I suddenly remember how I lost weight in the past

[rickenvox]

I remember when I was racing Cat 3 crits and road races (bicycle), and was burning so many calories a day I could eat whatever I wanted. But I still was on a diet, trying to get down to some low body fat percentage like 5% or something crazy like that. I'm not doing anything crazy like that now, but the one mantra I remember from a friend of mine from the racing team was, "I go to bed hungry, wake up hungry, and spend most of the day hungry." And it wasn't like we weren't eating, but not enough to keep up with what we were burning.

Anyway I remembered this as I'm going to bed tonight hungry, after eating about 400 calories for dinner.

 

[yabba]

good quote from a running coach: "Eat enough, always. Eat too much, sometimes. Eat too little, never."

I've been averaging about 4000 calories a day lately; weight has been steady (but I'm definitely not trying to lose any)

 

[rickenvox]

good quote from a running coach: "Eat enough, always. Eat too much, sometimes. Eat too little, never."

I've been averaging about 4000 calories a day lately; weight has been steady (but I'm definitely not trying to lose any)

Competitive cycling and rock climbing (both of which I no longer do) are sports where you can excel just by losing weight, assuming you had some fitness and skill to begin with. It was always lose as much as possible without losing muscle. But I was astonished how much your visible muscles can decrease when the fat in the muscle also goes away. Anyway, I'm not trying to do anything like that today, but have gained some unwanted weight during my masters program and now during Covid (was supposed to give me more work out time). I'm always trying out a plant based diet, but I'm not strict about it.

 

[yabba]

Competitive cycling and rock climbing (both of which I no longer do) are sports where you can excel just by losing weight, assuming you had some fitness and skill to begin with. It was always lose as much as possible without losing muscle. But I was astonished how much your visible muscles can decrease when the fat in the muscle also goes away. Anyway, I'm not trying to do anything like that today, but have gained some unwanted weight during my masters program and now during Covid (was supposed to give me more work out time). I'm always trying out a plant based diet, but I'm not strict about it.

I think that was the conventional wisdom in running for a while as well (and still is with some crusty old school types), but the data is pretty solid at this point that pushing for crazy low body fat correlates well with overtraining and injury, so for longevity in the sport being obsessed with cutting weight is counterproductive. (obviously being overweight isn't helpful either) Less weight = higher performance makes a bit more sense in terms of physics for both climbing and cycling than it does for running anyway.