Your issue might be with your sodium intake. I had the same issue, but when I started adding a bit of sodium citrate to my bottles, my gut became much much happier.
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Really love episodes w Alex, and this was another great one, but Dr Pfaffenbach is probably my favourite guest ever. I could listen to him all day.
Variety of guests on this podcast is great. Keep it up!
The type of âtable sugarâ probably makes a difference. For clarity, thereâs white sugar which is highly refined. Thereâs also brown sugar & raw sugar which are less refined. Icing sugar is white sugar with other stuff added to it, in the case of the CSR brand itâs tapioca or maize starch. I wonder if @Jonathan had been trying to use brown or raw sugar before going with his other drink mixesâŚ? 
I tried brown sugar once, it had an odd flavor, was a bit 
⌠I only use white sugar, ideally if available I use caster sugar, which is just white sugar in finer granules. The difficulty in dissolving sugar is probably about more about granule size than chemical composition, because drink mixes are powdered. I could mill sugar to a powder in a nutribullet but I havenât bothered. If I was going to go to the trouble of using a blender I might as well just dissolve the sugar solution in the blender rather than milling it. Luckily for me I like the taste of plain white sugar so I can consume ridiculous amounts of it without any palate fatigue.
A solution of 200g of sugar in 100mL of water takes up quite a lot more volume than 100mL of sugar by itself. The best Iâve been able to do is 500g in 250mL of water in a ~600mL bottle, & in order to dissolve it in a timely fashion I boil the water, mix in a large coffee cup in batches, & pour into the bottle when it cools a bit. Itâs very thick, & as someone elsewhere on the forum said itâs like a big gel, but with none of the associated plastic waste besides of course the bidon when it does deteriorate, but itâll get hundreds of uses before that happens.
Iâve had no trouble dissolving 200g of sugar in the amount of water that fills the bottle after first pouring in the sugar. A few shakes when adding & again after about 5 minutes, then road vibrations & bumps finish the job.
Typically I start an audax ride of 100km or more with 400 to 500g in the bottle, if I need any more than that itâs because itâs a really long ride, so if I havenât packed any with me Iâll buy some along the way & mix at about 200g in a bottle. By then the temperature has warmed up so my needs for hydration increase in comparison to my capacity to absorb carbohydrate. I went with white sugar because itâs available in every general store.
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@Jonathan I use a shortcut on my iPhone to calculate a 7-day average of my weight from my Garmin scale, as well as some other data. Unfortunately, thereâs no charting functionality (for that, youâd need a raspberrypi and ADHDâask me how I know).
If you use an iPhone, I can send you a simplified version of it. How it works:
- It looks for a weight value from today in Apple Health. If it doesnât find one, it opens Garmin Connect for 15 seconds so that it can sync to health.
- It then grabs the Apple Health weight values for the past 7 days and averages them.
- Finally, it sends an alert with the value of that average, rounded to the nearest tenths place.
This could be expanded to get the average of the previous 7 days to compare them and give you the change between the two.
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To directly answer your question in the context of Alex, seeing as how it is her profession, she has high levels of awareness for the macronutrient profiles of foods, so she can just do this on the fly.
In place of weighing food and journaling, a dietitian like Alex can provide a plan for an athlete that hits all the necessary marks.
If you donât take that approach, looking at the macro profile of what you eat and then keeping a mental tally throughout a day is probably the lowest demand path of entry.
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I have tried upwards of 20 different forms of âsugarâ including 5 different brands of table sugar (white sugar) over the last 10 years and when mixed at 90-120g/hr, it scores lowest on dissolving and causes more gut distress than any other option.
YMMV, but Iâd be dishonest if I didnât share my personal experiences.
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Why not just look at the 7 day average on Garmin Connect?
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Watch Sid and Macky doing Marji Gesick and thereâs a point on course where you can get a bratwurst hand up.
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I absolutely think you should share your personal experience and views, but you also have a history of stomach sensitivity if I recall, and it was a process for you to up your carb intake to current levels. But to me it sounded very dismissive of sucrose when you brought up, meanwhile tons of people are using it without issue, and when your answering a question about low cost options youâd think it would be at the top of the list of things to try.
The maltodextrin Iâve used was waayyy harder to mix than sugar, and evidently there are many people who donât have stomach issues, especially once theyâve gotten used to it, just like how some people have to train their gut to achieve higher levels of carb intake regardless of source.
I really enjoy your work, this just seems like an item where youâre being dismissive based on your personal experience, even though it works well for many.
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How is him saying that sugar doesnât dissolve well or work well FOR HIM being dismissive of other peopleâs experience? He even points out that YMMV. (Caveat - I agree with him on both). It seems to me that youâre letting your personal experience cause you to be dismissive of his.
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I thought the first sentence in my post was clear, but his experience is absolutely legit and something he should share. I canât remember verbatim what he said in the podcast, but it didnât strike me as âit doesnât work well for me, but it does for others and might be worth a tryâ.
But I certainly am not intending to dismiss his or your personal experience, or create a polarizing debate of cyclists marching with signs that say âTable sugar forever!â Vs. âDown with Sucrose!â 
.
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You gave great advice for the letter writer who needs to lose a large amount of weight. Let me chime in with my experience
In 2012/2013, I lost 160 lbs through diet and exercise and have kept my weight in a my target range since. A couple of principles were key:
- Donât try to lose lots of weight fast. The first 20 lbs will come off quickly. After that, losing more than 1-2 lbs a week will add a lot of stress to your system, and may increase the odds of bounceback weight gain.
- Make small, sustainable changes. Youâre changing your lifestyle, and that is easier to do one thing at a time.
- In the early stages, I had to prioritize either losing weight or improving performance. I couldnât do both and do both well. That doesnât mean it was an either/or situation, but in a given week, I could keep carbs low, run a calorie deficit, and do a lot of zone 2, or I could eat as much as I needed, eat lots of carbs on the bike, and do harder intervals.
Once I was within 20 lbs of my goal, it was easier to do both, and focus on performance on the bike and weight loss off the bike. - Donât get discouraged by temporary setbacks and plateaus. Like any other physical change, weight loss is seldom a straight line. Focus on long term results, not day to day fluctuations.
- That said, I live for numbers. While I recognize some people have issues with daily weighing, I found a daily weigh in (first thing in the morning) very useful for understanding how different foods/activities/stresses affected my weight. This also helped me have a sense of proportion and not get too worked up over the normal 2-3 lb daily fluctuations.
- Similarly, while I understand not everyone can log their food long term, maintaining a daily log of foods and macros (estimating sizes, not weighing) has been a great tool for better understanding my bodyâs reaction to different foods, and keeping myself accountable.
Hope thatâs useful for folks who need to lose a lot of weight. Those wont work for everyone, and I fully recognize that no single strategy will work for everyone.
At any rate, thanks for the great episode.
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I think youâve got to remember that a lot of the S-Works faction of the community favors complex and expensive over cheap and simple. If you pay more for it and it has a bunch of fancy sounding names, then it must be better! Cheap and simple canât really be as good, can it? Once weâve anchored our decisions and decided what we like, maybe a little perception bias comes into play on how we look at things and justify our choices.
Ahh that makes more sense with the 90-120g/hr. I was even wondering if US sugar has drying agents, or if water hardness makes a difference, as Iâve never had any problems with French table sugar and very limestone rich tap water⌠But I almost never go above 90g in 600ml (my longer and harder races tend to be in summer heat so I rarely mix very concentrated bottles).
I will bear this in mind and be prepared to experiment more if I try higher concentrations.
FWIW, it is possible to say the same thing without being insulting.
If you have the budget, thereâs nothing wrong with buying a product thatâs a simply open-eat-ride versus time in the kitchen mixing, playing with recipes, making mistakes, etc.
I use both homemade (malto+fructose) and high end (Maurten and SIS) drink mixes. No perception bias required to prefer one over the other. For me, itâs budget homemade for training (90% of the time) and convenient Maurten or SIS on race day or when traveling.
I hope the letter writer discovers bulk maltodextrin and fructose. Hard to get much cheaper than that and still deliver 90+g carbs/hour.
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They specifically mentioned fueling alternatives and even mentioned how great it was to have some new gel on the market that was like 2 bucks vs 6 or 8 (or however much the reference one was).
Arguing over malto vs table sugar is people making their own and has nothing to do with expensive name brands.
Not sure where you think this has anything to do with expensive vs cheap.