| Written by Malte Therkildsen 11-06-2023 |
It's for the simple reason that in the aforementioned Google search, there's an overwhelming amount of misinformation, and I can modestly guarantee you that everything I write is backed by research, and also are methods I've used myself in working with athletes over the past years.
But I am well aware that all talk of weight loss and training invites debate, as my former Nutrition in Sports teacher, Professor Graeme Close, so aptly said; "Almost everyone has an opinion on nutrition and weight loss, which makes the dissemination of the right science problematic."
But now I'm going to tell you a secret, weight loss is fortunately very simple. It's only about one thing. Calories in versus calories out. So if it's weight loss you want to achieve, you can for all I care call your "diet" exactly what you want, as long as you roughly start to keep a diary of your intake and your output, only in that way can you be sure to see results.
It's important for me to add, I'm not trying to neglect the complexity of the reasons why one might not be able to lose weight.
Just because the biology behind weight loss is simple, it doesn't mean that the reasons why we eat too much are simple. It's extremely multifactorial and largely about psychology. There are hundreds of reasons why we find it hard to eat less. Among them also evolutionary reasons, such as that we are "programmed" to always eat when food is available. The challenge in today's society is just that food is always available!
Exactly the complexity behind weight loss makes it utterly essential that we know the fundamental elements in a weight loss process before we can even begin the weight loss, and that's what I'll try to make you smarter on in the following chapters. As a bonus, you'll find two chapters on specific weight loss strategies, hopefully providing you with the information you need to start your process.
Basal metabolic rate
First, of course, you need to know your basal metabolic rate (BMR), and what does that mean? Well, the meaning is actually in the word itself. Your BMR intake is the amount of calories you need to consume throughout the day if you wish to maintain your current weight. So, if you eat and drink equivalent to your BMR number during the day, you will neither lose nor gain weight.
For women, the average BMR number is 2,000 kcal, and for men, it's 2,500 kcal. But, of course, you need to know your own personal BMR number before you can start your weight loss program, and here I could easily throw up a nice formula for you to start calculating from.
I just have never used such a formula myself. There are so many BMR intake calculators on the internet that it's much faster and easier to use these. Here, Google is your friend, but I can say that I use MyFitnessPal’s BMR calculator, completely free, so that might be a little recommendation from me.
It doesn’t matter if your calculator is off by 10-50 kcal, the important thing is that you choose “No activity” when the calculator asks how active you are in your daily life. Because if the given calculator starts trying to guess what your real output is, that’s when the big mistakes start creeping into the calculations, and it can all end up with a false sense of security, where you either consume too much or too little.
You should keep track of your output and activities yourself; I would even say it's crucial that you do exactly this. In the absence of a better example, let’s take me:
I weigh 59 kg and am 180 cm tall. My BMR intake (without activity accounted for) is 1,980 calories. If I cycle for two hours at 150 watts, I burn 1,000 calories. That means my BMR intake that day is 2,980 calories.
The additional 1,000 calories I can consume are quite crucial information, whether I'm in a period where I want to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain my weight. So, they must, of course, be included in the calorie accounting.
Not all diets are ideal for a cyclist
The next crucial aspect of your weight loss is finding the routine that best suits you. This means being able to stick to your daily calorie count, day after day, week after week. If you can do this, you will see results. Then it's completely irrelevant whether you're on the famous low-carb diets, low-fat diets, or if you're fasting.
No matter which method you choose, it's important to remember that there's no specific diet that's better than others when it comes to weight loss. It's all about calorie intake in relation to calorie burning. That's why you need to create a routine around it that you can maintain in the long term.
However, if your goal is twofold, and you want to lose weight while becoming a better cyclist, the conversation is entirely different. Here, there are methods of weight loss we can completely rule out - namely all diets with a low amount of carbohydrates.
There's no doubt that if you remove carbohydrates, you'll find it harder to perform and thus harder to improve. Carbohydrates are simply crucial for our performance on the bike since it's the primary fuel source during cycling. Likewise, your carbohydrate intake is essential for optimal recovery. Therefore, you should definitely avoid various low carb diets when you, as a cyclist, are trying to find the right diet.
The difficult exercise, however, will be to ensure that you get enough carbohydrates between your hard training sessions while being in a calorie deficit. Most people need 500-600g of carbohydrates between hard training sessions, so you should try to account for that in your planning.
Furthermore, carbohydrates also have a very positive effect on the brain. Without going deeper into it in this article, many of you may recognize that you can become slightly irritated and in a bad mood if you go too long without sugar.
Two Recommendations for a Sustainable Weight Loss Strategy
As mentioned, there are many diets that work, and I can’t unfold them all for you, but I can share some knowledge about my two preferred "diets". The first we can call "the traditional weight loss strategy," and the second we can call "the periodized weight loss strategy."
Before we get to these two weight loss strategies, we first need to talk a bit about weight loss goals, health, and responsibility, which are all important ingredients in a successful weight loss journey.
The first thing you need to do is set a weight loss goal. A goal that is both realistic and healthy. A good guideline here is that women should not drop below a body fat percentage of 12 (14 if under 18), and men should not drop below a body fat percentage of 6 (8 if under 18). If you adhere to this, you are on the safe side, and that's what it's all about. There's no need to take risks.
You will easily find articles telling you that you can have a lower body fat percentage than the above without problems, and I'm not trying to say that everything is black and white, the low body fat percentage limit is indeed a complex topic, and a subject there is significant disagreement about worldwide. The research does not have a clear answer. For most, it would be wisest to stick to the standard guidelines, as too low of a body fat percentage, in the worst case, can have very serious consequences.
One of the consequences, if one for a long time consumes significantly less than their maintenance intake, can be RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), which primarily affects recovery and performance negatively. Moreover, it can lead to health problems, where men will experience low testosterone levels, and women often will find that their menstruation stops. So, one must be careful, because if not, one can end up harming their performance or, even worse, their health.
That is also one of the reasons why it is important to monitor both weight and calorie intake during the weight loss process. This way, we can be sure that we are doing things correctly.
With that in mind, we are ready for two concrete theories.
The Traditional Weight Loss Strategy
As we've established, weight loss, in essence, revolves around having your daily caloric intake fall below your BMR, and that's exactly where we place our focus when we work with the traditional weight loss strategy.
Throughout your weight loss journey, you should be mindful of your BMR level, which you'll need to adjust as you lose weight. The less you weigh, the lower your daily BMR level will be.
Thus, you'll need to be in a calorie deficit over a prolonged period, and here it's crucial that you monitor your weight and your calorie intake and output to ensure that you're following the plan day after day.
It all comes down to habits, and the first habit should be to weigh yourself first thing in the morning. Of course, there are many factors that can influence your weight to fluctuate from day to day. The scale can easily swing by plus/minus one kilogram. But if you suddenly, from one day to the next, experience a drastic increase or decrease, don't panic; it's merely due to changes in your carbohydrate stores and/or your fluid balance.
To get a more nuanced picture, I weigh myself first thing every day, note down the daily weight, and then calculate the average when the week is over, by taking the average weight for the past seven days. In a weight loss journey, the weight should naturally be decreasing from week to week.
After you've set a healthy and realistic weight loss goal and figured out your maintenance level, you need to plan what your daily calorie deficit relative to your maintenance should be. My recommendation is always 500-600 kcal under your BMR. This is the healthiest way to do it, as you can safely maintain the calorie deficit without health risks as long as you don't drop below the recommended minimum percentage. Moreover, a deficit of 500-600 kcal provides a buffer that essentially protects against minor errors in your daily calculations.
If you are a man, desiring a more aggressive approach and quicker results, and if your body fat percentage allows it, you can indeed start with a larger calorie deficit. You can, in good conscience, go as much as 1,000 kcal under your BMR over an extended period, depending on your starting point. As long as your mind is in the right place, you can maintain a 1,000 kcal deficit until you reach a body fat percentage of 10, after which the deficit should be adjusted so you're at most 500 under.
The consequences of being 1,000 kcal under if your body fat percentage is below 10 percent will likely include a declining testosterone level. So, you need to be mindful, but that's generally always the case when you're in a weight loss process.
Most people don't have the means to measure their body fat percentage or testosterone level, but there are several signals that can indicate if you're going too low. Fatigue - both on and off the bike, poor mood, lack of motivation, and decreasing libido are good indicators that you need to adjust your caloric intake upwards.
It's important for me to emphasize that the 1,000 kcal deficit is not an approach that women should use in their weight loss journey. Women's biology isn't geared towards as significant a calorie deficit from nature, and the consequences thereof can potentially be harmful to health.
The traditional weight loss strategy thus requires you to closely monitor your calorie intake and output, your weight, and to listen to your body's signals. If you do this, you will undoubtedly achieve results in an effective and healthy manner.
Less Monitoring, More Common Sense
Of course, it's not impossible to follow the traditional weight loss strategy without calorie monitoring. The results may not be as certain, but it can still be practiced and yield results nonetheless.
However, we can never completely avoid monitoring weight, as it is an important and accessible indicator we can measure to see if the process is going as planned. So, I would always recommend weighing yourself every day, first thing in the morning, to have a better understanding of the progression of the process.
If you wish to practice the traditional weight loss strategy without calorie monitoring, you can start with two actions that will likely affect your weight in the right direction.
Again, it's quite simple. Either you can increase your overall training volume and, preferably, your training intensity, so you train a bit harder, remembering that more watts equal more calories burned. Doing this, it might well be that you don't need to make changes to your intake.
Alternatively, you can start eating a little less each day. For example, you could eat one less slice of rye bread, skip the butter under your toppings, and drop a snack.
However, it may well end up that you need to do both. Increase training activity and training intensity a bit, while also eating a little less every day. Use the scale as a guideline and adjust continuously so you keep losing weight.
The 16:8 Eating Pattern
An alternative method that I have previously used successfully with my clients is fasting. More specifically, the fast involves having an "eating window" of eight hours, while fasting for 16 hours. Typically, the fasting hours would start after dinner.
An example could be that you consume 0 kcal from 8:00 PM to 12:00 PM, and then have your "eating window" from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
When we fast in this way, only calories are "forbidden" during the 16 hours, meaning coffee, sugar-free sodas, and other calorie-free beverages can be consumed guilt-free during the fasting hours. In fact, caffeine will only make the fast easier to get through mentally.
With fasting, you'll likely find it becomes much harder to consume too many calories in such a small "eating window," which is the whole point. Moreover, it's a method that can be practiced every day without compromising your general health.
If you combine your fast with a week that contains several hard training days, you may need to consider dropping the fasting days on those days when you train hard. When you train hard, you need a good amount of carbohydrates to be fresh enough to hit your watts. So, combining them is definitely not a bad idea either.
In fact, your training likely holds a key that can make weight loss easier and more effective, but it requires you to be willing to suffer a bit more on the bike.
Train Hard, Burn More calories
Zone 2 is undoubtedly the most hyped training zone of the moment, and there are many nuances to that debate, and many claims I disagree with, but I will return to that in one of my upcoming blogs. Today, our focus is on weight loss, and here, training focused on zone 2 simply doesn't make sense unless you train +15 hours a week.
If you train 5-10 hours a week or less, and your focus is on weight loss, it makes much more sense to try to train with as high watts as possible. As I've already written; The higher watts you pedal, the more calories you burn.
Thus, an hour of cycling at an average of 150 watts gives you a burn of about 500 kcal, while an hour of cycling at an average wattage of 250 gives you a calorie burn of around 850.
Of course, time and mindset are factors here. You should only train as hard as you can manage. It's no use training less because you can't handle your hard program. It's also no good if you suddenly halve your training time because you can't withstand the high watts you're now focusing on.
A good place to start could be to include some harder intervals around and above your FTP in most of your training sessions, and generally ride hard for the first hour on the bike. Then, the remaining hours can proceed at a calmer pace. Here, zone 2 is far better than zone 1, and your focus should be to stay as high in your zone 2 as you can manage in the last hour. This way, you will be able to increase your average watts and thus your burn.
Moreover, the hard training has the positive effect of likely increasing your FTP and thus also raising your watts in all your zones.
Alternatively to the hard first hours in your training sessions, where your focus is on intervals around and above your FTP, could be simply focusing on cycling as long in zone 3 as possible. Again, from a calorie-burning focus, this makes perfect sense.
At the cyclist's level, there are many more details you should be aware of regarding your training, but I will return to that in a later blog.
However, briefly, I would like to point out that you will eventually stagnate if you use the same training strategy for too many weeks in a row. As a rule of thumb, you can run about 15-25 of the same type of training sessions before you should focus on something different in the following weeks.
The Alternative Method - The Periodized Weight Loss Strategy
Another method, equally effective and actually better in terms of performance and recovery, involves periodized weight loss days.
Here, you have a maximum of four weight loss days per week; I usually recommend three, but again, it's a matter of temperament. If you want to lose as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible, it's clear that four weight loss days will accelerate the process. Conversely, one weight loss day a week is enough for you to lose weight week by week. So, for those who find it difficult to maintain a deficit, this could be the right solution for the patient.
As important as the weight loss days are the remaining days when you should not be in a caloric surplus. Here, you should maintain your BMR calorie intake. In this way, the periodized weight loss strategy is built on two elements: x-number of weight loss days and x-number of maintenance days.
Therefore, with this strategy, it's also crucial to monitor your daily calorie intake. Otherwise, you might end up not making any progress.
For example, if you're in a calorie deficit on weight loss days but end up in a calorie surplus on your maintenance days, the process will stall before you really get started.
The most effective and controllable method to keep an eye on your daily calorie intake is undoubtedly by using an app where you can monitor and log your daily intake. I personally use the free version of MyFitnessPal.
This way, there's no guessing, and you can be 100% sure that you will see results. The downside, of course, is that it requires a lot of time and energy, at least in the beginning. However, for most, it can quickly become routine.
If you're serious about your weight loss and want to be absolutely sure that you're losing weight, there's no way around it; you need to control your daily calorie intake as accurately as possible.
Switching between deficit and maintenance
When using the periodized weight loss strategy, you can be in a larger calorie deficit on your weight loss days than, for example, with "the traditional weight loss strategy". Aim for a deficit of 800-1500 kcal, depending on how quickly you want to lose the weight.
When planning your week, it's important to ensure that your weight loss days are not consecutive. But this shouldn’t be too hard, as you simply have to remember that a weight loss day should always be followed by a maintenance day. This way, you'll have better recovery, and you also ensure that everything is done in a healthy manner.
The next focus in planning should be to schedule your hard training sessions on maintenance BMR days, while focusing on zone 2, zone 1, or complete rest on your weight loss days. This prevents the fewer calories and carbohydrates from impacting your training and recovery as much as if you were in a deficit every day.
With the periodized weight loss strategy, you achieve better recovery while losing weight in a way that won't affect your health. You avoid the long-term calorie deficit which, as previously discussed, can affect hormonal regulation and prevent RED-S.
At the international top level, several major cyclists have made frequent use of a periodized weight loss strategy in recent years. This includes the former Team Sky with cyclists like Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, and Bradley Wiggins, and the rest of the classification riders.
Weight Loss is About Mindset and Habits
It's clear that it's important to understand the basic principles of weight loss before starting a program. It's crucial to know what to pay attention to so that you always manage your weight loss in a responsible manner. That's what I've attempted to enlighten you about here.
Once you have the right foundational knowledge, you can gradually start. But as I've mentioned before, a significant part of a successful weight loss journey is about having the right mindset. It's about habits that you can maintain and repeat day after day until you've reached the weight you desire.
If you're about to embark on a weight loss journey, I understand if you find it hard to decide which strategy is right for you. Whether it's the traditional, the periodized weight loss strategy, fasting, or perhaps a completely fourth approach is not defining. What matters is that you're in a caloric deficit on a weekly basis. So, which strategy suits you best?
Only you know that. A good start could be to dedicate the first three to four weeks to try out different strategies.
Week 1: Traditional
Week 2: Periodized
Week 3: Fasting
After these three weeks, you'll have a better basis for determining what best suits you and your temperament. Plus, you can always switch strategies along the way if you find yourself stagnating in your journey. Similarly, you can beneficially insert a maintenance week now and then if you need breaks.
Lastly, I want to mention that in a longer journey, it's important to keep your motivation high. Most people are motivated by success. Fortunately, you have your mobile phone right at hand, so a simple motivational tool could be a weekly picture, or a picture every fortnight, that can help to visualize the progress you're definitely making over time.
Thank you for reading.