You don’t need a relatable case study, just look up some physiological data charts, your engine works the same as Matt Beers it is just less than half the size.
140w is 504KJ per hr, KJ expended are roughly equivalent to Kcal used, even at 40-50% of your max aerobic power, you are using approximately 50% carb 50% fat. Sugar is 4Kcal/g. At 140w you’ll need 62g/h just to cover what you are using.
Fuelling your workouts on the bike will improve your recovery, raise you energy levels for the rest of the day as your body isn’t shutting down to conserve energy, it will also improve your mental health because the most carb hungry organ in the human body is the brain.
There’s been some absolutely great advice here. Than you all so much. It’s more a case now of overcoming the mental barriers and just implementing experimental nutrition methods.
Another issue I seem to face is the rest day/week nutrition. You can probably all tell I’m a massive overthinker and have a complicated relationship with food body image and exercise. Cheers for the support.
I think for most average Joe’s with rides up to 2 hour it is much better to focus on fueling before the ride then during the ride. There is no use starting an interval set with depleted glycogen stores.
My personal approach for sub 2 hour rides:
Estimate the expected kJ’s of the upcoming ride (most training software calculate this based on the intervals).
Add approximately 50-75% of the expected kJ’s in carbs to the preceding 2-3 meals (not in sugars, but mostly whole/regular foods. (For me mostly wholegrain sandwiches).
No fueling on the bike (typically)
Add another 10-25% in carbs and proteins to a recovery meal or snack.
Depending on the schedule of the next day I decide if I want to carry a small deficit (say next day is rest day) or if I add the remaining 10-25% to the next regular meal (say next day is another ride planned).
E.g. :
Tomorrow at 5pm I have ride scheduled:,
Sweetspot intervals, total time 90min, scheduled energy: 1200kJ
The day after I have an easier day; I will aim for a small deficit this day.
I will add 900kCal to my two meals and a snack prior to the workout. Mostly in carbs and protein, so 900/4=225g of carbs and protein.
For me that it is an additional two slices of bread at breakfast, and two additional slices at lunch. WIth either something like jam or lean meat. And a bowl of fat-free yoghurt with muesli as a pre-ride snack (usually at least two hours before).
During the ride no fueling, just water.
After the ride is dinner time, so I eat what the family eats. I have a little extra. I find it difficult to count calories of mixed dinners.
I might have a protein shake in the evening before bed.
Ps.
For longer rides everything changes, and especially closer to goal events I will fuel during rides at 90-100g/hours in line with what I will fuel during my main events. Call it gut-training, although I never had any problem with these amounts.
I’ll generally eat a good breakfast and lunch, have an afternoon snack (often a banana and apple) and about 80-90g on the drive home (swedish fish).
During an hour long workout I’ll generally do a minimum of 55g of carbs and recently pushing this up to 85ish. If I’m still hungry the 25g carb gummy bear packs are next to the bike. Off the bike it’ll be a protein shake and dinner.
So far the only workout that’s been hard since I started the latest block was when I tried to fit a morning workout in and didn’t do the above.
Nah. A well trained athlete is going to use fat for fuel a lot better than a non trained (thicker) athlete actually. So a lean 350w FTP cyclist most likely will be using a great portion of fat and protect glycogen stores much better than a fat 200w FTP cyclist that pretty much runs on glycogen only duing training.
I don’t know how you all do monster fueling for intensity. In the middle of a VO2 workout the last thing my stomach wants is sugar.
Granted I’ve always been like that, sugar during intense exercise causes cramping and severe gut pain. Lower intensity is fine but the fast stuff… I need to fuel before and after.
Try these guidelines (that have been posted in this forum many times if you had searched), adjust as needed (e.g. for me 30g/h is the minimum I ingest, even on short recovery rides, and I stretch the upper limit on longer rides). IMO there’s no benefit to restricting fueling “don’t diet on the bike” as Amber said.
Totally agree. And I’d argue that fueling decisions during a ride are mostly about looking forward. IMO, there’s too many pitfalls in looking at at Kj’s on your current ride and trying to use that as fueling “math”.
Yeah, I used to use the kJ’s to calculate and then realized that I don’t need to be that exact about it so now I just do my 60g/hr for endurance and 90g/hr for anything hard and I know that will be plenty of fuel to make sure I’m not “dieting on the bike” or setting myself up for being ravenous after a ride and eating everything in the kitchen.
I kind of flip the thinking around. I’m bigger than you, and 90g per hour is sort of my baseline. Maybe yours is 70g. Then I think about why I would take in less than that. Today for example I’m still in the off season, riding mostly indoors doing shorter rides, and trying to drop a couple of pounds that I put on over the holidays. I knew my workout would burn about 1200 calories. I ate 300 calories worth of sourdough and jam before the ride, and knew I would eat 700 calories of oatmeal and fruit after, so I’d take in 200 during the ride, or slightly less than 50g/hr.
When I’m 100% about performance, doing longer rides and burning a lot more calories, it’s always 90g+ per hour.
i consume less than 60 grams per hour while riding. i eat before and after rides and i have occasional gels while riding. if i took in 60 grams per hour on a 3-4 hour ride, i would be consuming more calories than i burn. i usually average about 100 watts. i have a very carb heavy meal before each ride.
I consider myself a pretty normal person, although with maybe slightly higher cycling aspirations than some here on the forum (and trying to balance that with a full time teaching job and a wife and a toddler). My weekly riding volume is usually around 13-15h (11000+ kJ) and my FTP is in the high 300s.
I have no problems chugging huge amounts of carbs on rides, and e.g. when I do big 6h+ rides I usually take at least 100g per hour. But for my usual 2-3h workouts, I rarely take more than 80g per hour, and for normal endurance rides it’s more like 60g/h. For example, last week I did 2x25 + 20min high sweetspot at 355W plus endurance riding and sprints to top it off, for a total of 2900kJ in 3 hours. I took a total of 225g sugar on the bike – first hour around 50-60g, then more as the ride went on. There’s a couple reasons for this: I usually ride in the morning and eat a big breakfast ~1-1.5h before, so I already have lots of carbs in my system; secondly, there is some research (I think Tim Podlogar?) that indicates that higher intakes of carbs intra-ride can deplete your muscle glycogen stores quicker. So the compromise is slightly back-loading the carbs, not taking in that much during the first hour or two and then ingesting more when your energy deficit becomes higher as the ride goes on.
In the past, I’ve also taken 100g+ carbs for every training hour, and honestly I don’t find much difference in performance. I’ve found that what’s more important is simply eating enough carbs off the bike, especially on the days before the next key workout. And with “enough carbs”, I really mean large amounts – I am a taller, bigger cyclist at 190cm/80kg, and usually eat 800-900g of carbs total before a big training day. The effect of having really topped up glycogen stores before a big sweetspot workout is massive anecdotally.
On a HIIT hour session I tend to have one 750ml bottle with a carb drink and a banana. If I’ve done my maths right and my scoops/ bananas are consistent that’s 89g of carbs. Depending on the intensity however I might not use the full bottle.
For an hour Z2 ride inside I’ll often have less than a 1/3 of a bottle and forgo the banana, at most 22g of carbs.
For an outside hour Z2 ride I won’t have any drink/carb.
FWIW Im a 5foot 9 inch (175cm) and 138lbs (62.6kg), 50year old male (missing 3kg from my bowel though after a cancer op 6 years ago).
It’s a bad habit but with chemo, completely destroying my finger nerves back then, even though they’ve grown back to a degree I quite often have got into the habit of not drinking on the move outside.
