Mostly strategies and macro numbers. I’m a numbers kinda guy so was easy for me to use their tracking tool to create meal plans for each day depending on the kind of workout I was doing.
A lot of plugging in foods into the tool and finding what worked from a macro standpoint. Most important thing to me is it feels sustainable. I’ve done this before with a professional and gained everything back because I was going too low all the time.
I listened to part of that segment, and that was my take too. I can easily gain 80 watts. Stop riding for 1-2 months, which has routinely dropped my ftp to 180-ish, and then do some training and watch it go back up to 260W. I’m not impressed by off-the-couch gains.
This. It is like training, I consistently do a lot of boring training, and consistently keep bumping up my fitness. Patience is a virtue.
I’ve whittled off 10lbs and without testing can’t say exactly, but my ftp is up, short/mid power is up, and endurance power is up. I’ve not heard Alex before todays podcast, but I did hear her say 450-650g of carbs. Last month or two I’ve posted similar numbers in other threads on the forum. That plus eating enough protein. Not that hard to hit 450g carbs if you focus on it and figure out what to buy and eat. About 3 years ago I got inspired after buying the FasCat Winning in the Kitchen Plan.
I’m a “faster to lose weight” person. It worked for me but it’s not for everyone. A lot of people will put the weight back on. They just can’t reduce their calories after fasting. While riding I went from 230lbs to 165lbs. Basically ate very little. When I did eat it was salad, raw nuts and fruit. Filled up on water, tea diet soda etc. I was constantly tired both on and off the bike. Lot of saggy skin. Took about a year to take it off. Did not see any real gains besides being able to climb a lot better. 8 years later I’m still 160 to 170lbs. Halloween to Christmas is the “put weight on” time of year.
I have managed to up ftp about 25w in the past 6 months. On the bike I do take in prob more carbs than necessary. My current diet consists of lot of veggies, fruit, nuts and protein. I snack all day and eat a normal dinner. No breakfast most mornings. Sometimes I don’t eat dinner if I’m busy. I can go without eating all day. Maybe this is not normal, I don’t know. Drives the misses crazy.
This is my weight loss program. Shoot me down if ya want. I’m skinny and hard to hit.
It seems to me the best place to get advice for losing weight (since you all keep saying you aren’t getting it from the podcast) is from those who do it professionally: body builders. Some big names in the field: Layne Norton, Brad Schoenfeld and if you want a keto approach Robert Sikes. The gist: prioritize protein (1g per pound of bodyweight), determine your caloric goal and split the carbs and fat however you want - studies show that with protein where it needs to be there is no “winner” for carbs vs fat for greater fat loss. Chose the one you can stick with. Weight train to minimize muscle loss if you are doing an aggressive cut. No, cycling doesn’t count as weight training. And, maybe don’t eat those little cherry pies that Jonathon talks about and instead provide your body with nutrients instead of highly processed crap and you might find that you will need to white knuckle your way through weight loss a bit less because your body is actually nourished. Just my 1.5 cents 
Yep, I’m doing 450ish a day when I do longer rides which are 3ish hours in my world.
The periodization of the carbs to coincide with the type of training has been the key takeaway for me. I’ll drop down the carbs on my weightlifting only days and then bring them up big time when I ride longer.
Not to point specifically at you, but just because it’s a direct opposite, the only way I’ve ever really lost serious weight and kept it off was when I stopped cycling and focused on long walks and counting calories.
I say this because I think that some people will do better by doing more cardio, some by doing less cardio, and others by some other plan…but in the end, it just comes down to whatever works for you personally that allows you to do more calories out than calories in.
same.
Yeah, the weight loss advice on the podcast isn’t that helpful for those of us are more legitimately overweight. I’ve managed to put on about 15-20 lbs since 2019, all while being pretty consistent with my training. For me, the culprit was just not monitoring my diet close enough and letting some bad eating habits sneak in. I also stopped weighing myself regularly, which led to me not intervening earlier (having to get fitted for a new suit because I didn’t fit my old ones was the real wake up call for me!).
So right now I’m just under 200lbs at 5’11 and trying to get back to around 185lbs. For me, it’s all about monitoring my diet. Yes, weight is all about energy in versus energy out, but I really don’t know what the energy out part of the equation is. My FTP is 376, so 2000 KJ for a two hour ride isn’t that difficult for me. However, I’m of the mind that the 2000 KJ I used for my workout does not equate to an extra 2000 KJ burned over the day - it is some number less than that (i.e. Pontzer’s theory of constrained energy expenditure).
I just have to go by the scale. It is a bit tricky for me to ensure that I’m properly fuelled for tougher workouts (I do endurance rides fasted) and longer outdoor rides, while not compensating by eating too many extra calories.
I’m trying out the “Lose It” app to help with my calorie tracking and daily calorie target.
Pontzers stuff blew my mind! I am hesitant to test the idea that I could stop riding and walking 12k steps a day and maintain my weight 
Where all of these under-nourished, emaciated cyclists trainerroad keeps acting terrified about? I have yet to see any, and I know a lot of cyclists.
Have I made a mistake somewhere…is trainerroad only for world tour GC riders that want to switch to excelling at track and cyclocross?
I don’t know how common it is, but the constant talk of W/kg appears to affect some significant portion of cyclists.
Here’s a good thread where forum members discuss this sort of thing;
Edit to add: as I recall, a few of the hosts have struggled with disordered eating, if not diagnosed eating disorders. I can think of three podcast regulars (or former regulars) that had personal experience in this space. It’s out there.
Raises hand. I know a lot of them. Most, but not all, are women.
And there is an eating disorder thread around somewhere…
Nutrition is complicated. And not just because science.
I’m with you on this. While I’ve been a cyclist for a really long time, I’ve also lifted weights on and off just as long, but cycling is my main squeeze. When it comes to body recomposition, the physique athletes know were it’s at. I follow and like Layne Norton, Dr. Mike Isratel, and even Greg Doucette, but my favorite fitness personality when it comes to dieting is Paul Revela of Prophysique. It really is just macros and fine tuning them. While losing weight is as an endurance athlete is a little different, it’s not that different. It’s just a matter of being consistent and in a deficit. A lot depends on how much you have to lose. Other things that matter that will affect weight loss is how active you are during the day, if you are a constant dieter, and if you have any medical issues.
My best success to lose and keep off weight has been to start with a modest deficit after establishing a baseline of calorie intake for a short time. About 350-500 per day on average. This is done while either starting or maintaining some sort of a fitness regime that is sustainable. For me it’s strength training/boot camp type workouts and also cycling. If I’m starting at 170’s or even 180’s…then I know it will take about 3 weeks before I see meaningful changes in the mirror, while the scale may drop much quicker. Then the scale can go up and down for a while, usually trending down to the tune of 1-2 pounds a week. After 6-8 weeks I’ve most likely lost a lot of weight and look and feel much better. I can do this during base, build and even specialty phases because at the end of the day I can always include days where I take a diet break which means I can eat at or a little above maintenance calories. What I’ve learned is that it takes time and persistence but you need a deficit. And sometimes you can increase your calories back up a couple hundred a day week by week and still lose or maintain your weight. The danger is if you hunger gets ravenous - which is why you don’t want to crash diet or go into too severe of a restriction.
@shawrx It sounds like you are carb cycling and also do some resistance training. Question for you, did you start with establishing a base line and then incorporating a deficit to get the weight loss going and how did the plan adjust (macros) if and when your weight loss stalled? Since you’ve lost a good amount of weight (congrats btw), are you now just doing maintenance and are there any plans in the future to further reduce? Would love to get your perspective on this.
Yes, however once she got a feel for the way I train we established carb targets for the type of workout I’m doing each day. For me it’s longer ride day, 60 min interval day, and recovery or weight training day.
I have not really stalled so we have not tweaked the targets that much. It’s been a steady 1-2lbs a week. We did up the longer ride day target as I started increasing the duration of those rides.
I’d like to drop another 15ish lbs but I’m not in a hurry. Plus my target races are 6 and 8 weeks away so the focus is on workout performance and fueling the work using the carb targets we established. I’m guessing I’ll drop a little more weight before my races but it’s not the priority. After my races I plan to put a bigger emphasis on reducing further.
If you listen to the podcast backlog, you can hear Chad, Nate, and Jonathan all give go through low level disordered eating as they try to lose weight. I’m sort of convinced that the year where Chad went low carb effectively ended his competitive racing.
There’s tons of episodes they’ve done about losing weight. I think their recent advice around fueling comes from how negative those experiences were.
At one point, Nate was taking laxatives to drop weight before an event, and at a different point, Chad and Jonathan were eating a single hard boiled egg for dinner…
They hang around with the cyclists that “forget or get too busy to eat” that I consistently hear about on the the podcast. I have NEVER forgotten to eat in my life! In fact, when it’s near lunch time that’s all I can think about and my body constantly reminds me.
Well, perhaps I should have been more specific…but I meant in the population of cyclists at large…not the subset that make training plans for a living and make cycling podcasts…
I mean if we’re looking legitimate, recreational/amateur cyclists, meaning, NOT one of the 4 people in the country that make their living racing bike…this type of person strikes me as a unicorn. I’m sure there are people that struggle with legitimate and serious undereating…but based on my personal observation…for every one person that undereats, there’s 100 that manage to carry extra weight even in the face of serious riding.
Maybe this is a personal thing…Chicago cyclists are fat…all the malnourished ones are concentrated around Reno. I seriously doubt that though…
Just to expand a bit…I don’t want to make light of it or knock these people, but what they are talking about is disordered eating. By definition, they are the exceptions to the rule. The focus of the podcast on this particular subset of people just seems wildly out of wack considering the actual challenges cyclists face in reality. I mean if TR wants to make malnourishment/disordered eating their prime topic, cross to bear, and focus solely on trying to fix that…that’s a noble goal. I just don’t see how that offers much at all to the cycling population at large.
I forget to eat all the time, it’s (partially) why I’m overweight again.
Active outdoorsy people seek out and move to Reno because of their lifestyle, people seek out Chicago for a plate of dough mislabeled as pizza.
Some of it is also just going to be TR is a cycling company and their staff rides and will be involved with higher level cyclists than the majority of its user base. My brother’s wife bought him one of those drive a supercar experiences, the same week I was paid to drive a McLaren. When they sent around pics I was more interested in knowing if you could drive the car hauler I’m the background…
Working in/on people’s hobbies can really distort your views. Which leads to the problems being discussed here, when you’re in the trenches you can easily loose sight of the bigger picture or in this case what the majority is actually dealing with.
Agreed - except for the pizza part. Deep dish is mostly for tourists 
It’s pretty rare people eat it here.