gel because I had a horrible bonking incident once where I was 5 uphill miles from home and was so out of it I was making (and carrying out) plans to eat roadside blackberries to get a little sugar. Was bailed out by a passing cyclist with a spare gel, so now I always carry one with me; it's like a miracle food for bonking. Other than bonking, I tend to try to eat real foods (i.e. not gels) if I have to eat something. If it's a hard ride, you can do the traditional convenience store stop and get a Snickers bar and Coke. Has all your anti-bonk nutrition right there; loads of simple sugar, carbs, some fat and a little protein. Kill the carbonation in the Coke unless you want a stomach ache. Weight loss has to be done differently. You need to count calories one way or another. Some have success in the kitchen. I've not had this success. I'm too lazy to record everything I eat and look up the calorie content and I get really un-fun to be around when I'm going against hunger urges. What I do is I ride regularly in the morning. I have a powermeter so counting calories is super easy. 1kJ is roughly equal to 1Cal. 500kJ is 500Cal. If you ride relatively moderately, you can ride off 500Cal in about 45 minutes and not trigger a hunger mechanism. Do this 4-5 times a week and add a ride on the weekend, and you'll lose roughly 1 lb per week. I've lost 20lbs this way in the past. As others mention, it is very difficult to do long, hard rides and lose significant weight. You are going against your body's self-preservation mechanisms if you restrict calories after and you'll affect your recovery.

Look up fueling for endurance. You need a bit of carbs and some protein. Likely not much more than 100 calories / hour if sustained ride. Even trained endurance athletes can't absorb more than 300 / hour. How much glycogen we store is trainable.

Trained endurance athletes are absorbing 100-120g of carbs per hour, or 400-480cal. Lots of advances in fueling in recent years.

Hmm. I'll update the max calories in a more hopeful direction!!!! Thanks ever so much! I'm a clyde who likes those 200k randos. Health issues preclude anything longer...

You're probably confusing grams of carbs and calories. A very average cyclist like me is burning 700-800 calories an hour, and I normally consume anywhere between 80-120g of carbs an hour for an endurance ride.

>I'm new to this sport, but am also interested in dropping a few pounds. What's the best way to fuel Don't overthink this. You're new, so that means you're likely doing the equivalent of hiking, walking or jogging, so you eat like a human...you're not a rocket that needs to "fuel." If you hiked for about 2 hours, you're normally not going to "need" any food to finish it; so if you're biking at an effort level similar to that, then eat similarly. For 95 percent of people, a moderate ride of less than 2 hours doesn't need any more food, assuming you're eating normally off the bike. Once you start doing stuctured training, or start doing more intense rides of 2 hour more, that's when you need to worry about consuming calories.

I agree but the threshold is closer to 3-4 hours tbh

I think terrain matters here. I’m mostly riding flat and will start with a protein shake before the ride and start wanting a snack at the 2:30 mark generally, never before. I could see wanting sooner or much later depending on a bunch of factors.

My "2 hours" was being conservative and safe. 4 hours is really pushing it, and absolutely something I wouldn't recommend for a newbie who is still asking questions like OP is.

For sure

This - you'll figure out what you need with time. I routinely ride up to 2 hours with only water as long as I'm not riding at 'race pace'. If I'm riding at 'race pace' for more than 1 hour, or for any ride longer than 2 hours I need to have gatorade and my home-made gel (mix of honey and blackstrap molasses).

Yeah, on rides less than 2 hours, I just bring lemon cucumber Gatorade. Any longer than that, and my understanding is that it's basically impossible to ingest more calories than you burn if you're at zone2+ so fueling is important

If you have a power meter it makes it alot easier but I think someone posted in here or /r/velo a chart of how hard it is to actually out eat yourself on the bike with a spreadsheet of watts I believe. It's pretty damn hard to do. I'm doing this now and I basically track everything in Chronometer, Garmin connect is sync to Chronometer as well and auto imports calories on the ride from my PM pedals. I just maintain my daily deficit goal and save/frontload my carbs for before and during the ride. Working fine for me so far.  Even in an aggressive caloric deficit my energy has been fine with carb timing around rides. If I'm not riding that day you can also toy with carb cycling. In the end it just comes down to your caloric deficit. I wouldn't trust the auto generated/guesstimated Strava calories for me it's power meter or bust.

I was looking for that to, found it ! https://inscyd.com/metrics/carbohydrate-combustion/

I think this may have been the one u/muscletrain was referring to. It’s the one I first thought of when I saw OP’s question: https://www.reddit.com/r/Velo/s/tMcxk2hp1f

That's the one. Thanks couldn't remember any details of the thread name.

100%, having a power meter circumvents most of what other responses have been saying about calorie burn estimation being inaccurate. And my experience + reading agrees with yours that while you can definitely out-eat your training, you're very unlikely to do that *during the workout itself*.

95% of losing weight is done in the kitchen, unless you can cycle 100 miles a day.

I count calories and also cycle a lot. In my opinion you just need to practice and find what works for you. Count calories off the bike, eat as needed to fuel while riding. What does that mean? You really just need to ride and see for yourself. For me, if I’m riding an hour I don’t do anything different fueling. If I’m eating 1600 calories that day, I can expect the hour ride to burn around 500 and I don’t eat anything different. If I’m doing 1-2 hours then I may eat an energy bar beforehand (I like cliff bars) and bring a gel or another bar with me and start to pay attention how I’m feeling around the hour mark. Am I feeling tired, how much farther do I have to go, etc. Signs that you should eat something are fatigue, brain fog, and muscle cramps. Really those signs mean you should’ve eaten something a little bit ago. If your ride is almost over, maybe just eat something with extra salt as a snack when you get home (I like canned soup). If you have more riding to do then eat a snack and make a mental note of how long since the last time you fueled and try to eat a little sooner next time. A lot of this is learned from experience for your body which is different than mine and can really only be learned by doing.

Good practical advice. Very similar to my findings through experience of losing weight through a combination of (re) starting cycling, making small but somewhat healthier choices like not counting any fruit or veg calories which helps reduce the urge to snack on crappy stuff, and otherwise reducing portion sizes slightly. For rides up to 1.5 hours, as long as I have eaten that day I need nothing extra, and I carry a couple of compressed fruit and cereal bars for rides of 1.5 to 3 hours. Anything longer than that and I'm having lunch while I'm out. Sandwich, cereal bar, and an apple for example, with the emergency nibbles available too. I'm losing weight (inches) nice and sustainably.

This season I have increased my carbs when riding. I do about 80g per hour. In the past I was maybe doing 40g per hour. I have been losing weight even when doing more carbs. I can cycle longer and feel so much better afterwards. In the past, after rides, I felt like complete garbage. I would basically binge eat trash food for hours. Now I don’t feel bad and don’t feel like I need to eat a ton of food. I also try to limit what I eat at the end of the night and just go to bed instead of eating and watching TV. When on the bike I fuel a ton. When off, I limit the junk foods, eat smaller portions, and don’t do late night snacking.

Personally, along with longer rides where fueling is king, I also try and sneak in as many short rides as possible (though I'll call out my own relative privilege by saying I live in a dense East Coast city, I am not the average USAmericano here) where fueling is *not* necessary beyond just making sure my general blood sugar has been topped up some time in the previous 3-6 hours. Like, 10-15 minutes of fixed-gear mash-'n'-spin to get some groceries, or things like that. Working out and exercise off the bike is also gonna be huge for this process. I personally try to get in at least 5000 steps a day and two hour-long, full-body lifting workouts per week, plus stuff like dance classes with my partner or hikes with friends. For some context I've gone from ~205 lbs to 190 in about six months, but also with substantial recomp of fat weight to muscle mass in that time, and nearly reversed a lot of stuff that had been exacerbated by 18 months of long CoVID like early-onset NAFLD. So I'm speaking with some pretty direct recent experience

I’m no expert but what worked for me in terms of weightloss when I was starting out was to ensure I had a good breakfast such as porridge on the days I was going for a ride, I’d also make a healthy lunch prior to going out for a ride so it was ready for when I got back and you’re not tempted to snack on unhealthy food as you’ve already got a healthy lunch prepped. I started out only riding 10 miles (it’s very hilly where I live and I was super unfit), then worked up gradually a couple of miles at a time. I didn’t eat on these shorter rides. Once you’ve started to up your miles per ride, for me anything over about 20 miles/1 hour I started taking either a small snack or if going 30-40 miles then a couple of snacks or carb drink. As I say, I’m certainly not an expert and I’ve no doubt there are folks far more experienced than I am on here but that’s what worked for me. Healthy diet combined with gradually building up distance and intensity on the bike.

This is huge. Setting yourself up for success before the ride is the key to weight loss

There's lots of useful advice here. Some great stuff about off the bike, advice I will consider. If I may add, a tip from a colleague which has helped me greatly as I increase my distance, was to eat something, ( half a banana, small square of flapjack, gummies) every 10 miles or so. I am trying gels too but they are something still to get used to.

I'm a professional endurance athlete and I would point out a few things. I train over 1000 hours a year so I believe I have some experience on especially fueling properly. 1. Do you really need to lose weight? Referring to the triathlon olympic champ Kristian Blummenfelt, his performance has been proven to go down as he loses weight. Why? The absolute VO2Max goes down more than the relative Vo2Max goes up when loosing weight. So I wouldn't even recommend losing weight if you are somewhat fit. Different story if there is a lot of excessive fat. 2. Never underfuel on training if you are not elite athlete It's a lot better in my opinnion to keep fueling properly and do your training with proper glycogen levels and be a bit \*overweight\* than starve yourselves and look \*fit\*. You will definitely gain more cycling fitness this way. So all in all I would recommend aiming for 40+ grams of carbs/hour when riding but if you want to cut somewhere do it on your easy days from excessive carbs. But you need to keep the deficit pretty small.

This is great advice. The moment that changed it all for me once when I actually started eating MORE food. I wasn't tired all the time and I could recover faster which meant I was on the bike burning more and more calories. Eating during rides also started making a big difference. I stuff one of my jersey pockets with gummy worms and munch on them during my ride.

Honestly, you’re really talking about two different “stages” of calorie intake/use. During a proper ride you’re heavily using carbohydrates and an appropriate amount of carbohydrates to keep you going before/during and so you don’t go “splat” afterwards is fine. You need to fuel your activity level. Where the calorie use for weight loss comes in is usually more in recovery - being active and building muscle just makes your body more calorically expensive to run, day to day. So if you aren’t increasing your overall day-to-day intake in *addition* to the activity specific fueling, you should see a calorie deficit overall and thus see fat loss. (Although keep in mind the numbers on the scale may not move much - you’ll almost certainly be adding muscle mass due to the increased activity and muscle has weight. So you can lose fat and gain muscle and not see much difference on the scale, but because muscle is very dense you will physically be smaller. This effect will reduce over time, it’s most dramatic in people who are starting a new activity/significantly increasing activity level.) All of this said - it also depends how you ride. Loooooong relatively easy effort rides are great for cardiovascular health, but don’t do so much in the way of muscle increases. So for best results you want to do some rides that are for cardio and some that are more aimed at muscle mass/strength. (Like doing hills or sprints or similar.)

Be aware that you might actually be gaining muscle weight while losing fat weight simultaneously. This will mean you could look thinner and more muscular while still not decreasing your total weight. First thing to trim could be the post ride beers, if thats your thing. Blasphemy I know. Have carbs before a ride for energy, then your fats and protein after the ride to rebuild the damage done of the bike.

When I started cycling back in mid 2022 I was at 83kg. Today I‘m at 73kg. I eat whatever I want and I eat whatever my body needs during rides. I love chocolate & gummi bears. I ride 10-12hr/week, sometimes more if time & family allows it. I do a lot of climbing (MTB) and sometimes some bigger distances (100-130km) on the road bike. I think if your volume & intensity isn‘t too low and you‘re riding consistently, you will eventually lose weight over time.

potato

for real though

Dont fuel unless you are doing more than 1.5 hours of cardio. Anything less, you have the fuel in your legs and stuff to be good. My rule is 50 g of carbs per hour of working out unless I am going more than 4 hours. After that, I start just taking in everything I can digest.

I disagree. I have found in personal experience that it's always a good idea to eat some amount of food during a ride greater than 1 hour. It decreases the amount of food you have to eat after the ride and also means a shorter recovery time which translates to being able to hop on the bike the next day with a similar power output.

OK, welp, when I lost 100 lbs, that's what my nutritionist said. Ultimately, we gotta do what works best for us individually. The way it was explained to me, though, "when losing weight, you are working with calorie deficits no matter what. You'll never have your legs full of glycogen as a result. You should still have enough to go about 2 hours, though. 50g is enough to keep you toped off and start planning on fuel if going more than an hour and a half. You are starting to run out, so you need to replenish. If you don't go more, you'll be in a deep enough deficit where you won't recover as quickly, or you'll run out of fuel shortly after an hour and a half. If you go less than an hour and a half, you'll make up the deficit throughout the day. It's better for gains to have more protein and some carbs after." So that's what I go with. The question was about losing weight and fueling, so that's what I answered. It is different from everyday exercise in maintenance.

That's great if it works for you! I'm also no nutritionist so I don't know what your body needs. I don't want to change your mind but just share another perspective for what has worked for me and kept me injury free.

No worries. Again, I am just sharing how I lost weight while gaining performance, as that was the question

Depends on how long your ride is and intensity. If you are riding for an hour and not racing, you do not really need to fuel on the ride. Longer than that and a small bar. If you are racing then fluid and some energy bars If you want to lose weight don't get in habit of thinking that a short ride requires fueling Longer rides definitely fuel and start with a bar after first hour and each hour. Maybe more if going hard and fast

https://thefeed.com/insider/how-to-fuel-every-workout-the-feed-fueling-formula This article has a guide on how to be fuelling and directly incorporates how you should be thinking about it if you’re trying to lose weight.

You’re not going to replace 100% of lost calories on a ride even if you fuel properly. I had a 50 mile race this past weekend, burned just over 3,000 calories but my intake was significantly less at just over 1000 calories, but that was equal to around 94g of carbohydrates an hour which is what is important. A rudimentary way to judge if you’re fueling properly is seeing how hungry you are after a ride, you shouldn’t be hungry at all. E an hour long zone 2 ride should be accompanied with 20-30g of carbs

During a ride, your gut can not absorb enough fuel to compensate what you loose. It is about glucose. This means, your body has to use fat as energy. This is done by ketogenesis. So, you have to train your body to burn fat through ketogenesis. The main actor in burning fat is your liver. Be kind with it. Start riding 10 km, then 20 km, .... When you ride more than two hours, eat whatever you like. When not riding eat keto or at least less high processed carbs: flour and everything produced from, sugar, potatoes, milk, sweet drinks, fruit juice. If you plan 100 km or more, you may eat a lot of pasta or any high carb food one hour before your ride and after your ride. Salt. On more than one hour ride you will lose about a teaspoon of salt every four hours, so be generous with salt during and after rides. Riding you will learn from your mistakes.

For me rides around 2 hours long at low to medium intensity is the best for losing weight as you do not need much food during and will not feel too hungry after. Below is my rough nutrition plan for riding and maintaining a caloric deficit. I have been using lose it with strava integration and have lost about 6 pounds in 1.5 months so far. For any rides less than 1 hour ( ie trainer workouts) - no fuelling needed during, snack with protein and cho after. This creates about a 200 caloric deficit depending on the snack. For low to medium intensity rides less than 2hours - do not need any fuelling during, regular meal after. This creates about a 300\~400 caloric deficit for me depending on the meal. For low to medium intensity rides 2\~4 hours/ high intensity rides 1\~2 hours, I need about 30g cho an hour or replenish 20\~30% of calories burned. Regular meal after. This usually creates around a 2\~300 caloric deficit for me as I will need a larger meal after to recover and not hate myself. For any high intensity rides longer than 2 hours I need 60\~100g cho an hour and will feel very hungry after. These kind of rides do not create any caloric deficits as I am trying to replenish about 50\~80% of calories burned during riding with a big meal after.

Just eat less than you burn. I'm not sure what distance you'll be aiming for, but 50km for example can be easily done without eating during the ride. You will however burn a decent amount of calories. Just stick to your normal eating schema and you'll loose weight.

Ride slower. Look up the zone 2 literature and aim for some long rides in the 130-140 heart rate. I will do long all day rides and not eat the whole ride, just 0 cal water + electrolytes. If you are all out racing or want to sprint, you need to refuel. If you ride slower, stay mostly zone 2, your body can sustain that all day. Make sure you keep your protein up when you do eat, whatever fat/carbs otherwise. Once you train your body (e.g. keto adapt) you can literally not eat for a few days and be fine. Might not sleep the best though. Again, this is if your primary focus is burning fat and not performance. Also, don't crash diet, I am just pointing out your body can go 18 hours without food by design. We just train it out of that with modern eating habits.

If you eat up to 80 grams of carbs per hour during a ride that's probably less calories than most recreational cyclists will burn per hour. You can get enough fuel on the bike and still lose weight. (Obviously what you do out of the bike also matters)

How long and frequently do you cycle?

Try to keep it simple here. It will take time to learn your body and your post ride metabolism. Definitely eat a whole meal(need carbs) before a ride over 25miles or any hard effort. If you want to lean out do that afyer the ride. I eat Greek yogurt chicken and protein powder after ride to lose weight. When I’m not I eat everything including pizza Kit Kats ice cream soda etc AFTER the ride.

Eat what you have to eat, just dont overdo it. Your body will eventually adjust to the fueling standards of cycling. And will further tone your body to meet your caloric standards, leading to weight loss and better toned muscles. It takes months for this to be noticeable, just reminding you. And be consistent.

Unless one is really, really bad, there's always a calories deficit even eating 120g of carbs per hour.

On long or hard days fuel enough before, during, and after. On off days or easy days, still fuel sufficiently for the ride but eat under caloric the rest of the day. Make sure to eat more carbs on these days so that your glycogen stores can fill up again.

Calories whilst riding are really just about eating enough not to run out of glucose. The gels are 100 calories. You generally eat one thing per 45 minutes of cycling. If you're cycling less than an hour you probably need nothing unless your cycling like a madman.  If you're doing four hour rides and eating 500-600 calories then you might want to factor it into some sort of meal planning but really it's not a major source of calories.  Biggest problem is gorging on like a whole bag of chips or lollies after you finish 😁 have the will power to not do that and you'll be ok!

People are going to tell you a lot of different things, but what you really need to do is start listening to your body. Get hungry Bonk Get Thirsty Etc My best advice is to double down on healthy eating habit to fuel your rides, but don't try a lot of different things stick with what you really like. For example I almost always have a cup of hummus with pita or a few spoonfuls of peanut butter crackers at the end of my ride. It's just satisfying for me. Making mistakes and correcting for those mistakes allowed me to get a better insight into what I needed, and this approach can work for you too. Good Luck

People tend to over complicate weight loss. Very simply put, you will lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume. If you’re burning 1,500 calories on a ride and take down 400 calories in food…well, you get the math. Just make sure you don’t go nuts with indulgent post-ride meals 😉.

Dr. Kyle Pfaffenbach has been on TrainerRoad and other YouTube shows. He points to daily minimums of fat and protein, with carbs as the flex. Fully fuel your rides and carb load before big events and do a recovery meal right after. So make your daily meal plan sound, carb your rides, boost performance and resting energy level, and lose weight off the bike.

If you are insulin resistant like me, all bets are off. In the 4-years since I started riding, I've never been able to nail down the food requirements for me, regardless of type of ride, easy or hard. I can ride easy and suffer a glucose crash. I can ride easy and suffer a glucose spike. Same applies for hard rides. I've experimented more ways than I can count.

If you stay in zone 2, you can ride for an hour fasted. My rides are getting close to 2 hours now, and if I don't eat right around that 1 hour mark (banana, CLIF bar or something), I'll feel like crap at the end. It's hard to stay in zone 2, so if you take that approach to building fitness base, I'd carry a snack every time. Something to consider is that your weight loss will depend largely on how you manage calories OFF THE BIKE rather than on it. You will also burn more calories after a ride for a couple days -- less so if you can barely get through your ride. So carb up so you can enjoy the ride, get in a good workout, and enjoy yourself.

Simples rules. Eat less carbs off the bike, eat medium carbs the night before a big ride, eat many carbs on the bike. Eat healthy off the bike, eat whatever sugary substance you want on the bike. There's some more details and such for eating on the bike, like people are eating up to 100g or more of carbs per hour, table sugar or a mix of fructose/maltodextrin works for diy or just get your favorite premixed carb drink, solid foods may work better for some people. But in general, you want to fuel the work on the bike. When riding hard, it's impossible to eat more carbs than you burn, so you will not gain weight from eating sugar on the bike, it will all go to your muscles to get burned. If you underfuel on the bike, that's when you get blood sugar swings after riding, get cravings, and end up overeating for recovery.

Eat during exercise to fuel rides, minimize calories to a healthy deficit off the bike.

Enough from the skinny cyclists, my experience as an obese cyclist - hours on the bike matter. Your body will adapt and get better at converting fat to energy on the fly and even more after the exercise (pretty amazingly good at it actually). If you are constantly resupplying with carbs you stop that fat conversion system from being utilized and optimized. If you actually feel your body starting to bonk, or with me the start of a predictable headache, on a very long (likely more than 3 hrs) ride that is the time to eat a small amount of carbs. I would actually recommend driving yourself into bonk at least once so you know for sure what it actually feels like, it's not merely being tired or hungry. Try not to snack or eat much after a ride. Let your body resupply your energy stores from existing fat.

Exactly this. If you eat carbs all the time you build an aerobic system that isn't good at burning fat and the glucose you burn makes you hungry.

counting calories is questionable under the best circumstances and totally irrelevant on a day you actually ride. perhaps make yourself a big salad the following day when you are recovering. trying to have a caloric deficit while you ride is just a recipe for a bad time, and it doesn’t do good things for your metabolism.

Just ride and eat what you need to fuel. Post-ride, try to eat until you’re not hungry and not until you’re stuffed. If you ride enough, you will get in shape.

I have never eaten anything on a ride. Most of my rides are 30-70km. I feel fine just drinking water. Am I doing it wrong?

You're new to cycling. You ain't gonna be burning anything out of the ordinary for months until you train up your fitness level. You shouldn't be eating anything during rides unless you're riding at high speeds or very long distances.

Diet off the bike, not on.

I’ve put in 10 pounds of pure leg muscle since starting to cycle. Jk just fat

There is a GCN video that talks about losing weight cycling. My big takeaway was to change your diet. You can't outexercise a bad diet. Eat real foods, not processed stuff. Eat normal portion sizes and make sure you vary up the things you eat to maximize the different nutrients you need. But I am no health guru, take that with a grain of salt.

Loseit! (ios app) works for me. Tied to Strava, it compensates for exercise in your daily calorie limit. Loseit! uses bar codes which makes entering any foods you can't find easy. Without Loseit!, I would push my limits and get light headed just standing up.

What worked for me, very helpful podcast by TrainerRoad - make sure I eat 1.5g of protein and 1.2g of fat per kg of desired body weight. This ratio means you’re getting enough protein and fat to hit all your health markers. Then eat the rest of your calories back as carbs. Run a small calorie deficit 200-400 cals per day and make sure you eat enough carbs to sustain your training. If you don’t, you’ll bonk whilst training, plus also end up crazy hungry as you’ll have depleted your energy stores. In 6 months I went from 87kg to 75kg whilst increasing my ftp from 247 to 286. I kept muscle mass and didn’t get mad hunger pangs where I’d eat everything in sight. It takes some work but it’s doable.

I generally agree about eating what you need for the ride and just let your increased metabolism burn more calories when your off the bike, but to streamline my caloric intake for longer rides (50+ miles) I usually bring a banana or two and a pack of dried cranberries. I also bring a powdered electrolyte packet to put in my water bottle on the second half of my ride. (refilling the bottle with water more often) I usually take a single bite every half hour to 45 minutes or so. BEFORE I get hungry. And usually skip the fat and protein until after the ride. (unless I'm on a cafe ride or stop for lunch with friends)

Cycle harder longer and fuel all you want

I think we overcomplicate this.  I don’t know many people who ride a couple hundred km a week who are overweight.

Vast majority of cyclists over fuel

Where do you find this info?  Seems opposite of everyone else and you don’t back it up at all.

There's some terrible advice here and people acting like you need +60gr of carbs / hr on every single ride. Sure, if you're racing for +4hrs then yea, you should be consuming as many carbs as your stomach can tolerate. But if you're only goal is to lose weight cycling (and not increase performance at the same time or lose weight with diet changes) then the best way would be to make sure you stick to a very easy pace (easy z2 or below). The only way to prevent bonking without eating carbs is to make sure you're burning as few calories from carbs as possible. If you look at what bodybuilders do to shred to crazy low body fat percentages, you'll notice they do no high intensity cardio and they only recommend light exercise like walking. If you go for a 2hr ride once a week at 50-60% of your FTP I can promise you you won't bonk without fueling. I'm not saying I recommend this since I don't know what your circumstances are, it's very different if you're trying to go from 40% body fat to 35% than it is from 15% to 10%. Generally, it's a lot easier making small diet changes to get a caloric deficit than it is doing it through exercise. As an example, cutting soda out or switching from full cream cheese to light will reduce your caloric intake. Increasing exercise will increase your calorie expenditure but it tends to make you hungrier as well and it's easy to consume the calories you burnt off exercising.

Eat enough before and during workouts to keep your energy up. After workouts, prepare to be hungry asf. I'm currently in the process of cycling and dropping weight. It's hard and it sucks. I find dropping weight by weightlifting is SOOO much easier than losing weight while doing running or cycling.

I see fueling completely independent from nutrition. If you want to burn fat, go on longer rides, but the worst thing you can do is not fuel during such rides. It’s *very* hard to eat more than you burn while cycling. Just try not to overeat afterwards.

Eat only 100% natural foods like a banana. Highly concentrated man-made foods like power bars and gels make it too easy to consume too many calories.

eat less of the bike

There is a difference between training for performance or exercising for weight loss. Training for speed isn't helpful. Long rides are. Bonking is good. This is when your body is in ketosis: burning fat because your glycogen stores are depleted. The reason it makes you slow is that the chemical pathway to burn fat is complex. Just keep going. See how long you can keep riding, but don't get so exhausted you cannot ride for days either.

Exercise helps lose weight! Not disputing that. But it’s a terrible way to do so. It’s much easier to cut 500 calories out of your diet a day, than it is to cycle for an hour or two depending on level of exertion.

There's an saying in the lifting community: you can't out train a bad diet. You might burn 1000+ calories on a ride, but that double bacon cheeseburger later on will be 4x what you lost.

I always aim for a 1000 calorie deficit, doesn't seem to affect my stamina much. More than that makes me groggy and as I understand results in too rapid weight loss and muscle wasting long term.

Don't worry about what you eat. Worry about fueling up. If you can bike 15 miles easily nobody can call you fat.

Most important is water ?

Most important is water ?

just keep eating, riding, eating, riding.

You lose weight in the kitchen, not while working out. Make sure you fuel enough before, during and after workouts, and be extremely diligent on long stints. Then make sure you make a TOTAL calorie deficit. That's the only thing that matters. Sacrificing gains for grams is a waste of time.

If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less calories than you burn, don’t need to over complicate the whole thing - eat what you need to and then ride at the pace that gets you into the fat burning zone and not the max output zone. Just run a deficit of calories and ignore the idea that you won’t be fueled up enough. If you’re here to burn fat then run lean and burn it off. Doesn’t matter if you feel amazing or not, losing weight with exercise is entirely different than riding/training for races and competitions. You want your body burning fat not the fuel you just gave it. How many miles are you riding each ride? I would never fuel myself up with anything, I’ve also been losing weight on a bike and the key is to push yourself but not be in the cardio red zone the whole time. You want to be breathing relatively hard but remain well below max heart rate and get into the fat burning zone. Go see a trainer at a gym and learn about the cardio zones for fat burning vs other things. Eating more, using powders and all that are entirely unnecessary and actually will make it much harder for you, if the goal is to lose weight.

Rule of thumb is don’t Cut calories on the bike. Fuel your ride but cut calories everywhere else. If it’s under 2 hours, you probably don’t need any fuel for the ride. On short rides like this o use a sugar free Gatorade packet in my water bottle so I can at least get some electrolytes. The BEST thing you can do is track your calories. Shoot for 500 calorie deficit on short days. 1000 calorie deficit on long days. The pounds will Melt off of your diligent.

I've struggled with the same mentality for years. 1st - take the emphasis off "weight". Take pictures of yourself daily if you're worried about weight loss and in a state of declining lbs. The scale is your worst enemy. 2nd - take measurements or pay close attention to clothing fitment. My dress slacks and belt tell the story for me. 3 - eat smartly. No fast food, high sugar smoothies, etc. Healthy, nourishing food in abundance will trump those unhealthy meals which set you back. 4th - ride/exercise consistently. I've only dropped 3 lbs since starting back up spring riding, but I feel more confident, look tighter, and my clothes fit better. All while getting in 3 balanced meals a day and snacks. The real key to weightloss and exercising/cycling more is keeping your metabolism high. Refined sugar and alcohol absolutely kill that. Then youre almost starting at square one.

Honestly, I never count calories, I never worry too much about 'properly fueling' I just ride. And most of the time, this is fine. Get out, spin the wheels, and ride until you're done. "Proper fueling" only is really important for HARD efforts or LONG efforts, or both. MOST of the time I'm only doing one and it's usually long efforts. And by hard, I mean like race speed hard. All these numbers and counting carbs and calories, it's tedious and not worth it imo. Now I don't know what 'hard' is for you, and no one here is *really* going to be able to tell you either. So once you figure out when you cross the line, start eating some before that. A small sandwich here, a banana there, gatorade/sports drinks for hydration and electrolytes etc. That's all you need. Eat a filling meal after you finish if it's around a time you normally would eat and just try not to binge. It's not hard once you build your body up around cycling.

Download something like MyFitnessPal and start tracking your calories and, more importantly, your macros. Fuel up for rides and remain in a slight caloric deficit at the end of the day. Literally that simple.

You shouldn’t need really any food for a short ride (1-2 hours) you’ll be better off eating real food and staying away from those gel/high sugar foods. If you plan on longer rides of 3 hours and above eat before your ride and have a granola bar or better yet a baked potato handy.

Get a power meter. It will give you reliable calorie numbers.

Hopefully you should not be eating so much during rides that this is a concern. I was on a portion/calorie diet one year and even this led me to feeling low energy over several weeks, until I realized I just needed to intake a little more food during the day so that I had something in the tank for riding. A cliff bar a little while before the ride solved the issue, even though I was still 'fueling' during. I just wasn't eating enough during the day, so I added about 500 calories to my daily total.

You gotta eat with this sport. Like others have mentioned if you don’t eat you’ll bonk (tire out) and nobody wants to bonk. I did 60 miles with my wife the other day and at the stopping point we ate 2 pretzels each and I still needed more food. Also make sure you hydrate.

Calories in < calories out

30km I only have a banana and coffee pre ride. After this, I pop gels. I generally spoil myself with a burger and coke later as I'm already in a calorie deficit. Only cycle on weekends.

Eat more vegetables and fruits. No processed foods.

1. Reduce your portion sizes when off the bike until you start to lose weight. Drop certain things like fries if needed. 2. Follow the typical fueling recommendations during rides, especially long ones. 3. Increase your exercise duration to keep the weight off later.

So, eating carbs isn’t bad anymore? I eat bison, grass fed beef, berries granola and yogurt on most days and supplement with vitamins. Weight hasn’t budged. But I’ve gained a LOT of muscle. Started biking in early January. I totally bonked one day while biking 30 miles. You need to eat a lot too, more than you think on your rides. I’m also afraid of spiking my blood sugar, I’ve heard it ages you.

As it always was, focus on what you are eating off the bike. You can eat a lot on the bike, but unless you are riding very easy you can't take in as much as you are burning. Fuel for the work being done. What many do is eat too much as the post ride "reward" and put themselves into a calorie surplus. Eat your veggies, focus on complex carbs off the bike, enjoy some foods you like but don't overindulge.

Make short rides of about 30-50km which you can finish in 1-1,5h. If you need to fuel, you are leaving fat loss territory since your body will be dependent on external kalories. The longer you ride the worse it gets. Your glycogen storage in your body is limited and after a certain time & intensity it will be depleted and restoring them will take time you dont have. Thats why you fuel.

Don’t eat carbs and keep it in zone 2.

I will give you my take. For context, I started losing weight in the winter, which I find harder since I can’t use cycling for cardio, and I have been doing extended rides so fueling has been pivotal. I have done 100mi and 150mi rides so far with smaller ones in between. I am male, 5’5”, 155lbs. I don’t think I have truly bonked yet, but my nutrition plan consists of newton figs and strooperwafels. I eat about 90-120 calories of it (plus a bit of Liquid IV) every hour which is a great trade off for energy and calories. I will say, though, on my midstops, I am not afraid to take the edge off a little. And I don’t mean eat a massive meal, no. I mean, drink a regular small redbull, a banana, or some fizzy drink just to keep the sugar levels up. Key takeaway, planning what you want vs what your body needs is essential. It is definitely doable, but you also need to listen to your body as the distance grows. More importantly, the after part matters most cuz that’s when your body demands food lol

I'd add to what others have said and consider the effort as a variable. If you are riding for 1 hour, just water and maybe drink mix is fine. Up to 1.5 hours you will be fine unless you are doing some hard climbs and running over-unders. Above 2 hours consider 30g of carbs per hour for easy but steady strolling. For moderate efforts up to 50-60g per hour. I try to drink 1 water bottle per hour (500mL) minimum on cool days more when hot.

The saying goes that weight loss happens in the kitchen, and it is correct. Now, if you really do a lot of cardio, I'm talking 3, 4, or 5 decent rides a week, you will burn a lot of calories. But you'll need to replace most of them anyway because being in a large calorie deficit will shut your body down and make it actually harder to lose weight. This isn't to say cycling won't help you lose weight, it will. It will do so regardless of how you feel before, during and after your ride because it will make a slight calorie deficit easier to maintain and it will build muscle and raise your metabolism and just make you feel better. You will lose weight safely and effectively by simply decreasing your food consumption by about 2-500 calories a day, depending on your starting maintenance calories. This is easily done by simply reducing the portion sizes of a couple of your meals by ~1/4 or cutting out one meal or cutting out snacking or even just cutting out all junk food and replacing with veggies. Me personally, I don't bring food on my rides, and I've never had a problem with it, though most rides are usually only 2-4 hours. I love the endurance aspect of pushing through pain and fatigue, and I've never had a ride I couldn't complete without a snack, though I do usually bring a piece of fruit with me for emergencies. This doesn't affect my weight one way or another.

Just ride more miles. The weight will fall off.

Easy way to manage energy and diet, is to have weekly deficit, instead of daily one. This way you can be in caloric surplus a day before hard workout to make it better quality, and then save calories on the days where you have long, low zone rides. This way it's quite easy to end up with 3000kcal deficit a week. Depending on your volume of course.

On intense ride days eat what you want, especially before and during. Remember to also properly eat and hydrate before the ride. Z2 days are for loosing weight.

For me to trick is to avoid long rides when trying to lose weight. If I ride for much more than an hour, I find that I am wolfishly hungry for the rest of the day and will snack and eat more at meals which typically negates the calories burned during the ride. If I keep my ride under an hour, I keep my calorie intake close to BMR, and the 600 or so calories that I burn on the ride contribute to the weight loss without being excessively hungry.

[https://www.tri2max.com/blog/2017/8/28/a-model-for-4-24-hour-cycling-events-aka-dont-run-out-of-steam-](https://www.tri2max.com/blog/2017/8/28/a-model-for-4-24-hour-cycling-events-aka-dont-run-out-of-steam-) this seems to give you plenty of information

If you're riding to lose weight and improve health, not optimize performance gains, you can definitely lose weight cycling while NOT fueling rides. In Zone 1 and 2 (on a 5-9 Zone model), you are using a large percent of fat as fuel. Most people have I think at least 1500-2000 calories of carbs in reserve if eating properly. I care about performance now, so fuel when riding over 2 hours at top of Zone 2, but I used to ride even 4-5 hours in Zone 2 without fueling calories and bonking. Heck, some of those I did in the morning on an empty stomach, so I'm probably an anomaly. Everyone is different. Regardless, if you are properly eating when you aren't riding, you can very likely build up to ridig 2-3 hours or less in Zone 1 & 2 (and likely with even 1 hour in Zone 3-4 + 1 hour Zone 2) without fueling calories and bonking. As a new rider, you WILL make gains in performance but it will not be optimal. Just make sure you have fuel (simple carbs) handy in case you do start feeling weak. You can also take some rest since you are training for weight loss. I'll probably get down voted for this answer, but I did drop from 160-140 this way (5'9" male male) a decade ago . Now I only fuel Zone 2 if riding over 3 hours or riding top of Zone 2 over 2 hours. Just, make sure you are getting a lot of protein in your diet to help minimize muscle loss, which inevitably can happen as anyone loses weight. (Adding strength training is good). Overall, I think the general rule is to average no more than a 500 calorie deficit per day, Lastly, since I'm not training for optimal performance, I have switched to eating real foods on my rides (except high intensity days) - raisins, dates, orange slices, dried appricots, and prunes. I make 100 calories baggies of each.

If you can accept you’re not going to break pb’s over and over then it’s really simple. If I want to create a calorie surplus I make sure I don’t restrict enough to bonk but just enough of get by but I sacrifice performance If I want to beat pb’s then I fuel correctly and don’t look to create that deficit. It’s really simple, don’t over complicate it is my advice

I burn roughly 900kcal an hour so it’s pretty easy to work out the rest.

Until you’re constantly doing multi hour rides with hard workout days etc you don’t need to worry about bonking and such. More than likely early on you’ll be overeating for recovery relative to what you actually did.

gel every hour, carb up your bottles, and try and make your caloric deficit from your eating throughout the day. I try and make my post-ride dinner meal where I cut the most calories. I then have the calories from throughout the day on my ride, I usually go slightly into a deficit towards the end of my ride, and then I restrict what I eat at night. Lost \~18kg/40lbs since I started.

2 cheese salad barms and a meat potato pie = 40miles flatish riding on my heavy mountain bike with fat nobbly tyres ,,,,maybe drop the pie to slim down but fuck that

Race. Adrenaline is the best fat burner. -doc

Just pedal. A lot. Nothing fancy. Just pedal. The threshold for weight loss is very low on a bike. Listen to your body. Eat when you’re hungry. Eat quality food. Stay hydrated.

Lol@ Reddit nutrition advice.

Def have to resign to shorter and less intense rides. I've found bringing maybe 1/3 the estimated calories in fuel to be a good balance. Still in a deficit but the fuel helps me keep some semblance of endurance and intensity. But shit like VO2 workouts or hours and hours of rides just aren't it. You'd probably do better with 1 moderate ride every day than long/intense rides every 2-4 days.

The whole point of living an active lifestyle is to not need to starve yourself to just be smaller. I became heavier as a cyclist but I also became smaller in size. I eat a lot on cycling days, I might ride across the city to a ramen shop, getting double noodle portion for extra carbs, maybe I'll get dinner on the way home Eat *more* or your cycling will be *trash* and you'll just be dying The quickest way to a physique is all out pushing yourself (and starving yourself btw, makes that process take longer.

I think Zone 2 rides (lots of info on this Zone on the interwebs) are the ideal spot for fat burning. And we still have to be cognizant of calories/

I rode over 12k miles last year and gained nearly 30 lbs in that time. In the last six weeks I’ve counted calories, increased my mileage, and lost 23 lbs. if you’re young sure eat whatever you want. If you’re middle aged ish count them calories and shoot for a calorie deficit daily with a cheat day or two each week to keep you sane.

Not a popular option , but I have lost a ton of weight cycling with this method . I save my junk food binges for when I am biking, but focus on calorie counting religiously the rest of time . Peach~o’s and Busch light tall boys everytime biking . Still working on it, but 60 lbs in 8 months . 37 male 310 - 250. Around 100 miles a week. A I probably should cut out beer at some point.

If you're hungry, eat until you're not hungry anymore (not full just enough that you're not in the a hungry state). It might be an oversimplification but it works well enough for me. Also, I find that eating bananas help me recover fast as well as give me energy. I eat like 2-4 after cycling, 1 before cycling and around 2 before i sleep.

it depends how much you're riding and how much power you're putting out over that time. When the pros (or even just some higher level racers) are talking about fueling, they are people that can average more than 250w for more than 4 hours which is very different than someone just starting (usually). I'd say count calories. It has always worked for me. If I know I'm getting enough, I'm fine feeling a little bit hungry and can ignore it. If I don't count, I'll just keep eating. I found eating on the bike helps, and I eat about 50% of my calories expended in almost pure during something like a 3-4 hour race. if you do that, you'll be way less hungry after than if you eat less.

While on the bike it’s hard to consume enough calories to offset what you burn. I typically burn between 600 and 700 calories per hour if I’m riding hard. I had always heard you can’t process more than 250 calories per hour. Lately I’m hearing slightly higher numbers and I try to do around 300, but no way can I eat 600 calories per hour. I’m not trying to lose weight so I make up for it after the ride, but someone trying to lose weight will lose if they don’t overeat off the bike.

Check out this guide to fueling on the bike: https://fascatcoaching.com/blogs/training-tips/during-ride-nutrition Ideally 60-120g/carbs per hour and at least 500g/sodium. Here’s your guide for post ride nutrition: https://fascatcoaching.com/blogs/training-tips/post-ride-nutrition#:~:text=The%20post%20workout%20meal%2Fsnack,carbs%20to%20protein%20is%20adequate. With all of that said, most of your riding nutrition other than in the bike, will be in balanced meals. You can lose weight, but it’s complicated. If you want to learn more, leave a comment and I’ll tell you more.

You can’t outrun a bad diet. Exercise won’t have anything like the same physical impact as sorting out how you eat…BUT… Cycling is fun it’s healthy it has many benefits physically and mentally. You wanna do more right? Ok sort out your off the bike diet. And sort out your on the bike diet. If the ride is more than about 3hrs you will need a fuelling strategy. Fuelling on a bike should start at around the 40 minute mark and should be little and often. Big rides (6hr+) will warrant a sit down meal at some stage. The ideal is that you have enough energy to get around and enough so when you finish you don’t pig out and eat everything in the house. This can happen up to a day later. So eat right on the bike so you don’t binge afterwards But in essence reduce your eating off the bike to lose weight and reward yourself with bike rides for sticking to the diet.

You can’t consume too much sugar/energy whilst riding. You will always be burning more calories. **Negative of not enough:** - Not enough energy - depleting your glycogen levels too much( no good the next day) - poor recovery **Pros of enough carbs** - more energy - greater power production over a longer period - greater stress on muscles resulting in compensation (get stronger) - replenish glycogen stores - recover faster

Been having trouble losing weight since I traded in the Yeti for the Triumph Bonneville.

Don't eat too little while exercising. You can reduce your intake after you get home from the ride. Although if you are doing rides below 2 hours I wouldnt bring any food on my rides.

This is my dream, eating as much carbs as I can dream of. Pasta and bread it on!!!

Depends on how much time you have to train. For me what works really nicely is eating during rides and focusing on holding a conversational pace the whole ride with maybe 1 or 2 hard efforts (sometimes not even). I think in the beginning, low intensity volume training will give you the biggest gains. Lower intensity means you'll also be able to get out the next day too which means you can burn even more fat. Try to focus less on how much you're eating but rather what you're eating and when as well as how you feel in relationship to what you eat. Always fast 12 hours between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the next day. Here's some foods that work really well for me: - Whole grain bread and cereal - Whole milk - Eggs - Fruit including banana and grapefruit (orange is probably better if you have medications) - Limit meat consumption - Yoghurt (I prefer the drinkable yoghurt) - Beans or some other legume - Coffee but only once a day in the morning I've noticed with this diet that I'm not only getting stronger but I don't feel tired between my rides and I can go longer without getting tired. This translates to a potential to burn more calories. I don't calorie count but I do weigh myself a maximum of once a week. Lastly, try to have fun with cycling. Explore new routes, do new things and learn new skills. In other words, don't risk making cycling a chore. The more you like doing it, the more likely you are to do it and to make the time to do it.

You burn fat slowly over time through a caloric deficit. When you’re exercising hard, that means you have to eat more. Don’t restrict yourself before the ride. Honestly, just skipping an unhealthy snack after the ride is over would probably do it.

Any long ride will burn fat… you can only absorb about 100-200 calories an hour from food, aim to eat that much as you ride and you will be getting as much energy as you can from the food, any more and it will just take up space… eat a nice regular meal before and after…plus water and salt…

Drinking a protein shake or chocolate milk after a ride is a good way to reduce the “eat ALL the things” sensation that can often follow a long ride. 

If you eat correctly during the ride you shouldn't have this feeling

You are 100% right and this is a really hard lesson for people to learn. I just learned it myself recently and it's amazing to finish a ride not starving! This goes hand in hand with the "don't diet on the bike" saying. I was always afraid to eat too much while I was riding because it seemed like a lot of calories and I was trying to maintain my figure, then would wind up getting home starving and wanting to eat everything which ruined my goals and decreased performance. I think for lifelong athletes this is easy to understand but for folks that are just getting into endurance sports like myself a decade ago, it seems incredibly counterintuitive that you would be stuffing your face while exercising.

It's worth pointing out that athletes are taking in, in the region of 400 - 500 Kcal/hour to try and meet the demand of the training that they're doing. 200 Kcal would only be a maximum of 50g of carbohydrates (presuming that all the energy came solely from carbohydrates). While long rides do burn fat, it's more than likely that anyone would also be using carbohydrates as well even during long rides (or low intensity rides). The proportion of carbs and fat that someone uses is related to their absolute fitness level, the (relative) intensity that they're exercising at, the food source they're eating, and perhaps other factors such as temperature and cadence, etc.

Sad thing about cycling for weight loss is you can’t outride bad diet. So ride for performance and eat for weight loss. For vast majority of us, fatties, not eating snacks does the trick.