For cyclists, mastering the use of body fat as a fuel is something of a busman’s holiday. That’s because one of the key routes to increasing the muscle’s capacity to store fat (in the form of triglycerides) and use it for energy is to ride, and keep on riding.
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“Training on your bike in a variety of formats and fine-tuning your nutrition can make you more efficient at using fat as fuel at high intensity to preserve glycogen stores,” explains Nigel Mitchell, Head of Nutrition with Cannondale Pro Cycling.
However, to do that properly, he says, you first need to have a clear understanding of some of the concepts involved. To lose weight, you have to create a ‘negative energy balance’ in your body – in other words, expend more calories than you consume. The idea of enhancing fat burning (to ‘burn fat fast’) simply means to increase the proportion of your expended calories that will come from stored body fat.
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“Nutritionally you need to bear in mind that although you can ‘burn’ all three types of food calories (fat, carbohydrate and protein) to produce energy – the bulk of what you use to fuel a ride is derived from carbohydrate and fat,” says Mitchell.
Protein does contribute to ‘fat burning’ in that it can be used to ‘fool’ the body into thinking it has carbs to call upon during certain types of training. As we’ll see, it can help encourage the use of fat as fuel.
It’s equally key to avoid overdosing on high-glycaemic index (high-GI) foods that cause blood sugar levels to spike: “If there’s too much glycogen for the muscles or liver it can lead to the blood being flooded with insulin, which prevents the use of fat for energy.”
1. Fasting burns fat fastest
2. Go zonal
3. Train long
4. Get intense
5. Raise your resting metabolic rate
6. Make fat-burning muscle
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