How to Lose Weight by Cycling?
1. Focus on 3 main meals and 2 snacks per day.
2. Increase your protein intake!
3. Do not drastically reduce fat consumption!
4. Plan your meals!
5. Avoid sweetened, carbonated drinks and juices
6. Avoid fast food dishes
7. Avoid sweets!
8. Ensure a high level of food security
9. Care for the hydration of the body
10. Avoid alcohol!
11. Eat food on smaller plates!
12. Consistency, the help of a coach and a dietitian!
Weight reduction is achieved by:
- Increasing physical activity while maintaining the amount of energy supplied,
- reduction of the amount of energy supplied while maintaining the current physical activity,
- to reduce energy supply and increase physical activity…
1. Focus on 3 main meals and 2 snacks per day.
Planning 3 main meals and 2 snacks a day in your menu allows us to provide you with regular energy, macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat), micronutrients (calcium, iron, potassium, sodium) and fibre. A seemingly trivial recommendation, which has been repeated for centuries, and is still often underestimated. Applying this principle in an individually selected diet allows to avoid hunger while reducing body weight and maintaining as much lean body weight as possible.
Someone may say that eating less often and eating smaller portions (1-2 meals + a few snacks) during the day will achieve the same effect and is right, but this effect will not be long-term. In the case of cycling, we do not want to quickly reduce body weight. This treatment should be gradual, not causing excessive stress for our body. It should not last longer than 6-8 weeks, and the energy deficit should not be greater than 300-500kcal.
2. Increase your protein intake!
In a diet with zero-calorie balance, where we care about maintaining our current body weight, protein usually amounts to 1.4 g / kg body weight / day or about 10-15% of the total energy pool per day.
With weight loss, these values increase to 1.8-2.7g / kg body weight / day or 20-30% of the total energy pool per day.
Why is it so important to increase your protein intake?
- Protein is digested longer, resulting in a longer feeling of satiety,
- increased protein intake allows for faster regeneration after exercise,
- reduces the risk of injury during reduction,
- allows more muscle tissue to be preserved.
A good solution is an even distribution of protein in the main meals even >40g of protein per meal.
3. Do not drastically reduce fat consumption!
Contrary to popular belief it is not the high fat intake that increases our body weight and fat tissue, but the excessive energy supply during the day. A very common phenomenon of slimming on our own is cutting off the fat supplied to zero.
Such a long-term treatment may result in a reduction in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) and cause shortages, reduce our mental performance and cause a nice mess in our hormonal economy.
In diets with no calorie balance, fat should amount to 25-30% of the total energy supply per day. During the reduction this value should NOT fall below 20% of energy.
At the same time, limit animal fat sources to less than 10% of total fat per day.
4. Plan your meals!
Take care to equip your fridge so that during weight reduction you do not have to replace a healthy meal with less healthy and disturbing products.
Prepare a planned lunch and snack for work or university. Do not be ashamed to take out the prepared meal. Finally, we have set a goal that will help us improve our performance in your favorite discipline of cycling.
Shopping if there is such an option, plan it immediately after eating a meal. This will reduce the risk of unplanned cravings or buying unhealthy products.
5. Avoid sweetened, carbonated drinks and juices
The consumption of sweetened drinks and even freshly squeezed juices is not a good solution with reduced energy supply. Products of this kind are rich in simple carbohydrates that do not provide us with a feeling of satiety and do not need to reduce the amount of energy that will remain to be consumed. If you squeeze juice out of a fruit and drink a glass of fresh juice, we still do not supply the fibre contained in the fruit.
A glass of Coca-Cola (250ml) = 105 calories and 26.5g of sugar.
A glass of pineapple juice (250ml) = 125 kcal and 29g sugar.
For comparison, a 250ml shake based on 30g whey protein isolate and water will provide us with 111 kcal and 27g of protein that will keep us satisfied for a long time and provide such an important protein for reduction.
6. Avoid fast food dishes
While a one-time trip with friends to pizza is not a bad thing with a well-chosen diet and consistent adherence to the recommendations, feeding a few times a week on such dishes is already lamentable in its effects.
Fast food dishes are a big dose of energy, animal fats, processed carbohydrates and a huge amount of salt. Their greatest advantage is high taste and quick and universal access. However, from the point of view of a dietitian they are one of the main causes of obesity and overweight in the world. Dishes of this type in comparison to home-made meals with added vegetables do not cause a long-lasting feeling of satiety and therefore do not have in their composition a large amount of fiber.
To satisfy your cravings and not get crazy, let yourself once a month go out with your friends for a pizza or invite them to your house and prepare yourself, with healthy fit products, replace fast food dishes.
7. Avoid sweets!
Sweets right next to fast food and sweetened drinks are the main culprit of excessive calories in our diet. In order to cope with the lack of calories, try to follow the advice below:
- Try to replace them with fruit,
- add a small amount of your favorite breakfast cereal to your morning porridge,
- When you lack chocolate, replace it with chocolate with more cocoa, e.g. 90%, or use sweetened chocolates like stevia,
- increase the intensity of your training once to allow yourself to add your favorite jellybeans or cookies.
Any such deviations should be made with common sense without causing a decrease in motivation to progress in weight loss.
8. Ensure a high level of food security
One of the biggest mistakes in creating weight reduction menus is too little attention to the topic of satiety of meals. In order to achieve high satiety of meals, one should, among other things:
- The bigger the meal by volume, the more it will whet us,
- add vegetables to every meal,
- replace processed products with full-grain versions that have more fibre and, for the most part, fewer calories,
- make sure that every meal contains a wholesome source of protein (fish, poultry, beef and pork, legumes, cottage cheese, eggs, protein supplement),
- replace fat fish and pieces of meat with those with less fat.
9. Care for the hydration of the body
In the proper functioning of the body on reduction should not forget about the proper hydration. Remember that most of our body builds water, and by getting rid of unwanted fat reserves we will also lose a lot of water. We described the issue of hydration in the previous article to which we cordially invite you! (https://cyklopedia.cc/cycling-tips/hydration-for-cycling/)
10. Avoid alcohol!
This seems to be a trivial problem and has little effect on the reduction. After all, nobody drinks every day, and certainly not in large quantities. Well, it looks a bit different.
Frequently it is an exemplary and consistent adherence to the recommendations from Monday to Friday, while on Saturday evening rewarding yourself in the form of an all-night party heavily sprinkled with alcohol. Another variant that we can observe is also rewarding yourself after a hard workout with a few beers, which not only slow down regeneration but also cause significant dehydration of our body.
Alcohol is primarily empty calories, which the body burns first, and the snacks supplied with it is put aside in the form of body fat.
3 lager beers = 435 kcal
3 shots of vodka = 200 kcal
2 glasses of whiskey = 500 kcal
1 dry red glass of wine = 140 kcal
The consumption of alcohol has an impact on:
- inhibition of lipolysis – the process of fatty tissue decomposition,
- increases food intake during drinking – increases appetite, which is associated with increased fat retention,
- alcohol can cause a deterioration in strength, even after the hangover has stopped..,
- alcohol impairs the storage of glycogen – impaired ability to train,
- slows down the rate of hydration, decreases productivity,
- increases the peripheral dilatation of blood vessels,
- distorted glucose metabolism
In the case of alcohol for reduction, refrain from drinking it or in the worst case reduce it to a minimum at special events.
11. Eat food on smaller plates!
As we know, people often eat with their eyes. A common situation is when we put too much food on Swedish tables, and it will be awkward to throw it away or leave it on a plate because the host of the party could be offended or think that we do not like it. In this way we absorb a huge amount of calories, which in turn is stored in the form of body fat.
An interesting trick is to use an optical illusion, where the same portion looks more beneficial on a smaller plate than on a larger one. Scientists using this simple trick were collecting opinions from respondents who, judging the same portions on different plates, were inclined to choose a smaller plate, claiming that they were more likely to eat this choice than the others.
12. Consistency, the help of a coach and a dietitian!
“We could finish this article with this statement, but just as you don’t build a skyscraper in one day, you won’t get rid of fat in one day. The key word in the case of weight loss is definitely – Consequence!
We can have the best trainer and dietitian, but if we do not follow the recommendations, we will never achieve the desired goal!
If you can’t cope with weight loss alone, seek advice from a dietitian.
Perseverance!
