During the event we stick to maple syrup and sugar water, but you can also use a sports mix, gels, and bars. You want fuel that is easily digestible. One serving of sugar water the morning of your race is helpful as well, or whatever carb based drink you consume; and then one serving to stay topped off before the race.

If it is a zone 2 endurance ride , eat your normal breakfast and just lean towards carbs. Stay on top of the fuel during the ride, getting g of carbs per hour. Most gels and drink mixes are just carbs, whereas you need to be careful when it comes to the bars that you eat.

Some are very high fat, and this is not what you want to be fueling with on long rides, since fat cannot be used for energy as efficiently as carbohydrates.

The general recommendation for carb loading is g of carbs per 1kg of body weight. YES, that is a lot of carbs, and YES, you will go over your normal amount of calories for the day. We hadn't been able to get an answer from anyone on how this math works out; if your glycogen stores can only hold g of carbs, why are we eating more?

Is it usable within the blood stream? The answer to that is NO, as only 4g floats throughout the blood stream. Staying topped off on carbs for long, high intensity sessions, will allow you to lay down the watts like you have not done before.

Drink more water or decaf teas, eat a hearty breakfast when you are hungry, and let your normal activities bring you back to race weight. Yes, fueling for a race needs to be carbohydrate focused, and while we focus on eating whole foods and being healthy, sometimes when you are at a race hotel, you need cereal!

I would only recommend eating one bowl; try to find oatmeal instead. I mistakenly used to carb with a lot of cereal; it never left me feeling full and my legs felt trashed on some hard efforts. Stay away from boxed cereals IMO.

Yes, carb loading works! More carbohydrate equals higher glycogen stores. Highly regarded nutritionist Asker Jeukendrup wrote up this history on carb loading. Here are the cliff notes version. Does carb loading work? It was originally thought that you needed to deplete the carbohydrate stores in your body for a few days, and then start carb loading, creating a higher than normal level of glycogen.

While your body does replete glycogen faster if you have fully depleted the stores, it does not bring them up to a higher level. This created athletes that felt weak and irritable, due to the lack of carbohydrates providing energy.

A taper strategy became more popular as you got closer to your event, you trained less, and consumed more carbohydrates. This works well and was a 7 day carb loading plan. Eventually, a 2 day program took over and this seems to be the most prevalent way of carb loading in , and the one that we promote.

Simply put, carb loading is shifting your diet towards carbohydrates for 48 hours before your event, leaving the fats and proteins off of your plate. Before any big race! When To Carb Load? Before any intense training session that will last over 3 hours. Carb loading is defined as g of carbs per 1kg of body weight.

Most athletes underestimate how many carbs they should consume. What are the best carbs for cycling? All of them. Just kidding. When choosing my carbs for cycling, I like a variety, which mainly include rice, apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and some bread and pasta.

I made a video that we will post that shows exactly what I ate for mile gravel race where I burned 5, calories. I flatted and had to TT a bunch to try to reach the lead group again, but either way, I would have burned about 4, calories that day. Good carb loading foods include fruit, oatmeal, rice, breads, sweet potatoes, more rice , a burrito.

I hit over 1,g of carbs the day before the race. Make sure your digestive system can handle all the fiber before you go overboard and only use fruit as your carb loading food, or if you eat too much processed foods, you may find yourself bound up and unable to really excrete it all before the race starts.

Weight gain: for every 1g of carb you retain 3g of water. This will create some weight gain, but it will come off as you race. The benefit of having carbohydrates to fuel your racing and exercise are well worth the slight gain. Odd feelings: honestly, sometimes all the carbs make me feel weird.

Not sluggish, just loaded with a ton of sugar. I take those feelings and pour them onto the pedals. When do you want to utilize these carb loading foods like pasta, fruits, breads, etc? Leaning your diet towards carbs simply means focusing on eating carbs over protein or fat the day before the hard intervals.

Here are some easy pre-race carb loading food for your race morning, where you might not have fresh fruits or smoothies available.

A bagel and an instant rice packet mixed with honey and peanut butter. Do not eat eggs, sausage, bacon, avocado toast, etc. Those have too much fat and will NOT fuel your body for the bike race! Forget doing longer threshold efforts, and your ability to do enough work to allow for adaptations to occur is way too low.

If you want to ride hard, or even medium hard, you need carbs! We do NOT follow this protocol as of ; we are always eating carbohydrates, but sometimes a few less. Decreased Ability To Oxidize Carbohydrates. This study was brought to my attention from this blog by Sigma Nutrition which is largely based on this study.

Main takeaway: if you train with low carbohydrates to increase your ability to use free fatty acids, your ability to use carbohydrate decreases! Therefore, training low all of the time, and then trying to focus on carbohydrates on race day for hard efforts is a major mistake!!! Shout out to the Trainer Road guys for pointing me to this Nutrition Review that sources over studies and compiles some amazing information.

There are some great studies sited here, but the point of this article is to BOIL IT ALL DOWN! so wait a minute, is Monday the only day off? If you want to get serious with this, you need to look at this meal by meal. Not at all; this effect in the kitchen will give you benefits when racing! An annoying problem is just disguised as an opportunity!

The body knows to restore the gylcogen instead of creating fat, but at what rate? The rate of g of carbs per hour is very individualized, and the timing of when these carbs are ingested matters as well. The following text in italics has been taken directly from the study listed above.

When we are talking about grams of carbs they were originally listed in wet weight, which I have converted back for ease of reading and comprehension. Dry-weight values are 4. The current recommendations for carbohydrate intake in athletes vary to reflect the daily training load.

Glycogen supercompensation results from a combination of ample rest, reduced training volume, and the consumption of a high-carbohydrate diet.

To fully stock up your stores, you need to NOT use the carbs that are building up. This is another reason why a rest day and openers ride are great before a big competition, as you prepare your body for the race. Continue to read on, as our recommendation is in line with others…12 is too high, 10 should be the max.

However, it appears that many athletes may not be consuming enough carbohydrates on a daily basis to fully restore muscle glycogen. They looked at different sporting athletes, and many were not refueling with enough carbohydrates at at the 1g per 1kg of body weight recommendation mention below.

Consume those carbs! After exercise, the restoration of muscle glycogen occurs in a biphasic manner. The big takeaways above are the 1g per 1kg of body weight immediately post exercise and that athletes can store almost g if you are big and lean.

More muscle, more glycogen storage; another benefit of being a lean athlete in the gym! The high end rate of repletion of carbs, OR for rate of absorption for carbohydrate loading, is about 0. At 80kg, I can absorb g an hour. So theoretically I could store g of carbs over 10 hours of eating. Non-mega riding, untrained , and smaller athletes can store about g of carbs at once.

Therefore, eating a HUGE pasta dinner with bread at a restaurant is likely to bomb your system and NOT all get stored as glycogen. You need to space out your feeding. Said differently, you can most likely absorb more than 0.

See below. Periodic carbohydrate supplementation can result in supercompensation of glycogen stores, an advantage after tasks requiring hours of sustained physical effort. Takeaway : there i that initial 1 hour window according to this study, but I know there are others out there that show that the repletion is complete no matter how fast you consume the carbs by 24 hours later, which is plenty of time for MOST of us.

Eat a bar at the very end of your ride. Takeaway: g or less, from all the info above, is when we start to struggle to perform at our maximum capability. Therefore, diets less than 5g per 1kg of body weight are not ideal for performance.

Starling et al. Sherman et al. Takeaway: This one is confusing. In practical terms, athletes should be educated and encouraged to consume enough carbohydrates to replenish at least a sizable portion of their muscle glycogen stores so that training intensity can be maintained from day to day.

In the hours soon after exercise, consuming high—glycemic index GI foods can speed muscle glycogen restoration. Low-GI foods are digested and absorbed more slowly than high-GI foods, differences that result in a slower rise in blood glucose and insulin levels, an effect that can last for hours after eating.

Techniques such as training with high muscle glycogen stores but sleeping and then training the next morning with low muscle glycogen stores have been shown in some studies to enhance glycogen storage and performance. However, more research is needed to confirm the consistency and magnitude of these responses.

Takeaway: MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED on fasted training. If you do it, do it in z1 for minutes no more than x per week, and then try to carb up enough for your training session later in the day.

My biggest drawback is that athletes train fasted and then miss out on the quality workouts later in the day or hours later. YES, that is a lot of carbs, and 12 seems to high based on the math. Taper it back to g. Pre-race carb loading works, and you can use Monday to unpuff a bit.

When you wake up, just eat when you are hungry. Is this easy to do? No, it can be annoying, but it will optimize your performance! Day before event: g of carbs per 1kg of body weight. During the event: g of carbs per hour regardless of body weight. Post event or hard ride : 1g per 1kg of body weight of carbs immediately.

After that, space out your eating of carbs if you are preparing for hard training the next day. The video below will help you understand when you should just use protein and when you need carbs in your cycling recovery nutrition plan.

Do you want to be fast or thin? Change your eating habits over time. Do this slowly and create new habits! Read our Ultimate Guide to Cycling Weight loss to learn more about this subject. We will offer you helpful and practical tips to lose weight in a safe manner for cycling performance.

Weight Loss - If your main weakness is the number on the scale instead of your PMC, should you consider a weight loss block what would that look like? or try to pair caloric deficit-days over a longer period to training?

Of the former - what does that look like? If the latter - how would that be structured with the 5-blocks to Racing to make sure you are adequately adapting for each subsequent workout or block?

Historically I haven't fueled my workouts well - gotten into a bad cycle of doing my morning training fasted even races often and then eating like a bird the rest of the day, and then being starving at dinner and eating the entire house.

It's the kind of thing that when I step back and look at it then it's clearly so bad - but in the moment, when I get off the bike, there's a bit of fear about eating too much, gaining weight, and "undoing" the weight loss I just earned on the bike. You should never be "losing weight" after a ride.

The purpose of rides is to stress the body, break you down, and then you recover eating is key to this , your body says "that was kinda hard, i better grow and get stronger" and you rebound a stronger human; this is VERY simplified but should get the point across. Cut some some calories at the end of a long ride AFTER you've already WELL FUELED AND RECOVERED.

NOT RIGHT AFTER RIDE. A little hunger at night is okay, but going to bed starving is a recipe for poor sleep and not recovering. Focus on fat loss, not body weight; you will retain water with carbs etc; if you chase just that it will drive you nuts.

NO BS: goodbye soda even diet ones , candy, cakes, sweets, garbage. BYE FELICIA. Eliminating these will fast track this is a healthy way. Focus on fat loss; don't get obsessed with small fluctuations on the scale, it could be water weight. Think long term and stick to your plan, NO cheating!

FUEL workouts. Eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, and a pauper at dinner low cal but nutrient dense! Don't reduce carbs, reduce overall calories. People who cut carbs see a quicker decline in "weight", but that's water weight.

Athletes who eat carbs are more fueled for intense sessions and recover faster they aren't sure exactly why, but carb loading actually helps recovery too my theory, you just are never totally depleted and dead!

when you're tired, you're more likely to eat a twinkie and have less resolve. Sleep deprivation also inhibits fat loss. No recovery shakes, eat food.

If you can, finish a ride and have one of your meals right after! Snacks are veggies only. If you feel a little hunger, that's okay. That's your body telling you, "Hey, i might need food IN A WHILE, start foraging or go hunt something.

Do it, they taste like cheese. MMMMM cheese. Don't go all day being good only to cave at the end. When dinner is over, we are done fueling! Are you ready to become a stronger and faster version of your current self? Contact me if that sounds like a transformation you want to see happen.

I was overweight and feeling like a blob before I found cycling. We are helping a vast array of cyclists train for their next big goal, join the EVOQ.

Bonus for choc lovers and chasers of sweet treats. But, for everyone else, stick to eating whole foods maybe not too much choc though in healthy amounts and you should be fine!

We all remember those lessons from school, right? This will obviously impact your rides immensely and in a negative way. Not great.

Meat-eaters rejoice, because you can get plenty of iron through eating regular healthy portions of meat and fish. An amazing, pocket-sized way to fuel up on the go. We at Veloforte have spent years playing with natural recipes for the perfect energy bars that not only give you the boost you need, but also taste great!

After all, you want to enjoy what you eat, right? Much like energy bars, protein bars are small, convenient, and easy ways to both fuel yourself and get some extra protein needed to help your muscles recover. Check out our Forza and Mocha bars to get the little protein kick you need.

Naturally, we have the perfect solutions to your energy gel needs at Veloforte, allowing you to get the speedy energy you need quickly, conveniently, and in a gel packed full of natural goodness.

Recovery shakes are just what you need to get that injection of protein as soon after your ride as possible for maximum benefits.

Naturally, the extra protein helps your muscles recover from the exertion faster and more efficiently and promotes healthy development. Of course, we at Veloforte have considered recovery shakes as well and have developed our Vita and Nova shakes to be packed with protein to help your recovery.

Excellent ways for your body to get the carbohydrates and sugars that it needs, pasta and rice are cheap, quick, and easy ways to get what you need.

Broccoli, spinach, kale, cauliflower, cabbage - all are excellent for providing you with the vitamins and minerals that your body needs. These are especially good for providing you with an iron boost, so ensure that you eat these alongside some citrus fruits to get the most iron bang for your buck.

An amazing source of carbohydrates, protein, and vitamins, you can enjoy either white or sweet potatoes and reap the benefits. Whites are better at giving you a prod of potassium, whilst sweet potatoes will up your vitamin A intake.

Both are great and healthy options in moderation - and maybe not in the form of crisps or fries. Oats are amongst the healthiest grains you can eat, will keep you full for a long time, and are suitable for coeliacs being gluten-free.

Oats are also loaded with important vitamins and minerals like magnesium, iron, zinc, and vitamin B3. Studies suggest that salmon may even benefit weight loss and reduce the risk of heart disease. Not bad at all from our fishy friends. Vitamin E is hard to get elsewhere and not effective when taken as supplements, so this is some key advice right here.

Red meat is the most effective way of doing this and getting a huge helping of protein at the same time. Just keep an eye on those extra sugars. Staying hydrated when cycling is absolutely critical for the digestion of food and to maintain a high level of performance.

Dehydration, even in its mildest form, can really slow you down and leave you feeling ill and with a head-ache after your ride. Generally, bad times.

As well as drinking the normal recommended amount of glasses of fluids per day you need to drink extra to match any fluid lost through exercise, which can be lost through sweat and urine both during and after your ride. So, stay hydrated, kids! Another thing to bear in mind is keeping your body well-balanced with electrolytes.

These minerals carry a tiny electric charge and are essential for maintaining a healthy pH balance in your body fluids, as well as balance the amount of fluids you retain in general.

Electrolytes can be easily lost through sweat and urine during intense rides, so ensure that you stock up on pre-mixed electrolyte drinks, add a tablet to your water bottle, or mix up a smoothie to keep yourself balanced.

If you have a sweeter tooth, you can even slurp a small bottle of cherry, watermelon, or orange juice - these fruit juices are rich in electrolytes. A key point to remember, though, is that cycling energy drinks can make staying appropriately hydrated easy and, naturally, we have a range of Veloforte Electrolyte Powders available to make staying hydrated as easy as possible.

For every 0. Also, water alone is fine for short rides in cooler weather but if you are producing a lot of sweat then taking on board a little bit of extra sodium can really help your body maintain fluid balance, and prevent cramps.

Your most likely pre-ride or pre-race meal will be breakfast, but the same principles apply at any time of the day.

Your meal needs to ensure your glycogen stores are fully topped up and that you are properly hydrated. It must also be easy to digest - particularly on race or event day when pre-race jitters may make digestion harder.

Look for foods with a good combination of protein sources and carbohydrates. Half fruit juice, half water is a great way to hydrate and the fructose from the juice will also contribute to your carb needs. light sources of protein such as scrambled egg, unsweetened yogurt, nuts and seeds.

Different types of cycling training sessions need fuelling in different ways, here are some examples:. To perform these sessions well and reach the desired high intensities to get a training effect, you need to be properly fuelled for these endeavours.

This is a good test for your nutrition strategy and helps you to know what flavours of bar you like and how your body reacts to different foods, nutrition and fluids and timings. After your ride, whether it is a short and easy one, a tough training session or after a race, your first priority should always be recovery.

The first minutes after finishing exercise is known as the replenishment window or glycogen window. During this time your body is primed to be ready to replenish your glycogen stores and start rebuilding your muscles that have been damaged through hard exercise - all you need to do is give it the blocks and let the builders in your body handle the rest.

The carbohydrate is needed to replenish energy stores in the form of muscle glycogen and the protein is needed to help convert the carbs into glucose and build and repair your damaged muscle fibres. Our Veloforte Mocha bar is the perfect way to get the mixture of carbs and protein that you need during or after your ride.

Naturally sourced from pea and rice protein with a dash of hazelnut and a coffee and cocoa kick, these bars are the perfect pocket-sized way to get the extra protein you need for recovery. And, of course, you can boost your recovery by swigging one of our tasty Nova or Vita recovery shakes to energise and rebuild your aching muscles naturally.

After all, training is meaningless without proper recovery. Cycling is a great way to feel that calorie burn, and therefore excellent for weight loss, however, relatively gentle cycling can actually give you an appetite far in excess of the calories burnt, so be careful When you get home from a ride and feel ravenously hungry, recovery is important of course, but try to eat only a little more than on non-exercising days, stick to healthy food choices and do not super-size your portions.

No Maccies for you! The number of calories you burn on a ride is dependent on your body weight and the intensity of the exercise: lighter cyclists burn less than heavier riders and easy rides consume less calories than hard rides. A very easy rule of thumb is to multiply the distance cycled by calories - so a mile ride would need an additional calories.

You can also get an estimate of calories burnt using your power meter, heart rate monitor or GPS device. One last final warning: Remember to subtract the calories consumed on the ride, if you are fuelling properly or eating carrot cake at the café stop you may not need as many extra calories as you hoped… And seriously, who can resist that carrot cake?

It's a common misconception that protein will automatically result in muscle mass gain. Protein provides a pool of amino acids that act as the building blocks of muscle repair. After hard training, it is essential to make sure that you eat protein in the hours after cycling so your body has the tools it needs to strengthen and repair damaged muscle fibres.

Protein also plays a role in blood sugar regulation and weight management. Calorie for calorie, protein helps you to feel fuller for longer than carbohydrate alone and slows down the release of glucose into your bloodstream, helping to prevent sugar spikes and crashes.

If you are looking for a healthy snack between meals, protein-rich foods such as nuts, natural yogurt or peanut butter go down well with slow-release carbohydrates such as oatcakes, wholemeal bread, or a simple apple. What you eat and drink has a huge impact on how your body feels. Natural foods have many benefits over highly-processed or synthetic products.

They are naturally richer in vitamins, minerals, and fibre in formats that your body is easily able to recognise and absorb. Tour de France riders, who are biking and burning upwards of calories per day still stick to natural whole foods for the greater part of their diet, employing team Chefs and mobile kitchens to prepare fresh, natural, and nutritional food from scratch.

Humans love variety after all, and nowhere is this more important than with our tasty treats. Fat often gets a bad rap, but not all fats are created equal. They keep our cell walls supple, are good for our joints and prevent inflammation.

Good fats include both polyunsaturated Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats and monounsaturated fats Omega 9 fats. These can be found in nuts, seeds, avocado, cold-water oily fish such as salmon and oils such as coconut or olive oil. Bad fats to be avoided are saturated fats such as those found in meats, some dairy products, and pretty much every kind of processed foods.

Fat has the highest number of calories per gram of all the macronutrients, so aiming for 20g of fat per day will support good health without adding significant calories to your cycling diet. Eating a full rainbow-coloured range of fruits and veg will ensure that you are getting sufficient vitamins and minerals for good health and to support your cycling.

The NHS recommends three pieces of veg and two pieces of fruit per day, but many medical experts actually feel this is too low and recommend much more - up to seven, or even eleven servings per day.

So, we hope you like your veggies! What's important is knowing you're eating these regularly and that they're playing a significant role in your daily diet. By adding fruit and vegetables to every meal and snack you eat during the day, these higher numbers of fruits and veggies are easy to achieve and your body will thank you for it with a stronger and more resilient immune system amongst many other benefits!

Remember that fruit and veg are both good sources of carbohydrate so reducing the amount of less nutrient-dense plain white rice or pasta on your plate with vitamin-rich vegetables such as sweet potato is a good way to meet your quota. Dried fruit also counts, and at Veloforte, we make sure all of our protein and energy bars are stuffed to the brim with these delicious and nutritional ingredients to help you eat more vitamins and minerals, as well as providing superbly effective carbohydrate for energy whilst cycling.

In order to get the most out of your cycling, coming up with an initial nutrition strategy is going to be essential if you want to see continued improvement and results.

Having a plan in place will make it easier to form a routine and actually stick to it in order to make progress. Will you be riding for pleasure or training for an endurance event? Always keep pushing to improve.

Take another look at our guide on pre, during, and post-ride nutrition. Are you getting enough nutrients to prepare for your ride? Are you staying energised during your ride?

Do you have enough protein for your recovery? Are you hoping this is our last question? All of these are essential aspects to consider when creating your ultimate cycling diet and nutrition plan. Take another look at our best cycling foods and experiment with how you can consistently incorporate them into your plan to find the right fit for you.

Similarly, are you getting enough fluids on a daily basis? Consider trying out a combination of water, electrolyte tablets and drinks, smoothies, and fruit juices to get all the benefits that you need before, during, and after your ride.

Just keep an eye on those extra sugars. Staying hydrated when cycling is absolutely critical for the digestion of food and to maintain a high level of performance.

Dehydration, even in its mildest form, can really slow you down and leave you feeling ill and with a head-ache after your ride. Generally, bad times. As well as drinking the normal recommended amount of glasses of fluids per day you need to drink extra to match any fluid lost through exercise, which can be lost through sweat and urine both during and after your ride.

So, stay hydrated, kids! Another thing to bear in mind is keeping your body well-balanced with electrolytes. These minerals carry a tiny electric charge and are essential for maintaining a healthy pH balance in your body fluids, as well as balance the amount of fluids you retain in general.

Electrolytes can be easily lost through sweat and urine during intense rides, so ensure that you stock up on pre-mixed electrolyte drinks, add a tablet to your water bottle, or mix up a smoothie to keep yourself balanced. If you have a sweeter tooth, you can even slurp a small bottle of cherry, watermelon, or orange juice - these fruit juices are rich in electrolytes.

A key point to remember, though, is that cycling energy drinks can make staying appropriately hydrated easy and, naturally, we have a range of Veloforte Electrolyte Powders available to make staying hydrated as easy as possible.

For every 0. Also, water alone is fine for short rides in cooler weather but if you are producing a lot of sweat then taking on board a little bit of extra sodium can really help your body maintain fluid balance, and prevent cramps.

Your most likely pre-ride or pre-race meal will be breakfast, but the same principles apply at any time of the day. Your meal needs to ensure your glycogen stores are fully topped up and that you are properly hydrated.

It must also be easy to digest - particularly on race or event day when pre-race jitters may make digestion harder. Look for foods with a good combination of protein sources and carbohydrates. Half fruit juice, half water is a great way to hydrate and the fructose from the juice will also contribute to your carb needs.

light sources of protein such as scrambled egg, unsweetened yogurt, nuts and seeds. Different types of cycling training sessions need fuelling in different ways, here are some examples:. To perform these sessions well and reach the desired high intensities to get a training effect, you need to be properly fuelled for these endeavours.

This is a good test for your nutrition strategy and helps you to know what flavours of bar you like and how your body reacts to different foods, nutrition and fluids and timings. After your ride, whether it is a short and easy one, a tough training session or after a race, your first priority should always be recovery.

The first minutes after finishing exercise is known as the replenishment window or glycogen window. During this time your body is primed to be ready to replenish your glycogen stores and start rebuilding your muscles that have been damaged through hard exercise - all you need to do is give it the blocks and let the builders in your body handle the rest.

The carbohydrate is needed to replenish energy stores in the form of muscle glycogen and the protein is needed to help convert the carbs into glucose and build and repair your damaged muscle fibres.

Our Veloforte Mocha bar is the perfect way to get the mixture of carbs and protein that you need during or after your ride. Naturally sourced from pea and rice protein with a dash of hazelnut and a coffee and cocoa kick, these bars are the perfect pocket-sized way to get the extra protein you need for recovery.

And, of course, you can boost your recovery by swigging one of our tasty Nova or Vita recovery shakes to energise and rebuild your aching muscles naturally. After all, training is meaningless without proper recovery. Cycling is a great way to feel that calorie burn, and therefore excellent for weight loss, however, relatively gentle cycling can actually give you an appetite far in excess of the calories burnt, so be careful When you get home from a ride and feel ravenously hungry, recovery is important of course, but try to eat only a little more than on non-exercising days, stick to healthy food choices and do not super-size your portions.

No Maccies for you! The number of calories you burn on a ride is dependent on your body weight and the intensity of the exercise: lighter cyclists burn less than heavier riders and easy rides consume less calories than hard rides.

A very easy rule of thumb is to multiply the distance cycled by calories - so a mile ride would need an additional calories. You can also get an estimate of calories burnt using your power meter, heart rate monitor or GPS device.

One last final warning: Remember to subtract the calories consumed on the ride, if you are fuelling properly or eating carrot cake at the café stop you may not need as many extra calories as you hoped… And seriously, who can resist that carrot cake?

It's a common misconception that protein will automatically result in muscle mass gain. Protein provides a pool of amino acids that act as the building blocks of muscle repair.

After hard training, it is essential to make sure that you eat protein in the hours after cycling so your body has the tools it needs to strengthen and repair damaged muscle fibres. Protein also plays a role in blood sugar regulation and weight management. Calorie for calorie, protein helps you to feel fuller for longer than carbohydrate alone and slows down the release of glucose into your bloodstream, helping to prevent sugar spikes and crashes.

If you are looking for a healthy snack between meals, protein-rich foods such as nuts, natural yogurt or peanut butter go down well with slow-release carbohydrates such as oatcakes, wholemeal bread, or a simple apple. What you eat and drink has a huge impact on how your body feels.

Natural foods have many benefits over highly-processed or synthetic products. They are naturally richer in vitamins, minerals, and fibre in formats that your body is easily able to recognise and absorb.

Tour de France riders, who are biking and burning upwards of calories per day still stick to natural whole foods for the greater part of their diet, employing team Chefs and mobile kitchens to prepare fresh, natural, and nutritional food from scratch.

Humans love variety after all, and nowhere is this more important than with our tasty treats. Fat often gets a bad rap, but not all fats are created equal. They keep our cell walls supple, are good for our joints and prevent inflammation.

Good fats include both polyunsaturated Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats and monounsaturated fats Omega 9 fats. These can be found in nuts, seeds, avocado, cold-water oily fish such as salmon and oils such as coconut or olive oil. Bad fats to be avoided are saturated fats such as those found in meats, some dairy products, and pretty much every kind of processed foods.

Fat has the highest number of calories per gram of all the macronutrients, so aiming for 20g of fat per day will support good health without adding significant calories to your cycling diet.

Eating a full rainbow-coloured range of fruits and veg will ensure that you are getting sufficient vitamins and minerals for good health and to support your cycling.

The NHS recommends three pieces of veg and two pieces of fruit per day, but many medical experts actually feel this is too low and recommend much more - up to seven, or even eleven servings per day. So, we hope you like your veggies! What's important is knowing you're eating these regularly and that they're playing a significant role in your daily diet.

By adding fruit and vegetables to every meal and snack you eat during the day, these higher numbers of fruits and veggies are easy to achieve and your body will thank you for it with a stronger and more resilient immune system amongst many other benefits!

Remember that fruit and veg are both good sources of carbohydrate so reducing the amount of less nutrient-dense plain white rice or pasta on your plate with vitamin-rich vegetables such as sweet potato is a good way to meet your quota. Dried fruit also counts, and at Veloforte, we make sure all of our protein and energy bars are stuffed to the brim with these delicious and nutritional ingredients to help you eat more vitamins and minerals, as well as providing superbly effective carbohydrate for energy whilst cycling.

In order to get the most out of your cycling, coming up with an initial nutrition strategy is going to be essential if you want to see continued improvement and results. Having a plan in place will make it easier to form a routine and actually stick to it in order to make progress.

Will you be riding for pleasure or training for an endurance event? Always keep pushing to improve. Take another look at our guide on pre, during, and post-ride nutrition. Are you getting enough nutrients to prepare for your ride? Are you staying energised during your ride?

Do you have enough protein for your recovery? Are you hoping this is our last question? All of these are essential aspects to consider when creating your ultimate cycling diet and nutrition plan.

Take another look at our best cycling foods and experiment with how you can consistently incorporate them into your plan to find the right fit for you.

Similarly, are you getting enough fluids on a daily basis? Consider trying out a combination of water, electrolyte tablets and drinks, smoothies, and fruit juices to get all the benefits that you need before, during, and after your ride.

Grab some healthy energy bars, gels, and all your cycling nutrition products from us at Veloforte for on-the-go fuelling and find out which works best for you, stay hydrated, and eat a healthy and balanced diet rich in vitamins and minerals. Crucially, though: be consistent.

We know you can do it! GET SOME! Veloforte exists to help active people fuel better. By Team Veloforte February 04, By Team Veloforte February 11, Cart 0 items. FREE shipping will be applied at checkout Sorry, looks like we don't have enough of this product.

Your cart is currently empty. Shop by Health Goal. Items Free. Checkout Free. Important nutrients, vitamins and minerals for cyclists Carbohydrates Protein Vitamin D Vitamin C Vitamin E Magnesium Iron If you want to cycle at your best, recover well, and stay fit and healthy, understanding the main nutrients that make up your diet is the crucial first step.

Protein Protein wears many hats within the human body. Vitamin C You need vitamin C to give your immune system a boost and allow it to protect you from nasties that might keep you out of the saddle and place you ill in bed instead. Vitamin E Vitamin E protects the cells within your muscles and lungs - both of these are obviously pretty important for cyclists, so we should do our best to give them a helping hand, right?

Magnesium Magnesium helps regulate your blood sugar, blood pressure, bone development, and nerve function. Best cycling foods for fuelling on and off the bike Energy bars Protein bars Energy gels Recovery shakes Pasta and rice Green vegetables Potatoes Porridge Salmon Nuts and oils Red meat Citrus fruits Energy bars An amazing, pocket-sized way to fuel up on the go.

Protein bars Much like energy bars, protein bars are small, convenient, and easy ways to both fuel yourself and get some extra protein needed to help your muscles recover.

Recovery Shakes Recovery shakes are just what you need to get that injection of protein as soon after your ride as possible for maximum benefits. Pasta and rice Excellent ways for your body to get the carbohydrates and sugars that it needs, pasta and rice are cheap, quick, and easy ways to get what you need.

Green vegetables Broccoli, spinach, kale, cauliflower, cabbage - all are excellent for providing you with the vitamins and minerals that your body needs. Potatoes An amazing source of carbohydrates, protein, and vitamins, you can enjoy either white or sweet potatoes and reap the benefits.

Porridge Oats are amongst the healthiest grains you can eat, will keep you full for a long time, and are suitable for coeliacs being gluten-free. Importance of cycling hydration Staying hydrated when cycling is absolutely critical for the digestion of food and to maintain a high level of performance.

Set up your cycling diet and nutrition plan Pre-ride: Light source of protein and hydration e. However, in this article, please keep in mind that we are providing recommendations for cycling performance rather than weight loss.

That being said, if you follow these recommendations, you will be able to train harder, recover faster and do more work on the bike. Check out this article to learn more! Related Post: Eating While Cycling. What fuels a bike ride? What is the best diet for cyclists?

What is the other macronutrient that can be used as fuel, but not as effective of a source for endurance activities like cycling? What helps you recover from intense, muscle shredding activities?

Are you confused that many items are in multiple categories? It makes it hard to understand what are you supposed to eat, and when, if you want to optimize your biking diet for cycling performance. Carbohydrates should be the mainstay of your cycling meal plan.

For most of us; never. It will naturally get into your cycling diet. The following points are based around these tenets from these are taken from Asker Jeukendrup, a leader in Sports Nutrition :.

Glycogen concentration in the muscle is dependent on diet. The more carbohydrate in the diet the higher the glycogen stores.

Glycogen concentration declines during exercise, especially higher intensity exercise. Higher glycogen concentrations in the muscle resulted in less fatigue and better performance.

While we shift our cyclist diet plan towards carbs, remember that you need protein to repair your body after hard sessions and you need fats for healthy body function.

NOT EATING FATS is a recipe for sickness and poor performance. The other main reason you can always go crazy on carbs is that you will retain more water and look a little puffy, like the Michelin man, not P.

For every 1g of carbohydrate consumed, you will retain 3g of water. If you carb load, do not look at the scale and think you are fat; you are just retaining water.

So, eat less carbs the following days to reduce this this does not mean NO CARBS. During Race Season, carbs are king, and really need to be eaten often to keep your energy rolling along. The issue with laying out a cycling meal plan like this though is that some people ride in the morning, others at night, and some swap back and forth.

Monday: OFF, lean more towards a well rounded diet with protein and healthy fats to stay full; extra carbs are not needed, BUT YOU STILL EAT CARBS. Fit extra carbs into your biking diet at night to prepare for the next day. To clarify, we do not cycle off carbohydrate EVER.

We are always consuming carbs, but shift the amount based on the workouts. When in doubt, I lean towards carbs and just watch the amount that I intake. Tuesday: Intensity, 2 hours; carbs for breakfast oatmeal, cereal, breads, jams, etc.

Just lean breakfast towards carbs, aim to finish solid foods 3h before the ride. This may take some adjustments due to work and depends on when you are riding. Wednesday, Moderate riding, 2 hours, no major focus on carbs, eat normal proportions. Thursday, Endurance Riding, 2 hours, no major focus on carbs, eat normal proportions, unless you have a big day on the weekend, in which case you want to start carb loading.

Friday, OFF, lean more towards protein and healthy fats to stay full; extra carbs not needed, unless you have a big day on the weekend, in which case you want to start carb loading. Saturday, Big Ride or Race: CARBS before the ride, protein and carbs after to recover and rebuild.

Sunday, Big Ride or Race: CARBS before the ride, protein and carbs after to recover and rebuild. Take a look at this infographic which will break down our Nutrition Fueling Suggestions:. Keep in mind the key word: BASICS. We get more into carbohydrate loading at the bottom of this article.

Watts are made in the kitchen. Look for nuts, avocados, olive oil. Nutrition was always a hard thing for me to understand when I first started riding in I had no clue as to what I should eat and when.

Everyone has heard the saying that you should focus all of your shopping on the outer ring of the grocery store : produce, meat, dairy, go home.

But skip the processed junk food. Bread is delicious; Patrick makes his own and I try to eat high quality breads, but hey, store bought bread happens. Try to avoid bread with weird ingredients and preservatives. Bread should go stale in a few days if it is fresh and the most natural kind!

In the video below, I discuss my grocery list! I know, how silly. Focus all of your shopping on the outer ring of the grocery store. The best diet for cycling should feature healthy, real food like what is listed below:. Bananas Avocados Grapes Spinach Kale This Living Lettuce is DOPE Carrots Mushrooms White Onion Apples Peppers: I like red, yellow, and orange the most.

Potatoes; I like white, red, or sweet! Tomatoes; all kinds, especially the little colorful ones Pickles sometimes, not really a usual thing Frozen Fruit - big into blueberries, cherries, pineapple, and strawberries. RICE RICE RICE. Get some Korean sweet and spicy sauce.

Only purchase ones with no nitrates. Know thyself! Nothing tastes as good as being fit feels, and high performance expectations require high performance fueling!

pasta, in small portions, to hit that 10g per 1kg of body weight for carb loading. For a cycling diet plan, aside from just focusing on the macronutrients, one also needs to consider the timing and intensities of the activities that you are fueling for.

Also, there is a full product suite here, rated best cycling nutrition, to help you out, with Torq Energy discount code EVOQBIKE. To answer this one, carbs is the answer for cycling performance.

This will fuel all your efforts. Try to finish eating solid foods 3 hours before a high intensity session, or 90 minutes before an endurance session. You can use drink mix or any liquid carbs in the time leading up to the event or ride, to keep your carb stores topped off.

You want to refeed with normal whole foods and utilize carbs and protein. You can find a wide variety of bars, gels, and chews, along with hydration products, to get you through your even without any GI Distress.

I use exclusively Maple Syrup in a soft flask, and sugar water. Remember, during the ride you do not want to consume much protein, fat or fiber: these all slow the delivery of carbs and even fluids.

Carbs are able to sustain high intensity outputs, whereas fats cannot. Related Post: When to Consume Caffeine Gels in Cycling. If it is just a m of endurance, you can eat less.

Return from ride and consume 20g of protein, then next comes the carbs. We simply lean our cycling diet towards carbs. What does this mean?

We really focus on eating carbs for 2 days before a big criterium or circuit race, but not on a massive carb loading schedule. We lean towards g of carbs per 1kg of body weight. Yes, that is a lot of carbs. During the event we stick to maple syrup and sugar water, but you can also use a sports mix, gels, and bars.

You want fuel that is easily digestible. One serving of sugar water the morning of your race is helpful as well, or whatever carb based drink you consume; and then one serving to stay topped off before the race. If it is a zone 2 endurance ride , eat your normal breakfast and just lean towards carbs.

Stay on top of the fuel during the ride, getting g of carbs per hour. Most gels and drink mixes are just carbs, whereas you need to be careful when it comes to the bars that you eat.

Some are very high fat, and this is not what you want to be fueling with on long rides, since fat cannot be used for energy as efficiently as carbohydrates. The general recommendation for carb loading is g of carbs per 1kg of body weight. YES, that is a lot of carbs, and YES, you will go over your normal amount of calories for the day.

We hadn't been able to get an answer from anyone on how this math works out; if your glycogen stores can only hold g of carbs, why are we eating more? Is it usable within the blood stream?

The answer to that is NO, as only 4g floats throughout the blood stream. Staying topped off on carbs for long, high intensity sessions, will allow you to lay down the watts like you have not done before.

Drink more water or decaf teas, eat a hearty breakfast when you are hungry, and let your normal activities bring you back to race weight. Yes, fueling for a race needs to be carbohydrate focused, and while we focus on eating whole foods and being healthy, sometimes when you are at a race hotel, you need cereal!

I would only recommend eating one bowl; try to find oatmeal instead. I mistakenly used to carb with a lot of cereal; it never left me feeling full and my legs felt trashed on some hard efforts.

Stay away from boxed cereals IMO. Yes, carb loading works! More carbohydrate equals higher glycogen stores. Highly regarded nutritionist Asker Jeukendrup wrote up this history on carb loading. Here are the cliff notes version. Does carb loading work?

It was originally thought that you needed to deplete the carbohydrate stores in your body for a few days, and then start carb loading, creating a higher than normal level of glycogen. While your body does replete glycogen faster if you have fully depleted the stores, it does not bring them up to a higher level.

This created athletes that felt weak and irritable, due to the lack of carbohydrates providing energy. A taper strategy became more popular as you got closer to your event, you trained less, and consumed more carbohydrates.

This works well and was a 7 day carb loading plan. Eventually, a 2 day program took over and this seems to be the most prevalent way of carb loading in , and the one that we promote.

Simply put, carb loading is shifting your diet towards carbohydrates for 48 hours before your event, leaving the fats and proteins off of your plate. Before any big race! When To Carb Load? Before any intense training session that will last over 3 hours.

Carb loading is defined as g of carbs per 1kg of body weight. Most athletes underestimate how many carbs they should consume. What are the best carbs for cycling? All of them. Just kidding. When choosing my carbs for cycling, I like a variety, which mainly include rice, apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and some bread and pasta.

I made a video that we will post that shows exactly what I ate for mile gravel race where I burned 5, calories. I flatted and had to TT a bunch to try to reach the lead group again, but either way, I would have burned about 4, calories that day.

Good carb loading foods include fruit, oatmeal, rice, breads, sweet potatoes, more rice , a burrito. I hit over 1,g of carbs the day before the race.

Make sure your digestive system can handle all the fiber before you go overboard and only use fruit as your carb loading food, or if you eat too much processed foods, you may find yourself bound up and unable to really excrete it all before the race starts. Weight gain: for every 1g of carb you retain 3g of water.

This will create some weight gain, but it will come off as you race. The benefit of having carbohydrates to fuel your racing and exercise are well worth the slight gain.

Odd feelings: honestly, sometimes all the carbs make me feel weird. Not sluggish, just loaded with a ton of sugar. I take those feelings and pour them onto the pedals.

When do you want to utilize these carb loading foods like pasta, fruits, breads, etc? Leaning your diet towards carbs simply means focusing on eating carbs over protein or fat the day before the hard intervals. Here are some easy pre-race carb loading food for your race morning, where you might not have fresh fruits or smoothies available.

A bagel and an instant rice packet mixed with honey and peanut butter. Do not eat eggs, sausage, bacon, avocado toast, etc. Those have too much fat and will NOT fuel your body for the bike race!

Forget doing longer threshold efforts, and your ability to do enough work to allow for adaptations to occur is way too low. If you want to ride hard, or even medium hard, you need carbs!

We do NOT follow this protocol as of ; we are always eating carbohydrates, but sometimes a few less. Decreased Ability To Oxidize Carbohydrates.

This study was brought to my attention from this blog by Sigma Nutrition which is largely based on this study. Main takeaway: if you train with low carbohydrates to increase your ability to use free fatty acids, your ability to use carbohydrate decreases!

Therefore, training low all of the time, and then trying to focus on carbohydrates on race day for hard efforts is a major mistake!!! Shout out to the Trainer Road guys for pointing me to this Nutrition Review that sources over studies and compiles some amazing information.

There are some great studies sited here, but the point of this article is to BOIL IT ALL DOWN! so wait a minute, is Monday the only day off? If you want to get serious with this, you need to look at this meal by meal.

Not at all; this effect in the kitchen will give you benefits when racing! An annoying problem is just disguised as an opportunity!

The body knows to restore the gylcogen instead of creating fat, but at what rate? The rate of g of carbs per hour is very individualized, and the timing of when these carbs are ingested matters as well.

The following text in italics has been taken directly from the study listed above. When we are talking about grams of carbs they were originally listed in wet weight, which I have converted back for ease of reading and comprehension. Dry-weight values are 4.

The current recommendations for carbohydrate intake in athletes vary to reflect the daily training load. Glycogen supercompensation results from a combination of ample rest, reduced training volume, and the consumption of a high-carbohydrate diet. To fully stock up your stores, you need to NOT use the carbs that are building up.

This is another reason why a rest day and openers ride are great before a big competition, as you prepare your body for the race. Continue to read on, as our recommendation is in line with others…12 is too high, 10 should be the max.

However, it appears that many athletes may not be consuming enough carbohydrates on a daily basis to fully restore muscle glycogen.