“New year, new you!”; “A fresh start!”, “My New year resolution!” and “Got to lose that Christmas weight” are all things that are said frequently this month and whether that’s the case for yourself or you’re still trying to carry on your goal of dropping a little body fat then this is just for you!

Understanding how to create a deficit and then the importance of carbohydrate, fat and protein and their role in fat loss is important.

Deficit

First of all, we need to be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat – if it isn’t dropping then you’re still eating too much compared to the activity you’re doing. Try tracking your food in a calorie counter and doing so accurately while monitoring these things;

• Your weight (preferably as a weekly average)
• Step count – all your non exercise-based activity
• Monitoring the calorie or Kj expended on your chosen bike computer

Protein

In a calorie deficit protein is integral to success and helps us to keep fresh and powerful on the bike. It is the foundation of recovery; it aids us in maintaining our lean tissue; it’s filling and may help us still gain some muscle despite being in a deficit.

How much?

Aim for 2g/kg/bodyweight per day and have a portion with every meal which is every 3 to 4 hours in addition to after our training session.

Fat

Fat plays an important role in hormone, nervous system and cell health and provides fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids.

How much?

As cycling is mainly endurance based, we only need a daily requirement of about 0.6-0.8g/kg/bodyweight to keep a healthy system with higher intakes only really being needed on specific protocols, strength-based sports or very high calorie intake days. On rest days- which could be a couple of days a week- we can quite easily a drop this amount a lot lower to help with a calorie deficit.

Carbs

Lastly, we have carbohydrate – this fills out the remainder of our daily calories.  These become the most heavily manipulated macronutrient on training days fuel for the work required.  Have a larger daily serving on intense/ long duration bike days or if you’re just at work all day and not training then sack them off a bit, eating smaller portions at each meal as you don’t need the energy.

Focus on having some carbohydrate before hard sessions, fast releasing before morning sessions (like a 1 slice of bread, banana and a bit of honey) or slow releasing 2-4 hours before an evening session or a later start on the weekend.

What tricks can you do to help prevent you from getting ill this winter? Well a lot of them may be simpler than you may have thought, and they’re all backed by science – no old wives’ tales here.

Vitamin D3 – Vitamin D3 and its usage to improve our 25(OH)D blood serum levels has been directly linked to our ability to prevent illness.

As the angle of the earth changes for winter here in the UK even if we get direct sunlight, we won’t be getting the specific UV rays we need to create this! Believe it or not it’s also recommended by “Public Health England” to supplement at least 400iU or 10Ug a day over winter to help with immunity.

This number in increased for exercising individuals and is always recommended to get a blood test to see where your levels are and if they’re <75nmol/L supplementing with 2000-4000iU a day can be recommended.

Citrus juice – Within our saliva there is something called IgA which helps defend against bacteria and viruses that enter our mouths. When the winter months draw in, we can often find ourselves out and about riding with a dry mouth, meaning we’re without saliva and that protective IgA.

Adding citrus juice to your water or zest to homemade carb bars can increase saliva production and help aid against dry mouth and potentially combat infection

Calories – An obvious one but if our calories are too low and we’re dieting too hard over the winter months we’re going to see reductions in recovery, increase in inflammation and cortisol which in turns opens us up to infection. Be smart with your deficit and only make it small or make sure you’re achieving maintenance calories to support a healthy immune system

Zinc Lozenges – Probably my favourite and least known aid! There is a huge wealth of information out now with 3 meta-analysis papers confirming the efficacy of using zinc lozenges to reduce the incidence and/or duration of the common cold and upper respiratory tract infections when taken at the first sign.

These should be sucked on for 20-30mins every 2-3 hours with the lozenge containing 10-18mg ionised zinc.

NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis is essentially all the activity we do outside of exercise… so step count or your job if it is a manual labour one. This accounts for the biggest contribution to calories expended after our resting metabolic rate – unless we’ve done 5+ hour ride.

Why is this important you might ask?

Well, when trying to drop body fat and get stronger on the bike we may be tracking our calories/food and ensuring we’re training lots but if we aren’t taking not of the other biggest variable we may be losing out on a trick!

1000 steps = ~50kcal – depending on how big you are and how fast it’s done.

Often, we start seeing that fat loss we want but then randomly is plateaus, the reason for this may be a reduction in our NEAT levels which our body does sub-consciously as calories are restricted. You may also see those levels drop as you do a super tough turbo, chat laps in the morning or out for your weekend ride but after working really hard physically, you’re tired, legs ache and in turn you walk less. So, if your turbo session burnt 1000Kcal but you normally burn let’s day 600kcal from walking all day but now you just sit and only burn 200kcal, that turbo session net is actually only 600kcal.

Our 3 main variables in the goal of fat loss are:

Calories eaten

Exercise performed

NEAT

These provide the main factors that determine if you’re in a calorie deficit and thus losing fat or if you’re at maintenance/surplus.

My suggestion would be to track your food, monitor your step count on a free pedometer app or wearable device and ensure your training volume and intensity relatively similar each week or is accounted for in your food.

For the ever-busy cyclist, commuting and riding out those weekend miles finding the right food sources to help replenish and refuel can sometimes be difficult. Even more common is how to bring in some variety, since most carbohydrate choices tend to be pasta or potatoes.

Endeavouring to find something new and exciting can be extremely tedious and time consuming! Enter the Humble Parsnip! Parsnips offer a great solution with their prime season being between autumn and spring and provide an inexpensive option to add variety to one’s meals.

The unsuspected parsnip –

A great choice for carbohydrate to replenish and refuel, providing around 17g of carbohydrate per 100g. It is a high Glycemic food meaning it is rapidly broken down and converted into useable carbohydrate and also means it can be put to good use in replacing lost carbohydrate stores and aiding in recovery, which is especially important if we’re going to be riding again soon. It’s high in vitamin C, most minerals and provides a decent amount of fibre to help with gut health.

All of this combines to make it pretty awesome.

What I truly love about this recipe is that it’s something you can -after boiling- just leave in the oven while relaxing and also batch make, cooking extra for tomorrows lunch.

Rosemary, Maple and Orange Parsnips (Serves 4-6)

• 1kg Parsnips
• Couple sprigs Rosemary
• 2 tbsp Maple Syrup
• Peel of 1 orange
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• Salt & Pepper

PEEL & CHOP parsnips lengthways in half down the middle

PAR boil for 10mins

DRAIN & ROLL in remaining ingredients

WHACK in the oven at 180C for about 40mins

ROAST till golden

DONE

Nutritional Information for recipe (per serving of 6)

166Kcal
35g Carbohydrate
2g Protein
2g Fat

Not a fan of the flavours? Try swapping out the orange, maple and rosemary for Honey and thyme.

As we come to the end of the season many people start thinking about getting “fat adapted” and start thinking about getting those long miles in and doing a bunch fasted so fat can be the main energy source and hypothetically become more efficient.

This is a really interesting topic and possibly one we could talk and debate for a few more pages but let’s talk about some main points on utilising a train low (training in a low carbohydrate state) protocol.

How fit are you/how long have you been riding consistently for?

If you’re a new rider the chances are, you’re going to be unfit and your body may not be very efficient at cycling. Which most likely means riding on the road and sticking to Z2 HR or power is going to be very difficult, because as soon as you hit any long drag or hill you’re going to be struggling. Carbohydrate restricted rides require that the intensity stays at Z2 or lower. If the ride has intensity, the potential of you getting through 3+hours without food and maintaining power will greatly diminish.

What is your main objective – what race/event do you plan to do?

Think about what you’re training for, if the event, race, sportive means you will need to eat on it then probably a good idea to train what you’re eating too.

Why? Well it’s obvious really. If you eat fewer carbs and use more fat, as you upregulate your ability to do one, you down regulate your efficiency at the other which will make you worse at using carbohydrate. Not great if you’re going to be eating during your ride.

Doing it to lose more body fat.

First things first. Whether you’re in a calorie deficit fasted ride or not you will not be dropping body fat. If you had two days which were identical in every way; food, activity, calories burn in the ride and type of session and the only difference was one was a fasted the other was fed is it possible to lose more in one than the other? The likelihood is no. Maybe you could lose a little more in the fasted but not significantly so.

There are benefits though.

We do see benefits from carbohydrate restricted training, like increased amounts of mitochondria (aerobic cell) created from these sessions so hypothetically getting more out of those Z2 rides, changes in insulin sensitivity, you will get better at using fat at lower intensities (but it should be done in combination with fed rides).

How would I use it?

I would do one maybe two rides a week carbohydrate restricted. I would make them 2-3 hours (maybe longer if you’re an experienced rider) to ensure you become glycogen depleted, a quick 30-45mins in the morning won’t cut it! This will carry over more to your events as you want to be able to use more fat 3 hours down the line.

Ultimately think about your overall goal, mix them into your sessions but don’t make them all depleted, fuel for hard rides, restrict for easier.

POWER! That ever sought after entity- legs like tree trunks and fast like Hermes god of speed, the desire of many a cyclist! Ha!! but seriously- when wanting to increase power in your cycling, carbohydrates are KING!

I work with top level athletes and it is imperative that they know the aims of each session so you know how to eat before, during and after that session. How you eat for it will change depending on the training session intensity and goal but when looking at power, high-intensity intervals and high watt sessions you need to be fuelled ready for that session.

Why? Going into a HARD session on low muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) will impair your performance and reduce the potential gains and adaptions you would get, as remember you want to do your best and work your hardest for this session and not flounder early on.

This begs the question, “So, how should I eat for it?”

Well this is split into three categories; Timing, Type and Total.

Timing – As you can imagine this is massively important because if you’re eating your brown rice 1 hour before the session that precious rice won’t have fully broken down and be ready to use as energy in time for the planned session.

I recommend eating your pre-training carbohydrates 3-4 hours before, giving plenty of time for it to digest and be ready for use.

Sometimes this isn’t possible with busy schedules. If you have a morning session I’m sure you won’t want to wake up for a midnight feast! I would suggest for you to have your carb meal 30-45mins before your morning training though you would have a different type as mentioned below.

Type –  Now you know when to have your carbohydrates you need to know what type you should be having!

If you have 3-4 hours before the session, then go for Low Glycaemic Index (GI) foods such as brown rice, wholemeal tortilla, oats, new potatoes, legumes and sweet potatoes.

But if you’re one of the early morning people then you need to go for moderate to high GI foods like, wholemeal bread, muesli, puffed rice, and fruit.

Total – Having sufficient carbohydrates will ultimately decide the effectiveness of the session as ingestion of too small an amount the effect won’t be significant. Whether you are training early or later on and have time for a low GI meal I would suggest consuming 1-1.2g carbohydrate per kg of bodyweight beforehand.

This figure isn’t gospel though. Think about the duration of your session- is it just 20mins of power training or is it longer? Are you doing a run after- for example if you’re training for a triathlon?  In either of these cases the amount might need to be adjusted and you certainly don’t want to over consume on calories or their might be another muffin man down Drury Lane!

*depending on the length of the power session having a gel during might be worth it but I would possibly only use this over 25min intense sessions*

Here are four amazing carbohydrate foods that are perfect to have pre-workout and some suggestions as to how to incorporate them into your day with ease! Depending on your carbohydrate demands the amounts may need to vary.

Chilaquiles – Mexican style – Quick and something special

Ingredients;

• 2 Tortilla – I used whole-wheat
• 1-2 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 red onion
• Fresh coriander
• 30g crème fraiche
• 1 pot fresh salsa – I bought mine to save time
• 1 chicken breast -pre cooked

CHOP tortilla into small triangles 10ths or 14ths

FRY in a pan with olive oil till crispy

DRY off oil and put back in the pan

ADD all the salsa and cook through

FINELY chop red onion and coriander

TEAR your chicken breast into pieces

SERVE the salsa tortilla mix

TOP with red onion, coriander, chicken and crème fraiche

DONE

10min Beef Stir fry – Makes batch cooking a dream

Ingredients;

• 150-250g 5% beef mince
• 4/5 cherry tomatoes
• 1tbsp tomato puree
• 3 spring onions
• Fresh coriander
• 250g pre-cooked brown rice or microwaveable brown rice
• Salt & Pepper
• 1tsp Olive oil
• 1tsp butter

ADD olive oil and heat

FRY spring onions till soft

ADD mince and season fry till nearly done

STIR in puree & tomatoes

FRY till golden and tomatoes soften

ADD butter and rice just before end enough to heat through

GARNISH with freshly chopped coriander

SERVE hot or cold

Sun-dried tomato salad – Perfect side to any meal and meal

Send that Iceberg lettuce home!

Ingredients;
• New potatoes about 300g
• Pack of green beans
• Feta cheese
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Fresh Basil

CUT green beans and new potatoes in half

COOK and then leave to cool

MIX the two together in a bowl

ADD chopped sun-dried tomatoes

CRUMBLE feta cheese in

GARNISH with fresh chopped basil and a glug of olive oil

DONE

Breakfast Power Smoothie – That one for the early risers

• 1-2 large frozen banana/s
• 20g Whey protein
• 100g Total 0%
• Almond milk – add to make the consistency you like, I prefer mine thick
• Muesli

BOSH all ingredients except muesli in the blender

BLEND till smooth

POUR into a bowl or drinks container

ADD muesli

DONE