You can listen to them talking about eating a hard boiled egg for dinner. You can also listen to them talking about the dexa scans and how they thought it was a mistake (in hindsight) because they were underfueling and it impacted their performances and attitudes about eating.
I just happened to watch this video the other night. No rocket science, but some good practical tips relevant to this thread.
To some degree (i.e. on the macro scale when you have a lot of weight to lose), correct. But when you get down to the finer points (and for competitive athletes), there is a lot more nuance to it. I’m not educated enough to illustrate they why’s and wherefores, but you can find it pretty easily.
Many years ago, I remember there was study that compared calories burned at different exercise intensities. In a nutshell, it found that at lower intensities, the % of calories burned from fat was much higher than at higher intensities. However, at higher intensities, the number of calories burned form fat was roughly equal, but the overall number of calories were higher. So while the amount of fat calories was the same, but the percentage of fat calories burned and total calories burned was significantly different.
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Don’t need to be replaced but probably will be replaced. Your body is constantly attempting to maintain its fat stores at the current level. Once you get fat and have created more fat cells, it gets difficult forever more to lose the weight for many people.
I was not making a sweeping generalization in any direction. I was talking specifically about the podcast.
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Well…not exactly true. All calories need to he replaced. Otherwise you just die eventually. The goal of weight loss is…ideally, to start replacing to the point of equalizing calories in vs calories out before death.
You’ll still just eventually die even if you never exercise at an intensity that uses glycogen in a meaningful way. Really what I think I’m getting at is it’s somewhat counterproductive to break the type of fuel into individual bins. It’s all fuel. All things being equal…more fuel equals fatter, less fuel equals skinnier.
No that’s true.
And sorry…like all things weight loss…I think part of the issue is people are always talking about slightly different things when they disagree.
100%…the fuel you burn will result in a different “feeling.” 1000 caories of glycogen gone unreplaced for a day will definitely feel different than 1000 calories of fat gone unreplaced. The long term weight loss from both should be similar though…assuming you dont change your behavior from 1 scenario to the other (which is also where the nuance comes in…because the signals you get mentally are different for both).
Gross exaggeration is a stretch. I’ve been an avid listener, EVERY time someone brings up trying to manage weight, the answer is that you should just not worry about it, fuel your training, and your weight will sort itself out. I get it, they’re focused on training, and dietary restriction is a slippery slope especially when weight and performance are correlated as much as cycling. But I do feel like the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the other direction, where people who need to count calories or use methods like intermittent fasting are almost mocked or shamed. IF was referred to as “disordered eating” or “intermittent starving”.
We all have different genetics and I think the podcast is stacked with people with a certain body type. I remember a good friend of mine when I was in college used to get so frustrated that I could gain muscle with very little effort, but the dude could rock a six pack eating all day.
I’m not trying to attack the people on the podcast, they just have different experiences than I think a lot of users have. If I could train all day, I probably wouldn’t be worried about weight either, but life…
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Now that is a stretch. They absolutely do not do this.
I think the biggest difference people need to note is that “weight loss” on the podcast is generally a few lbs for someone who is already in ok shape, rather than someone who is “obese” and needs to drop a stone or 2.
Exactly, and this is what they’re all about 
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Thanks for opening this topic, because I too have begun to drift down that path of getting overly controlling/concerned about weight loss. I agree with you that huge caloric deficits are an awful way to live. I did my share of that in the past to the point where my husband was begging me not to start another diet because it made me so stressed out that I was difficult to live with.
My experience with sustainable weight loss has been pretty much spot-on in line with what Amber has said on the podcast, long before I had heard the podcast. There was a couple year time period where I was extremely motivated in my training and racing because I was excited about my goals. I was training 6 days a week, 12-15 hours per week on average, with even longer weeks on occasion, and some shorter rest weeks. I was so motivated that I could have done even more training if I didn’t also have a day job. I did not count calories or cut carbs or pay attention in any way to my weight at all. I was eating healthy whole foods most of the time but not denying occasional indulgences. I do remember feeling hungry quite often, so I was snacking a lot. I felt like I was eating a lot, but in retrospect I was probably just barely eating enough. I have never been a naturally thin person, hovering mostly in the lower end of “overweight” on the flawed BMI scale, but during this period my body was the leanest it has ever been (the high end of “normal” BMI). Most importantly, I felt great and my watts/KG were higher than they ever were or have been since. It might not seem like a huge change, but for me it was big.
In order for me to experience those results again, I need to be motivated. For me, it’s not motivating to just be riding to “lose weight”. It is not motivating to ride out of some sense of punishment for the crime of not being a naturally thin person.
Thinking back to what has worked for me during that time period, it was a focus on:
- Health over weight loss
I’ve known plenty of thin people who have died young of heart attacks and cancer, and there are plenty of diets out there - especially ones that will cause you to lose weight fast - that are really unhealthy. The diet industry nets $50-76 billion per year and is mostly ineffective. It preys on our low sense of self-worth because society values being thin over pretty much everything else. As far as what it means to focus on health - the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine are a good place to start:
- A whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern
- Physical activity
- Restorative sleep
- Stress management
- Avoidance of risky substances
- Positive social connection
- What’s between the ears:
What are the things that you would love to accomplish, or have greater meaning in your life? Wake up early to meditate, and ask yourself in your journal what really matters to you every single morning. It’s surprising what you can accomplish by just starting your day that way.
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Here’s the one that always murders me…when the experts say something like, “most of the people who come to me asking for advice on how to eat less actually need to eat more”.
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Now that is a stretch. They absolutely do not do this.
Well, I listen regularly and they absolutely have. I’d go back and find examples, but the thought of slogging through old episodes to find them is painful. So feel free to think I’m wrong.
Yea right lol. By the people on staff for world tour/olympic athletes with 9% body fat and brittle bones.
Yea…very relevant for us age groupers who drink too much beer, get stoned and eat cake at 11pm, and lean and mean is 17% body fat.
As a regular listener, they don’t mock or shame anyone.
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No agreed, that’s completely overstating it. They DO dismiss questions like this though as irrelevant, which I do not agree with.
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Sure, everyone is wonderful, no one says anything objectionable and the world is full of magic jellybeans…I’ll go back under my bridge of cynicism and sadness and stay out of the sunshine with the rest of you.
Nah don’t be like that. I know what you mean…and to a certain extent we’re being a bit pedantic. Being obviously dismissive or laughing at questions isn’t a far cry from mocking or shaming.
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Man, for whatever reason, weight loss is one of those topics that 50% of people are scared of, and the other 50% are angry about…
It’s cool, I’m just a sarcastic snark-basket in general 
and tend to towards hyperbole to make my point (shocker to find that on the internet I know).
Dismissive is probably the best word to describe it. I would love to get the perspective of someone trying to manage weight on the bike in a healthy way that doesn’t tend towards the typical “cycling physique” regardless of their training volume. Both my weight AND my FTP went up over the last year and my speed is pretty much performance is pretty much flat-lined, so just being told to just eat intuitively and your body sorts itself out just feels like obviously I live in a different world than they do. I get to be strong or I get to be light, but I don’t get both.
The first thing I tell anyone who asks me how to lose weight from cycling is that almost no one does it. Weight loss happens in the kitchen.
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Well, I’m pretty much in the same boat all the way around lol. 6’, 187 lbs of mostly muscle, some fat, but not too much. Wide shoulders, huge legs. Nobody is mistaking me for a climber.
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