EAT MORE, LOSE WEIGHT!

It sounds like an impossible dream, but if you’re cutting calories without paying attention to where you get them from, you could be starving yourself to no great effect. Losing weight without losing power is as much about what you eat as how little… and

When you want to lose weight without losing power, targeting your nutrition means in some circumstances you can actually eat more...

Can the answer to losing weight and improving body composition really involve eating more food? In some circumstances, definitely, as Cycling Plus columnist and head nutritionist with One Pro Cycling and Trek-Drops, Will Girling, explained when we met up at Allianz Park, the home of Saracens rugby club, where he would run some tests on me ahead of offering guidance on getting lean.

Despite a visit to the GP seeing me positioned slap bang in the middle of the ideal BMI range for my height, I’ve been concerned about where the weight lies – in fat, around my waist. This was no doubt due in part to the ever-ready office doughnut supply (some days we put the Twin Peaks Sheriff Department to shame), but I was running what I thought was a calorie deficit (1500 per day compared to the recommended daily intake of 2500 for a male) and picking up my cycling commute, and things weren’t moving along.

Will stepped up with the guidance that was going to see me eating more (much nearer 2000 calories most days) and shedding fat… and while not everyone can get in a lab for testing, some general principles emerged that can be applied across the board, particularly for those of us with sedentary jobs. Your calorie deficit may not be what you think…

1/ TRACK YOUR CALORIES

I used the MyFitnessPal app to track my daily calorie intake. It’s an approach Will approves of.

“Tracking food is very important,” he says, “because it allows us to be informed. It can seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve tracked a meal for the first time you can save it for future use. If you buy prepared food, such as a sandwich at lunchtime, you can often just scan the barcode. As well as tracking calories, the free version of MyFitnessPal will also keep count of the amount of macro-nutrients – carbohydrate, protein and fat – you’re eating, and, as we’ll see later, that’s critical. It doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight without tracking, but it allows you to understand exactly what’s going in.”

2/ MEASURE YOUR RMR

“Everyone wants to know their VO 2 max figure when they come to a lab,” Will tells us, “but for an average cyclist looking to lose weight that information is not critical. Having some knowledge about your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the key.”

This is the rate at which your resting body burns calories, which gives you an idea of how much food you need to just fuel a day in bed. Given my details, I was predicted to have an RMR of around 1700 calories. After half an hour lying on a mattress hooked up to a machine, it emerged my RMR was less than 1200 calories.

“We encounter this frequently with office-based workers with inactive jobs and a carbohydratebased diet,” expands Will. “Trying to run a 10 per cent calorie deficit from your predicted RMR would put you at 1500 calories, which is still around 400 more than you need!

“But if you now took into account your lack of activity and tried to diet from an RMR as low as 1100 then it might be a case of having to eat so little it wouldn’t be recommended for your health. Taking the reverse approach of eating more might work better, because as calorie intake increases, we see a sub-conscious increase in activity outside of exercise, so you end up burning more without even thinking about it.”

So if you think you’re running a calorie deficit, but aren’t seeing the results you would expect, the rest of this feature could hold the answers…

3/ BOOST METABOLISM

Will Girling team nutritionist Kas Ghaharian, on hand to assist with our testing, goes further on the subject of increased calorie consumption: “The body will adapt to what you give it, so if you aren’t eating enough food, getting enough nutrition, then your body will say, okay, I need to lower my functionality, my metabolism.

“I worked with an athlete recently who was predicted at 2200 and came in at 1500. We got him eating more, and more often. He came in 10 weeks later and had lost weight, put on muscle mass, and his RMR matched his predicted rate. So, eating more told the body to increase its metabolism and become more active.

“Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (including tapping on the keyboard), RMR, physical activity and the thermogenic effect of food are all at play in weight loss and altering body composition. All of those things make up your calorie expenditure, but RMR makes up the majority, so knowing this is the biggest thing to be aware of when

“THE BODY WILL ADAPT TO WHAT YOU GIVE IT, SO IF YOU AREN’T EATING ENOUGH FOOD, GETTING ENOUGH NUTRITION, THEN YOUR BODY WILL SAY, OKAY, I NEED TO LOWER MY METABOLISM”

giving people advice on nutrition.”

Will adds: “It’s been termed ‘reverse dieting’ but what’s been studied and what we’re looking at doing is steadily bringing the calories up to increase the metabolism. Anyone who diets chronically – restricts their food intake over an eight-month period – that is going to slow their metabolism right down, so then when they go back to eating a recommended daily allowance they’re adding, say, 900 calories just like that. They’re going to put weight right back on. It’s important to increase calories gradually.”

5/ THE PROS OF PROTEIN

“A lot of cyclists don’t think of protein because they’re scared they’re going to bulk up and gain too much muscle,” says Will, but he insists that’s wrong.

“What you eat is such a big factor in weight loss,” says Kas, “because the work the body has to do to digest food makes up about 10 per cent of your calorie expenditure over a day. If you eat more protein the body has to work much harder to process that: it doesn’t have to invest so much to digest carbohydrate and fat.”

“If you think about going for a really big meat eat and getting the meat sweats, that’s you heating up because you’re having to work to digest that food,” explains Will.

“On the other side, fat is a super-efficient fuel source and the body can digest it easily. A lot of people at the moment are on high fat/low carb diets – and while being in a low carb state does help fat oxidisation, it’s worth remembering that fat is also really efficient at being stored. So, a really high fat diet might not always be beneficial, especially if it leads to being in a surplus, which is easier to do with fat.”

As well as having a higher thermic effect, protein plays a crucial part in helping us to retain hard-earned muscle and, therefore, cycling power. What’s known as your net-protein balance can be either positive or negative: positive being anabolic and in a state of repair and growth, and negative being catabolic and one of breakdown. Regular protein feedings allow us to stay in a positive balance and prevent this potential loss of muscle while in a calorie deficit.

“Fat mass doesn’t have a metabolic upkeep, whereas lean mass does. That’s why we need protein to keep our bodies in an anabolic state for most of the day so we won’t be breaking down muscle. If we’re not breaking it down, we’re not going to lose it in a calorie deficit.

“If we just put you in a calorie deficit and fed you carbs all day you would start losing muscle because the upkeep costs your body, and your body will decide it doesn’t need it, so it’s important to keep protein high.

“It’s also important to help you recover, so you need to eat enough protein relative to the exercise you’re doing. I set that at a minimum of 1.8 or optimally 2g/kg body weight, spread throughout the day with protein feeds around every three-tofour hours, which fits in with a regular day of breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, evening meal and some form of post-workout snack.”

6/ FUEL YOUR EXERCISE

Another reason to ensure you are eating plenty during your weight loss regime is to make sure you can achieve the levels you want during training. To this end, Will upped my recommended carb intake for every training day and dropped it for rest days. “If you don’t want to lose power you need to look at what training you’re doing and optimising your nutrient ratios in relation to training load,” explains Will. “If you’re doing a lot of steady zone 2 riding [low intensity, 75-81 per cent of max heart rate], you can look at reducing carbs, and probably doing more sessions fasted to increase adaption to aerobic training. “If you’re doing lots of short, anaerobic turbo sessions – which is likely for the working individual, because you get more return for less time – you should be fuelling for it. If you’re eating a high-fat, low-carb diet, you’re not going to perform in those sessions, and you’ll probably lose power as a result.”

7/ UP THE INTENSITY

If you are cycling to lose weight and get leaner, there are two ways to go about it, but according to Will the short, sharp route is going to give you greater returns if you don’t have the hours of a pro to dedicate to training.

“Sprints and power-based turbo workouts will stimulate the building of muscle for more power,” says Will, “even in a deficit and especially if you aren’t used to those kind of sessions.

“If you’re in a calorie deficit, whether you’re doing zone 2 riding or high-intensity exercise, as long as those sessions are calorie-matched – say, you’re burning 500 calories – then in both instances you will be able lose fat so long as all else is right,” explains Will. “By doing the more intense workouts you can burn those calories faster. If time is an issue, intervals are the way forward.

“Looking purely at performance you need a mixture of the two, as in cycling you’ll always need high-end fitness and endurance, but looking just at body composition it’s a case of doing what you’ve got time for, so go for an intense session.

“We managed to get one hour, three times a week [the only time I could devote to exercise apart from my commute – Ed], so optimising what we got out of that hour was important. We focused on sprint efforts and even our steady session was shorter but at a higher intensity than you were used to; it’s a case of giving it everything in each session.”

“BY DOING THE MORE INTENSE WORKOUTS YOU CAN BURN THOSE CALORIES FASTER. IF TIME IS AN ISSUE, INTERVALS ARE THE WAY FORWARD”