Honestly I think Jonathan, Nate and Chad have all talked about their relationships with food and weight. Seems like they’ve all had some level of difficulty with it.
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But do you think the bath of great salty tasting brine those things come in is actually good for you?
In any case, people would be better off with a pre-roasted chicken over the doritos, soda, and frozen dinners they buy.
Of course, why not? What’s wrong with salt? Unless your doctor gives you standing orders to worry about it, salt shouldnt be a concern IMO.
With the caveat that you’re not sedentary and get most of your food from fried stuff in a bag. Of course even then…I THINK research has shown salt doesnt matter unless you have a sensitivity.
I don’t want to really debate costco chickens or salt with you. What I’m saying is that when something tastes that good, you know it’s been highly processed, injected with something, etc. And when it’s that cheap, it’s going to be the cheapest chicken they can buy. It’s the basic problem with our food supply and one of the reasons the country is more and more obese.
Specifically a Costco chicken may be fine in the grand scheme of things and still better than other processed foods.
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Jonathan has stated on the pod multiple times he will go on a food weighing binge to calibrate his sense and then stops for a while. I’ve taken this up and have gotten good, I can eyeball 200 grams of rice very closely.
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Costco rotisserie chickens are a loss leader. They lose money on them and don’t raise the price because it gets people in the door. They set up their own chicken business.
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The price is besided my point. I can tell you all love your costco chickens. I’ve enjoyed them too. There are amazingly tasty. Googling, I found:
There are ten ingredients in Costco rotisserie chicken: chicken, water, salt, sodium phosphates, hydrolyzed casein, carrageenan, modified corn starch, sugar, dextrose, chicken broth, isolated soy protein lecithin and mono- and diglycerides.
According to Consumer Reports, a saline solution is injected beneath the skin of the product to improve taste, leaving the product with 460 milligrams of sodium per three-ounce serving. This is nearly a third of the recommended daily limit
My only point is that almost every food in the grocery store has been manipulated to optimize taste. When taste is optimized (fat, sugar, salt) we eat more. I think this is the primary reason so many struggle with obesity. (Note that the costco chicken is breed to be extra fatty and they add salt and dextrose to it).
If one is struggling with weight, one way to lose it is to stop buying these kinds of foods. It’s insidious because people don’t even think a prepared chicken is unhealthy. Would anyone was making a chicken at home, would they sprinkle dextrose and a ton of salt on it?
I will grant that a costco chicken is probably not the worst food in the world in isolation but every single thing we eat that has been injected with salt and dextrose adds up to being a problem.
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I know you said you dont want to get into an argument about costo chicken…but dextrose is just glucose…sugar…its water with salt and sugar. That brine you seem to think is poisonous is nutritionally pickle juice they squirt in the chicken. I dont see the big deal.
Edit - you actually got me thinking about this…it’s a half gram of sugar per serving…I’m pretty sure I’ll
live through that…
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Yeah, I know what you’re trying to say about additives in food, but the Costco chickens aren’t a strong example. PIckling foods is a time tested tradition to improve flavor and preserve foods. As far as additives go, those are all pretty benign. Short of us returning to hunter gatherer ways, some level of preservation is going to be required for most foods.
To answer your question, would I add a bunch of salt and a little sugar to my home cooked food to improve the taste? Absolutely.
Do I want the levels of preservatives and sugar content present in Subway bread or grocery store deli ham? Fortunately, my taste buds resist those temptations.
Side note: That link is from a super pro-vegan website. It even suggests brand names for “Chkn” meat alternative products which, ironically, is diving into the processed foods pool face first.
Maybe it would be better to suggest realistic alternative foods for people to buy/consume vs. harping on how everything that tastes good is bad for us.
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So how much do I need to eat to hit 60g/hr carbs on my next ride?
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I did the math. About 6 chickens an hour should do it 
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Only $30!! That’s cheaper than what’s recommended on The Feed. 
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The big deal, obviously not for you though, is that we have an obesity epidemic in this country, and the reason is that the food supply is constantly being doctored up to taste better (extra salt, sugar, fat). When the food tastes better people eat more.
People are not more weak than people in the 1960s when everybody was much thinner. It’s not that people are more sedentary. It’s that we have different food now and hardly anyone wants to cook.
I’m suggesting that if one is struggling with weight, then you need to think about these things and step outside of the system of doctored, prepared, convenient foods. It’s a nuanced approach (what this topic is about).
If you don’t have a weight problem, you giving advice in this topic is just as bad as the skinny hosts of the pod giving dieting advice.
There’s nothing specifically bad about sugar, salt, or fat but when every single thing you eat has been doctored up in such a way the average person will eat more calories.
Part of this I agree with, part of it I vehemently disagree with.
You’re right about foods being engineered to be essentially addictive through high levels of salt, sugar, and artificial flavors. This is wrong, and insidious.
Where you’re wrong is the focus. You’re looking at a chicken…and seemingly because it has ingredient other than chicken in it, view it as falling into the doctored/artificial/unhealthy category. That’s just not true. They cooked it…that’s it. When you cook food, you add salt, and brining is one method to do so.
I don’t disagree with your overall sentiment about our food supply…but it could use a bit more discretion IMO. Nuance, I’d daresay.
I mean a $5 lean roasted chicken is exactly what we need to see more of in this country to combat all of the bad options out there. It’s as healthy and natural a protein source as you’re going to get…it’s a chicken soaked in salt water and roasted.
Edit: I just noticed your question about roasting a chicken at home. I cook a lot. I typically dont bother with recipes, but I do know that you will be extremely hard pressed to find a single reputable recipe for any meat that does not include a liberal addition of salt. You need a better boogeyman for this argument than everyday roast chicken
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I’m really tired of arguing with you because you seem to just want to argue about details, like salt. I said salt was fine. Sugar is fine. A costco chicken here and there is probably fine.
But if all your food is fattened and injected with salt and sugar, it’s the recipe for obesity and what the population is battling against.
On one hand you say that you agree with me. On the other hand, you disagree that a costco chicken hasn’t been engineered with salt, sugar, and preservatives to make you want to get down to costco and buy it and then probably spend even more money on mult-packs of other processed food.
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Weight Loss gets way too much air time. Understanding some basic nutrition is required to make any meaningful difference. However, the biggest mistake i see people make is eating too little. Not for anything related to performance, but because undereating on the bike leads to binging later in the day.
Volume also matters. On relatively low volume, you can get away with undereating. When i was cycling a lot less (~10hrs a week), i was really lean. I think at this time i was about 65kg, and 320w ftp. Fast forward to now, more like 73kg 370w ftp. Doing 800hour years led me to gaining close to 10kg. You can certainly eat back calories quite easily if you don’t pay attention. I put this almost entirely down to binge starve cycles.
Background - I lost 165 lbs through diet and exercise and have kept it off for 10 years.
One of the most important things I learned was that at any given point, I needed to either focus on weight loss and general fitness, or focus on performance and training. While the two aren’t mutually exclusive per se, it is hard to find that sweet spot where I’m eating enough to fuel performance gains and simultaneously run a caloric deficit.
I have had pretty good luck during the “off season” with eating carbs before and on the bike and avoiding them afterwards, but during the season, I eat what I need to get through workouts and feel like I could still push through one more interval.
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Spicy topic, but I feel compelled to chime in, given my day job as the CEO of Virta Health is to help people with obesity and T2 diabetes lose weight (=excess body fat, not lean tissue) without drugs (-13% of body weight on Intent-to-treat basis for several years, peer-reviewed) and happen to be trained as a physicist (i.e. I believe in the 1st law of thermodynamics and “CICO” principle) plus I ride & race bikes for fun.
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It is well established in published research and practical experience – while counter-intuitive – that exercise is a very poor tool for long-term, sustained weight loss. In some cases it’s counter-productive. Nutrition is the key driver. (In our Virta practice, we introduce moderate exercise when people are ready, but not for weight loss reasons)
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Forcing CICO and daily caloric deficit absolutely works … until you run out of will-power after race day, wedding photo or when the Biggest Loser TV Series ends (cautionary tale on NYTimes). Nearly all nutrition based and will-power driven (“count calories, achieve deficit by food choice”) weight loss programs are based on counting calories and achieving ~300-500kcal daily deficit through various means. This absolutely works for short-term, but practically zero of these programs work past 6 months, which is why the “intent to treat” weight loss in most studies is close to zero at one year due to weight bounce back.
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It is possible to sustainably lose weight (specifically body fat), systematically for a year, two or more if (and only if) it is relatively effortless and doesn’t not require constant feelings of hunger. This is how we manipulate nutrition for our patients at Virta Health and deliver that -13% ITT weight loss even at two years (0.5 to 2lbs/week lost typically). (Not going to go into the why and how here, but it works and is well published & documented)
Based on that, what’s been my take-away for cycling sports performance, both N=1 for myself and overall? (note: I’m no medical doctor and don’t play one on the Internet, so talk to your physician first).
i. First, if you race bicycles and have to climb or accelerate, weight-to-power absolutely matters. And you want to pay attention to it and take certain actions for optimal performance. This may or may not be psychologically healthy if you take it to the extreme and perhaps not something young kids should be dealing with. (I leave that for coaches) But ignoring weight as something that “just happens” is a bit misguided.
ii. For losing obviously excess body fat to get to “normal” or “healthy” weight, I’d focus on what we do for our Virta patients: It’s a long-term project, I’d dial down exercise both volume and intensity (e.g. “off-season”) and focus on not counting calories daily. Instead, fix the nutrition fundamentals and eat right foods to satiety. A food log for a few days to get expert guidance may of course be helpful. When done right, this results in 0.5-1 (maybe even 2lbs) per week of body fat loss for quite a while. I will leave the carbs vs. fats vs. protein debate for others, but would say that for easy to moderate exercise, especially during weight loss, a few daily meals should be enough to fuel you, constantly slurping sugar water to get your carbs may not be a smart strategy for weight loss or even metabolic health. (my bias here if you want to debate)
iii. For absolutely perfect and optimal race weight (I’m thinking a few kg’s or 4-8 pounds type of thing, at most) for a short period of time, different tactics might make sense. Calorie counting and forcing CICO to find the perfect power-to-weight likely makes sense. But this likely results in a yo-yo weight effect and if not done properly, can result in injuries too. First Law of Thermodynamics holds and this can be solved with math and will-power for some time.
(again, this may not be healthy, but if you’re aiming for championships medals, it’s likely a good trade off for a short period of time).
I hope that helps.
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Absolutely love it…well summarized reasonable approach to weight management IMO.
A few pounds quick, or drop 10 pounds in the off season…suck it up and count every calorie until you hit your goal.
Want to lose serious weight over the long run, or plan to be healthy for the rest of your life? Eat like the greeks instead of americans. It’s better food anyway.
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I totally agree that nutrition is huge and exercise can be a trap, but I think you have to better frame “exercise” if you want to say it’s a poor driver for long term sustained weight. This forum is a community that has a strong bias toward bike racing with many folks training at a level that is far outside the norms of exercise volume. Most of the studies I’ve seen that discount exercise as a weight loss tool are looking at “normal” exercise in those studies. Someone that goes to the gym, runs a few miles, does spin class, etc. a handful of times per week. I’m not knocking those folks and there is probably a case that their activity is healthier than a hard core endurance athlete who pushes themselves for 15 hours per week. That said, find me a population of serious cyclists who ride hundreds of miles per week (even if they don’t race), and I’ll show you a group of people with good body comp. Yes, there are exceptions, but most of the folks on my cycling team are in their 40’s and 50’s, eat plenty of pizza, burgers, and beer and they are leaner than probably 95% of the US population. It’s not a formal study, but the cycling community I know has good body comp and their diets are all over the place.
With normal levels of exercise, people would be doing well to burn an extra 3000 calories per week (which is probably less than the increased eating they do as a result of exercising). For a serious cyclist, they can be burning over 3k calories on a single ride and easily exceed 10k calories through training per week. At that point, you have a good bit of latitude with your nutrition and managing your body comp is a lot easier. You can still struggle with weight while training 12-15 hours per week, it’s just a heck of a lot harder than if you are doing 5 hours a week.
Again, I’m not saying the studies are wrong, but the population (and conclusions) in those studies may not be relevant to endurance athletes training in decent volume. If there is a study that includes those kind of subjects (along with folks doing normal exercise), I’d bet you would find a stronger correlation
between body comp and training hours then you would between body comp and diet. Or I might be wrong, this is just what I see personally in the cycling community.
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