No matter what kind of rider you are, it’s all too easy to suffer from an expanding midsection. Not only can this hamper your performance, it can also affect your overall health.
The key to long-term weight loss is not merely counting calories or cutting down on carbs, but following a programme designed to reshape your body while improving its composition and maintaining its power.
Fundamental to this is balancing blood sugar levels, which is crucial for losing fat while promoting increases in muscle mass. To put it another way, balancing your blood sugar levels will allow you to boost your energy and performance while you're in the process of losing weight.
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Adopting the following principles and eating plan will not only produce results fast, but will also improve your cycling performance and overall health.
1. Eat little and often
It’s essential for cyclists to keep their bodies fuelled frequently with the right foods. Doing so ensures there's a steady supply of glucose entering the bloodstream to be converted into energy. This reduces the insulin response as well, enabling your body to burn fat rather than store it, which means effective, healthy weight loss paired with constant energy levels.
Two to three hours after eating, your blood glucose levels drop, so you should aim to eat around every three hours even if you’re not training. In practical terms, this means eating breakfast, a healthy mid-morning snack, lunch, another healthy snack in the afternoon and an evening meal.
- Pots of natural low-fat yoghurt, cottage cheese or fromage frais and fruit
- Pots of hummus, guacamole or fish pate with a handful of carrot, pepper, cucumber and celery sticks
- Nut and seed bars (no added sugar)
- Piece of fruit with 30g of hard cheese
- Plain popcorn, crackers or pretzels (combined with some form of protein)
- Oat cakes or pumpernickel bread
- Hard-boiled egg and vegetable sticks
- Flavoured, low-fat milkshakes
- Miso soup and lean ham/chicken
- Homemade trail mix – a variety of nuts, dried fruit and mini plain shredded wheat to snack on
2. Include protein
3. Cut out the junk
4. Eat essential fats
5. Get supplementary help
Typical menu
- Breakfast: protein-boosting porridge made with porridge oats, milk or water and a half scoop of protein powder or ground seeds. Top with yoghurt and half a cup of berries or fruit.
- Mid-morning snack: one piece of fruit plus some nuts and seeds.
- Lunch: mixed bean or chicken salad using half a can of mixed beans and at least five different vegetables, sprouted seeds and dressed using an omega-blend oil. One slice of rye or pumpernickel bread spread with pumpkin seed butter or tahini.
- Mid-afternoon snack: one protein shake.
- Dinner: seared salmon with steamed veg and half a cup of cooked buckwheat noodles. Use a palm-sized piece of fish and wide selection of veg.
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
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