As the title states, can long and/or hard 2500+ rides contribute to more than 1 pound of weight loss a week that I see is recommended everwhere. Most sources seem to mention 500 calories (or 15%) as a good daily deficit to maintain without hampering training or losing muscle mass. Lately I seem to be able to do 2500-3000 kJ rides with nothing but a ~500 calorie breakfast and then about 200 calories of sports drink and perhaps a banana on the ride itself. I haven’t been counting calories afterwards and I just eat whatever, but I need to show some restraint and dedication and lose some weight before the season starts. As I am most likely tapping into fat stores on these long rides, is this ‘free’ weight loss that I don’t need to account for in my daily caloric intake and can I go higher than 500 or so calories safely (assuming proper protein intake). I’ve also heard 15% calorie reduction so with 2500 or so BMR plus 3000 or so calories from riding, that would be about 825 calories a day.
You might be able to do it but there are many reasons why you should not.
It will make you training of lower quality (than if you were properly fed), recovery will take longer, you will tend to lose muscle mass, training in a hyper depleted state is mentally very tough.
Also- this will leave you cracked and you will tend to binge or make bad food choices off the bike because you are in a depleted state.
Best RX is to figure out your diet where it is not reliant on the training volume- then eat up for hard or long days.
If you totally rely on the long days for weight loss- the fat will come back as soon as you let up on the long training.
Longer, easy rides probably will be fine. If you keep your heart rate down you’ll burn more fat than glycogen. So you’re at a lower risk for fatigue. I would be careful of long “hard” rides without proper calories.
If you’re trying to lose weight and maintain fitness, I would do a couple short hard rides with intervals and one long easy ride plus a few easy recovery rides if you want more mileage. One of the keys to maintaining fitness through all of this is to eat extremely healthy so your body keeps muscle and gets rid of fat.
Also where are you getting 2500 kcal from? At a moderate pace, that’s like 5hrs in the saddle. Be careful how you are calculating the calories you burn.
to the OP, another risk is that it may be easier for you to get sick. The most deficit i’d personally run is 1500kcal at 2200basal (this would be from a 3500kJ ride), though normally around 1200 or so.
Longer, easy rides probably will be fine. If you** keep your heart rate down** you’ll** **burn more fat than glycogen. So you’re at a lower risk for fatigue. I would be careful of long “hard” rides without proper calories.
keep HR down on a 5 hour ride means instead of working say top of Z2, you are actually working at bottom of Z2 toward the end of the ride due to cardiac drift.
Also where are you getting 2500 kcal from? At a moderate pace, that’s like 5hrs in the saddle. Be careful how you are calculating the calories you burn.
for whom? 500kcal an hour (assume efficiency of 24%) is about 140W avg. Unless you have a FTP of ~195, the intensity should be ramped up quite a bit more for a long ride.
also, one other thing that hasn’t been mentioned, pushing your limits allow you to raise your FTP and power at different training zones. So instead of putting out 312kJ of work during 20’ of an FTP interval when your FTP is at 260, you can burn 348kJ in that same period when you raise your FTP to 290W.
If you keep your heart rate down you’ll burn more fat than glycogen.
Maybe.
But not according to some research.
Just because gyms put a nice little chart of a “fat-burning zone” on their exercise machines doesn’t mean it exists.
“For years it’s been assumed that you eliminate more lipids in the magical fat-burning zone—exercising between 68 and 79 percent of your maximum heart rate—than when you really exert yourself. Why? Because, the theory went, low-intensity exercise allows the body to fuel itself from the midsection rather than from readily available food calories.
But a report by David Nieman, a professor in the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, showed that strenuous exercise burns more calories per minute than easy sessions.
Which isn’t surprising: higher intensity equals more calories. But that study also determined that intense exercise increases your metabolism for up to 14 hours afterward. In other studies, light-duty exercise produced no such caloric afterburn.
“We’ve become a nation of exercise wimps,” Nieman says. “Too many people don’t bother or are afraid of exercising hard.
But intensity is probably the only way to lose weight with exercise.””
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/weight-loss/Myth-8.html
If you keep your heart rate down you’ll burn more fat than glycogen.
Maybe.
But not according to some research.
Just because gyms put a nice little chart of a “fat-burning zone” on their exercise machines doesn’t mean it exists.
Sure it does and fat oxidation peaks around 65% of VO2Max.
http://i36.tinypic.com/6tpkdl.jpg
Yes you can burn calories at a higher rate by increasing the intensity but those extra calories will be from glycogen which needs to be replaced. Most of us have enough fat laying around that we don’t need to worry about replacing it after a long ride.
Also where are you getting 2500 kcal from? At a moderate pace, that’s like 5hrs in the saddle. Be careful how you are calculating the calories you burn.
for whom? 500kcal an hour (assume efficiency of 24%) is about 140W avg. Unless you have a FTP of ~195, the intensity should be ramped up quite a bit more for a long ride.
also, one other thing that hasn’t
I was wondering about this so I just quickly looked back at some files from the summer (yay data whoring!) and I was surprised a little.
A 1.5 hr ride that involved two ~25 min hill repeats at ~250W ea and an NP of 220 for the whole ride came in at about 1,000 cals (or 665 cals/hr) and that’s really with only 50 mins of real riding in the mix.
Two long rides (4 hrs and 6 hrs) both with plenty of climbing but ridden intentionally at a steadier effort (NP of 185 for both +/- 2) come in at 550-560 cals/hr.
So while it seems I can get a lot more than 500 cals/hr by riding hard that 500 cals/hr also isn’t at 140W (at least for me).
Just an FYI - I’m around 185lbs and a cyclist (FTP of around 370), not a triathlete so I ride quite a bit more than what would be considered ‘normal’ and burn more calories than most 150-160lbs riders. Most of my rides that incorporate intervals (doing a lot of 2x20s right now) or tempo are in the 2000-3000 kJ range and today I did a 6 hour, 4000kJ endurance ride at low Z2. These are accurate numbers from a Powertap. I am assuming roughly 21/22 percent efficiency (I saw a study where Lance was around that and increased to around 23% later in his career) so I’ve been multiplying my kJ by 1.13 to get a good idea of calories burned.
I guess my main concern isn’t quite so much about fuel on a ride - I can tell when I’m starting to suffer from lack of food or not performing with my power meter. I’m more concerned about post ride nutrition. If I manage to make it through a 3000 calorie ride fine with less than 500 calories of intake, does that mean that I’m sort of scott free as far as working towards a daily caloric deficit? I understand that I need to replenish my glycogen stores, but I’ve heard that your body only stores around 2000 calories anyways in your liver, bloodstream, and muscles. Could I eat a roughly ~500 calorie breakfast, do a long or hard ride to burn 3000 calories while taking in around 500 calories while riding, then another 2000 calories or so when I come home within the first hour or two when your body is incredibly efficient at glycogen uptake, make sure I get my protein intake (supposedly 1.2 to 1.4 grams per pound for dieting endurance athletes), and then just eat less and low calorie, high in vitamins and minerals foods like salads the rest of the day to stave off hunger? Therefore I’d have 3000 calories of ‘set’ intake which would completely offset my riding calorie expenditures, then I would have upwards of 2200-2500 calories of potential daily caloric loss from my BMR that I could work with. Obviously I would need to take on other food throughout the day to prevent hunger, but what would be a good limit without risking muscle loss and increased fatigue and allow me to continue training hard (I would like to continue my current training schedule and intensity levels)? 2200 calories minus a few salads, some meat for protein, and other healthy foods could still leave with me probably around 1000 to 1500 calories a day to play with if I’m dedicated. Is this too much? Reading things online, this seems like 2 to 3 times as much as recommended, but I’m guessing these ‘guidelines’ of 500 calories a day are for 150-160 pound males that *might *be working out an hour or so a day, not a 185 pound dude training 15+ hours a week.
Another question - when riding, is your body still doing ‘normal’ BMR rate work? If not or greatly reduced, on a 5 or 6 hour base ride, that’s around a quarter of the day that doesn’t count towards your usual BMR.
Also, while intense efforts do burn more calories, you can’t do intense efforts for long periods of time like you can with Z2 endurance. While calories/hour may be lower with Z2, you can do more hours of it so total caloric expenditures are higher than Z3 and above rides. While I’ve had a few Z3+ rides equal or exceed a good portion of my Z2 workouts, I’ve never had anything ever approach some of the expenditures of some of my long Z2 rides. I’ve never used a Powertap on any of my bike tours, but I’m sure some 10+ hour days at Z1 even exceed my Z2 training rides.
2200 calories minus a few salads, some meat for protein, and other healthy foods could still leave with me probably around 1000 to 1500 calories a day to play with if I’m dedicated. Is this too much? Reading things online, this seems like 2 to 3 times as much as recommended, but I’m guessing these ‘guidelines’ of 500 calories a day are for 150-160 pound males that *might *be working out an hour or so a day, not a 185 pound dude training 15+ hours a week.
Another question - when riding, is your body still doing ‘normal’ BMR rate work? If not or greatly reduced, on a 5 or 6 hour base ride, that’s around a quarter of the day that doesn’t count towards your usual BMR.
what the powermeter computer records is the work that you do. In other words, energy on top of what’s needed for BMR, so no worry about losing that part of BMR. This assumes that the BMR is mostly based on body composition and additional calories associated with non-exercise activities.
I think the 500-600kJ figure is indeed for zaftig 150-160 pounders like I, and you can probably exceed that a bit. That is the average, however, and your daily net intake can vary. My nutritionist suggest that I don’t have too much of a swing in net daily intake, but given my limited hours of training, it’s unavoidable to do a lot on the weekend, thus skewing things. I’ve been able to shed 3kg on this regime.
also, i take in about 1500-2000kCal of food on my long rides after a 350kcal breakfast, so i don’t think you need to restrict yourself that much on the ride. While it’s true that your body is good at resynthesizing glycogen post ride, 2000kcal is an overkill as your body can’t process that much anyway. I normally prefer ~450kCal in forms of risotto that includes enough proteins, starch, and vegetable to start the recovery process. Eat throughout the day as needed.
if you have access to a nutritionist, that may be a good thing to do.
Also, while intense efforts do burn more calories, you can’t do intense efforts for long periods of time like you can with Z2 endurance. While calories/hour may be lower with Z2, you can do more hours of it so total caloric expenditures are higher than Z3 and above rides. While I’ve had a few Z3+ rides equal or exceed a good portion of my Z2 workouts, I’ve never had anything ever approach some of the expenditures of some of my long Z2 rides. I’ve never used a Powertap on any of my bike tours, but I’m sure some 10+ hour days at Z1 even exceed my Z2 training rides.
a search of your posts shows that you are way more accomplished as a cyclist than I, so i’ll defer on training methods. I have, however, done 4 hours straight at 82% of FTP (AP), of course, this may be skewed as i bumped my FTP the next week, and that ride would only come in at 76%. In fact, these type of rides, ranging from 3-4.5 hours, has been what constituted my long rides this fall, although not all of them were successful or done at a high % of FTP. Part of this, however, is due to my time constraints (10hr/week), and i know i probably can’t build on it nearly as much as someone who’s laying down 20hrs of base/week.