TR HV? Too much intensity for me. But 8+ hours/week on the bike? Yes! Burn more calories, eat more food, and lose weight!
I guess Iām that guy. I can do high volume (not the TR plans high volume) above 10 hours per week and still gain weight. You guys are mostly already thin (enough) so upping your volume sure you get to eat a lot. But when youāre obese like I am? No, unfortunately you STILL cannot outride a shitty diet on high volume.
The OP didnāt say what his weight was. If heās ācloseā to an ideal weight already on a low volume plan upping the volume will probably allow him to eat what he wants.
An obese personās idea of āeat what I wantā is not like what you guys do. You eat a lot more of healthier foods, push back from the table, and likely donāt eat for emotional reasons or other types of disordered eating. When I let my eating go, it gets bad. For instanace I had a horrible year riding last year and basically quite in August. I started a mid volume-ish TR plan on December 1st, by Christmas I was up to 254.4lbs. So gaining weight while training. Yes, I eat like a garbarge can.
My weight was starting to go down in Jan and Feb even on about 5-6 hours per week training. Now, Iāve been outside for 3 weeks and not really paying attention to what I eat and Iām back up 4lbs. So you still have to eat correctly even when you up the volume.
Particularly if youāre obese, which I doubt the OP is but, you might still want to eat in a mindful manner.
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100% agreedā¦and I think too many of us get focused on the micro of day-to-day eating rather than stepping back and taking a larger view. You arenāt going to gain weight if you have an occasional treat after dinner, and you donāt need to add mileage to your ride the next day to āwork it offā.
This is especially true if you are fueling properly on the bike.
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So true. Iāve seen sooooo much benefit of eating as much carb as I can digest on the bike. For the said 4k calories burned I eat close to 2k on the bike. But with that comes the overeating problem. 500cal pre-ride and 1500cal post ride big meal already evens you out. Then itās a game of resisting that tub of ice cream 
Obvious but hard to do thing here is to eat food / snacks that are low calorie, high nutrition density ofcourse.
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My view is that if your diet is fairly steady week to week, month to month then either you are in energy balance or you are not. If you are eating more than you are burning then your weight will go up till you reach a new equilibrium weight, since the heavier you are the higher your BMR. If you are eating less than you burn, then youāll lose weight till you reach a new equilibrium weight. If your diet is way to the extreme in terms of too much or too little the equilibrium weight may take some years to arrive, or youāll hit health problems first.
Most diets are too extreme and unsustainable. The weight has not been put on in weeks, it usually happened over years, why try and lose it a rate more than 10 times faster than you gained it?
Opposed to what everyoneās saying hereā¦ it is not as simple as calories in / calories outā¦ decent rule of thumb for most people but for intensely exercising athletes there are a whole bunch of metabolic and hormonal changes happening, and things that arenāt studied yet happening in your digestive tract that donāt correlate w/ calories in and calories out.
Just eat without worrying too much about it with general health guidelines. A lot more fruits and vegetables, less breads; less beer wine and whiskey; more chicken and brown rice, more seafood, and less steak/pork, keep the ice cream to small servings (a kids ice cream cone is how I measure mine) and weight comes down eventually to what it needs to be to match your training. I say ālessā not āremoveā unless you want to optimize that much.
Itās a hard mental barrier to cross but if your training is high volume, if youāre hungry chances are youāre low on somethingā¦ what helps me a lot is writing down WHAT I are not necessarily how much, and when I train. Then I can look back and see timing of carbs before during and after workouts, protein, etc and make some educated guesses on what might be going on if I see a change I do or donāt like.
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Agree with all of this. Iād add more ānaturalā fats for lack of a better word (cheeses, whole milk, dark meat chicken, egg yolks, etc vs hydrogenated oils in packaged snack food or deep-fried foods) but otherwise absolutely.
I think this is false, but not for the obvious reasons - if there is a mismatch, it is my opinion that it is usually due to a mismatched measurement, not a violation of thermodynamic laws. Relatively small discrepancies over time can lead to weight gain/loss - trying to match your calories in based on food labels to calories out based on rudimentary measures is just not consistent enough for the all the reasons you mentioned - gut biome health, day-to-day endocrine changes, etc.
100% agree. Disordered eating can be disastrous. Medical treatment can help.
Not saying itās inaccurate but I donāt think itās the whole pictureā¦ The assumption is that our bodies are 100% efficient at all times and how energy is used in our brains, muscles and organs. It could be 98%, could be 100%.
My main point though I donāt think I got across was how our bodies produce energy and synthesize growth, week over week fluctuations in growing muscle mass, skeletal muscle weight when youāre strength training, etc. can fluctuate so much Iād argue makes precise measurement not very feasible. Sugar consumption during workouts is processed differently than at rest and before bed, etc.,
For most people, obsessing over every gram of fats or carbs going into our bodies can be added stress (which encourages fat storage ironically if you let it stress you too much) and counterproductive. FWIW I do measure sugar consumption during workouts for 90-110g/hr, but not necessarily towards a daily calorie total.
Eating good food isnāt really a secret, so keep it simple 
if you must measure, it is probably easiest during and after workouts or maybe approximate protein consumption to hit g/kg targets established by research. Adjust those guidelines as needed.
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