I haven’t listened to the successful athletes one, but the gist of it is this: EVERY single time it come up they encourage people to fuel the work, don’t diet on the bike, and body composition will follow. That’s about it.
And the problem is that may work for some people, but it’s HORSE **** for others. I’m not overweight by any means, if you believe my Garmin Scale (which, I don’t) I’m around 11% BF. But at the same time, as I’ve increased my volume to more than I ever have, focused on fueling, guess what - I put on weight and not in a good way if I’m not careful.
I know what works for me, and it isn’t what the TR crew repeatedly says. What I’m looking for is balance, not a bunch of skinny people who have trouble eating enough continuously saying the same thing.
I’m once again begging you to listen to the backlog. They spend so much time talking about their attempts to lose weight and maximize body composition. If you want to listen to coach Chad advise people that they shouldn’t fuel any rides up to 3 hours, and that they should cut out all processed carbs, those episodes are out there and easy to find.
I think the issue is that weight loss IS an extremely nuanced issue. Individual? Well…sure in the sense that training is individual. But all of the same factors are in play for all people to varying degrees.
My personal hot take - I think TR is just intentionally ducking the issue both because doing so is self serving, and because it is a very nuanced and difficult issue they just dont want to be involved with.
I went back and had a quick listen to the first segment, and it was hardly the way that you are representing it. I think the quote that stood out to me was,
“When most people say they want to lose weight, what they mean is that they want to lose excess body fat while maintaining muscle and in order to do that you have to be ready to maintain that for the long haul.”
Which part of focus on gradually losing weight while maintaining performance while focusing on sustainability to do you disagree with?
While I’m sure there’s ones I’ve missed, I’ve listened to plenty. My problem is they talk like their experience is how it works for everyone. And, I’m not talking about not fueling the work at all by any means.
Here’s another side to it. It is possible to fuel the work on the bike, recover appropriately, while at the same time watching what you eat and running a net caloric deficit off the bike (I’m talking 300-500 KCal a day) with a goal of losing weight while training and improving power.
I think they do a crappy job of addressing that, and how, and I think it’s probably a pendulum swing from their past experiences of not fueling at all or nearly enough that causes them to message it the way they do.
There was some good info on that segment of the pod, and some stuff said that I shook my head at and said no. But thats because we are all different.
You are the sausage king of Chicago, but for the love of all things holy either hire a dietician, buy a plan like the FasCat one (created by a dietician), or do some research.
Here is my post from a month ago:
My oversimplified instructions:
Step1: estimate your lean body mass
Step2: based on your volume, use the guidelines in the first pic I posted. Example: I ride ~8-10 hours/week, so I use the 1-3 hours/day guidelines which are 6-10g of carbs per kg of lean body mass. For myself at 186cm / 73" that means a minimum of 450g of carbs a day. Which is what I heard Alex say on this podcast
Step3: make sure you get enough protein
Step4: eat clean, and focus on Winning in the Kitchen (FasCat saying) not “cramming for the exam” by only fueling on the bike
With a BMI around 26, I’ve repeatedly lost weight and gained fitness. Its not rocket science.
Oh none of that I disagree with at all…that is the sort of detail I’m saying should be talked about more on the podcast. And as I mentioned…I cut out of the podcast early, so if there was detail later on I very likely missed it…I’ve had a bit of a short leash on the podcast lately.
And again I’m not even looking for info for myself…I mean I think I do a pretty good job of this. It just is a bit irritating seeing the podcast brush aside everyones weight concerns so nonchalantly and then dive in fueling more and eating disorders in response…
Yeah, I think that this might be fair. I just want to point out that they’ve covered this a lot in the past. If you just search trainerroad and weight loss on Youtube, you can find a lot of clips of them talking through this. EX:
Personally, I come to the podcast for the hosts opinions and experiences. I don’t at all ding them because they’ve had different experiences than I have.
I would also say that the advice that they repeat, fuel your workouts, and create a deficit off the bike if you’re trying to lose weight, with a focus on sustainability, is pretty much settled science in endurance sports and in line with what you’re advising.
Maybe I’m just hearing something different, but nothing that they say seems at all outlandish to me.
If you want to listen to coach Chad advise people that they shouldn’t fuel any rides up to 3 hours, and that they should cut out all processed carbs, those episodes are out there and easy to find.
What I’m getting from this is that the TR Podcast isn’t a reliable source of information on this topic, which, fair enough, there are other places to look.
In my opinion, as they’ve learned more through experience and education their opinion has shifted over time, but you’re right. There are lots of podcasts that are solely focused on nutrition that you could utilize as a resource.
My original point is, if that’s true, they could do a better job of updating the topic for listeners with a wider variety of situations and goals. I don’t want to go back and listen to them in their keto phase, I want the advice they’d give now, preferably filtered through someone like Alex.
For the record, (since it’s taken some flak in this thread) I don’t have any problem with them covering disordered eating/orthorexia, etc. those are important topics. I just feel like they’ve narrowed their audience on this topic until they’re only speaking to themselves five years ago.
Fair enough, and I think that’s a pretty reasonable take. I wouldn’t be opposed to hearing more about how they would approach this in an updated way as well.
Your intuition is right and you couldn’t if all else were equal. The work is important - especially the recent doubly-labelled water studies by John Speakman - but usually misinterpreted by the press. It is not that exercise does not use calories, is just that exercise it is not 100% efficient. As Jonn_Barclay states above, his 2000 kj workout is “some number less than that” in terms of calories actually “burned”. Using the average figure from Speakman’s recent paper it would be about 1,440 kj. Unfortunately this inefficiency increases with adiposity- an unfortunate but important finding that again spotlights the challenge of losing weight once it is gained.
And, back in the day, they had Matt Fitzgerald on too and they used to refer to his books quite a bit. In fact they even hosted a Q&A type forum with him on the panel (I think… it would have been five years ago probably). The message I’ve always picked up when the TR crew discuss weight - noting they tend to tiptoe around it due to peoples’ sensitivities - is: lose weight in the off season; don’t diet on the bike/fuel your workouts; and for nearly everybody you’re better served increasing FTP vs. losing weight. Chad always seemed pretty keen on most people carrying a bit more muscle too, for better resilience if you crash and general life. Anyway, that’s what I’ve always gotten out of it. Honestly if I wanted to drop weight I’d be seeing a professional in the field.
No, carb “loading” is proven to be very good for performance. However, for those already carrying large training loads and thus also eating plenty of carbohydrate already, loading may not be necessary. Alex Hutchinson recently did an article in Outside Magazine regarding carbohydrate availability where he discussed some studies suggesting that not only was it important to eat a lot of carbohydrate (>10g/kg of bodyweight per day) during heavy training periods and racing, but that more was in fact always better (within reason). The analogy was that fuel in the body works different to fuel in a car. A car will do 0-60 in the same time regardless of how much fuel is in the tank, but humans perform better the more fuel they have on board. It is as if a car would do 0-60 in 3 seconds when the tank is full, but in 5 seconds when the tank is half empty. Glycogen is not distributed evenly among all cells, so when eating less carbohydrate, some cells will be “full” while others will be “empty”. Thus, only some cells can used to their full capacity during training. Interesting article, link below. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/carbs-recovery-research-2022/
