Low Carb Nutrition Bicycling 3 + hours
 

I enjoy road biking and try to ride everyday during the summer. I try to do rides of 30 - 60 miles at least 3 times weekly. I began a low carb diet (Atkins) in April and limited my ride times and distances. I have begun riding longer distances and eating Oh Yeah protein bars to ensure that I do not "bonk" during the ride. Since, my weight loss has seemed to have stalled, I suspect the additonal protein bars may be the culprit. Does anyone have low carb suggestions to fuel by 3 - 4 hours bike rides ???
Thanks !!

I've done 60 miles with just some nuts (almonds or walnuts) as food. They seemed to provide all the extra energy that I needed.

I have had the same problem of bonking during a ride of more than an hour or so. I think I have found a solution, but I wanted to run it by you guys and see what everyone thought.
Here is yesterday's ride and what I did.
I eat a LC breakfast before riding (2 eggs scrambled with cheese)
I have found that at about 45 minutes in I need something to prevent bonk. At this point I will eat a banana. so about 45 minutes in there was a Starbucks. I had a coffee with half and half (no sugar) and my banana.
After about an hour and half, I was getting hungry so I ate some mixed nuts I had packed (1/4 cup of salted pecans, pistachios, and salted almonds)
After about another 40 minutes or so I was feeling a little tired so I ate a second banana.
Finished the ride 3 hours total time, 31.4 miles and 1854 feet of vertical climb. I felt good and felt like I could have kept riding
My concern is that the bananas have a lot of carbs, but since I ate them during exercise, do I really have to worry about the carbs in them? I'm thinking I burned all of them off while pedaling.
What do you guys think?

I eat carbs and whey protein while exercising, and as long as my intensity is high enough it seems like they get burned off. The real test though is controlling cravings afterwards - i.e. not stopping at three 7-elevens on the way home for cookies and ice cream.
It seems that when I eat stuff like plain oatmeal with plain whey protein drink, I don't get cravings as bad as when I eat sugary fruit like bananas or oranges.
So, I guess the advice is to be mindful and monitor your own cravings after cravings exercising and the day after. It's helpful not to berate yourself for going off the wagon, but to be analytical as to what kinds of foods set you off.
At least with me, the real damage is not what I eat DURING the time I exercise, but what happens to my diet afterwards.

It seems odd to be eating during exercise. I can't imagine eating while doing anything high intensity. What kind of exercise are you doing?

More fatty foods before the bike ride.

Well so far I have not had the urge to go clean out a bakery after a ride, so cravings have not been a problem so far. I have gone for bananas as they provide potassium as well as some sugars. Also oatmeal doesn't pack well for a snack part way through a long ride. :lol:

It's not hard to eat while bicycling - I just pull over for a moment.

Any other exercise, you just stop doing it for a moment. It's hard to think of sport or exercise that wouldn't let you stop and eat. Maybe long distance open water swimming??

As far as oatmeal - LOL, I don't bring it cooked. I just eat raw instant oatmeal washed down with protein drink. I keep the oatmeal in a little sandwich bag. It's light and fits in pocket. I pull over to eat it - don't want to crash my bike, lol.

I find that drinking whey protein with carbs helps my performance a lot and shortens the recovery period. Eating fat during exercise upsets my stomach.

Here's article on what tour de france cyclists eat during race days:
http://www.livescience.com/6699-tou...riders-eat.html

I'll have to try taking a packet of oatmeal with me.
I was half awake/half asleep last night dreaming of this mornings ride, and I think I may have the LC replacement for GU.
Packets of mayonnaise. Small, easy to pack and consume. Now the question is will my body accept mayo during exercise and will it help.
Guess I will have to experiment. This is either going to be a great idea or the worst idea I have ever had.
Anybody want to place a bet?

I haven't found unflavored instant oatmeal in little packets. I would skip the heavily sugared and artificially flavored ones (e.g. maple syrup etc.) in favor of the plain. I just pour a little of the plain oatmeal into a sandwich or ziploc bag and put in pocket. The instant oatmeal is already preprocessed so it's easy to chew as opposed to rawer steel-cut oatmeal.
The mayo packets are interesting idea. I just haven't found success mixing eating extra fat on days I exercise. My stomach doesn't like it.

It's probably anathema on this board, but I do best on a low-fat diet on the days with lots of hard exercise. On the days I'm recovering from muscle soreness, I go back to strict low carb.

This maybe bad advice to the person though who still has a lot of fat to lose like Rick51. It took me over a year to lose a bulk of my excess bodyfat, and during that time I was strictly low carb with almost no exercise, and that's when I really lost the bodyfat - at the expense of losing much of the muscle and fitness as well.
For Rick51, who is at 50%, of his bodyfat loss goal, it may be smart to accept diminished cycling performance and 'bonking' in order to lose the excess bodyfat more quickly?
It's really been a struggle for me to find good balance between losing bodyfat and gaining muscle mass and improving exercise performance.

High intensity weight training. I can't even face eating for quite a while after the workout.

That makes sense - the hardest workout I do is a mountain bike climb up a really steep hill for about 90minutes with frequent breaks. I suppose it's analogous to doing sprints intervals.
I haven't done weight training for a long time, and you're right that it's a different level of exertion. The biking gets me pretty tired and sore but it's nothing like the exhaustion from really hard core weight lifting.

Have you guys looked into the CKD/TKD diets from the hardcore bodybuilding crowd? The carbup day seems pretty dangerous, LOL.

OK so this morning I did almost 4 hours of riding. About 2.5 hours in I stopped for a cup of coffee, and I pulled out the 5 packet of mayo I had put in my pack.
They went down easy, and I seemed to have much more power on the climb after my break. Also since I did not wind up in the bushes yaking, I am going to call this a win.
I will buy some instant oatmeal and try that next weekend.

thats awesome! Have to try the mayo

You should be eating sugar doing long distance exercise. Your body will immediately burn off the sugar and you won't gain weight.

When I did long distance cycling I used to drink coca-cola diluted half-and-half with water and left open overnight to get rid of the CO2.

I have hiked up Mount Whitney solely on gummy bears.

Good topic, last summer I spent every weekend slogging my mountain bike on 40-60 mile routes around north west england. I was not lc'ing then, and my food stops were a combo of sugar and carb load. Now that I am 5 weeks into my lc regime, i wanted to start cycling lightly (it's cold, it's january, i know too much exercise when trying to lose body fat is counter-productive) and am concerned about how I will fuel when the long routes come back into scope in a few months. My initial plan was to take small portions of dried fruit (cherries, berries) and hope the fructose got me through and try and control the carbs through small quantity. I know I can't carb load in the traditional sense anymore (pasta etc).

At the moment, on routes less than 20 miles I don't need to fuel at all. I also now commute to work by cycling 2 or 3 days a week - it's only 3.5 miles each way and I feel it's a really good companion to my lc regime - good way to start and end the day, and short exercise does add to suppressing my appetite.

New here, love this thread.
 

I'm 5 weeks into low carb and my primary exercise is cycling. My focus this summer will be bike commuting (25 miles one way, get a ride one way) and I keep reading about too much exercise making it hard to lose weight. I'm doing short rides now, 4-10 miles in cold weather, and want to increase without disrupting my weight loss. Any theories on how much is too much?

I think you are getting confused between weight loss and fat loss.
Per volume (however you want to measure it, cubic inch, cc, whatever) fat weighs less than muscle.
So let's assume that you somehow manage to, between weigh-ins, you manage to lose 1 lb of fat, and gain 1 lb of muscle.
You are right where you started, and achieved nothing, right?
No wrong. You are going to be smaller, as the 1 lb of muscle takes up less space than the lb of fat did, and you are raising you base metabolic rate (it takes more energy to maintain 1 lb of muscle than it does to maintain 1 lb of fat.
So if you were to keep this up, the exercise actually helps you lose weight. As your body becomes more toned, the weight loss increases.
If you want to read more about this, I would recommend the book Fit or fat by Covert Bailey. Good read, and it goes into the bio chemistry of how your cells use various sources of energy.

Myself, I ride 2-3 times during the week, 45-90 minutes and on weekends 30-50 miles on both Sat and Sunday. A few weeks back I rode 60 miles one Saturday to celebrate my 60th birthday. I will do a century ride this year. :)
One last thing, don't forget Dr. Atkins said in his book "If you aren't exercising, you aren't doing Atkins."

Completely agree with this. Psychologically, it's important to be losing weight as it keeps you on track, helps you get over difficult times when you could waver, but really a balance needs to be struck - being scared to exercise in case you don't see weight lose is a completely wrong midset and as you rightly point out, there ain't many advocates of high fat low carb no exercise - activity is a massive part of well-being and mental health - those are the things that make you strong enough so you can remain strong when the time needs.

Intrestingly Rik, your numbers are very similar to mine, as is your exercise regime - I am maybe not quite as regimented right now as I am still adjusting to not being able to carb load on longer trips. I salute you for getting out on the bike at 59 - thats just absolutely awesome.

Glad to hear it, I'm going for a ride.
 

Thanks both of you, just what I needed to hear. I keep telling myself this is about improving my health, not the number on the scale. I still seem to tire easily on any longer rides or climbs 5 weeks into Atkins so I'm not pushing it too much. I know that this is such a huge change to my entire body and the way it functions that I need to be patient.

wheeler I was going through the same thing, it does get better.
What I have found helps is taking a small package of nuts like pecans, or mixed nuts, also I found packets of almond butter in the grocery store that I am using instead of Gu. I generally have some nuts or almond butter every 45 minutes or so.
Here is the link to the almond butter I am using.
Keep riding and I will see you on the road.
Rick

26 miles today, ate 6 rashers of bacon before going out, 2 water stops on route - absolutely no problem.

I'm totally new to LC (started a week ago) and I'm concerned about how I'll avoid bonking on long rides. I tend to go out for 30 to 60 mile rides in warm weather, and I push the speed. I'm averaging 18-19 mph over a couple hours, and I'm used to keeping up my energy with carbs. I've heard all the good ideas in this thread, but I'll have to prove to myself that I'll have the necessary stamina. I'll try nuts, but wonder whether they'll be absorbed quickly enough. We'll see!

I'm not a cyclist or endurance exerciser, but has everyone seen Mark Sisson's article on how to fuel a marathon? Not that everyone is training for a race but there's some interesting info on how much and what kind of carbs to add, based on your exercise.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-.../#axzz1vhyCWjec

also google "sisson endurance exercise"

Thanks Seejay. I wish it would address quick-burst sports like tennis. I find LC affects my tennis more than my cycling. Endurance seems ok. It's quick energy and recovery between points that has suffered, though a fruit a few hours earlier has helped.

I'm a quick burst sports lover too.

Maybe you could start with doing the math based on the standard formulas of carbs and intensity, and see how you do? And adjust from there?
I don't do much (being still too heavy) but that's what I would do.

For instance, a quick search on "tennis calories per hour" and "percent fat burned intensity exercise" turns up 728 calories for a 200 pound person. Course they don't say how much of that 200 pounds is fat but oh well.
Of those calories, if you are at high intensity heart rate, and your metabolism is like the mythical math average (ha), 40% of that energy might come from fat, and 60% might come from carb.
That would be 436 calories of carb, and dividing by 4 cals per gram, 109 grams of carbs.
So if you are needing 109 grams of carbs for an hour of tennis, it has to come from somewhere! Or else you get no energy for recovery between points. Yuk.

Mark Sisson has written that a fat burner makes better use of glucose so over time you don't need as much as a sugar burner for the same exercise, but still, that is more carb than non-athletes need for sure.

Somewhat aside - I think of energy partitioning a little more detailed than from the "car fuel" analogy. Glucose is like the energy in spark plugs - must have it for starting at all, for bursts, and for acceleration. Fat is like the energy in gasoline. If you are exercising hard, you need way more sparks than when idling. For those bursts and to keep up speed. Just like RPMs in a car. More RPMs, more sparks, more glucose.
(you also don't want sparks/glucose coming too fast if you are not using them, ha ha)

I appreciate the quantitative approach, Seejay. I've not eaten fruit since I began this woe in march. But I'm near goal, so I'm more willing to start to do that. The exception was two bananas during two crucial tennis matches at the end of the indoor season in April. One three hours before to replenish glycogen stores a bit, and the other half an hour before the match. Made a huge difference.

Ive been so determined to get to goal, and my weight loss has been so steady, that I haven't wanted to disrupt it at all.

Steve Phinney on LC + Cycling 60+ miles.

http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2011...than-high-carb/

Thanks cfunderb. He seems quite positive, but the only test that matters to me is my own experience. I'm not prepared to draw final conclusions. It's been 10 weeks with under 20 gms carb/day. I think my cycling stamina is improved from 6 weeks ago, but I have been riding much more. I think my overall performance is reduced from last year, but not as much as I would expect judging from my tennis. I will continue to make a careful study of this. I am not happy to hear his opinion on "Train low, race high."

I am returned a few days ago from a four-day loaded (camping equipment, etc.) bicycle tour, about 50 miles a day over gently rolling terrain. I've been LC since March, and was worried about getting enough/the right foods on the road. And worried about my energy level. While riding, I snacked on beef jerky and homemade glop of coconut oil/crushed nuts/coconut/unsweetened chocolate. I never lacked for energy and was not hungry. My ride was awesome. Thumbs up, LC and distance cycling.