"Fueling the Ride: A weight loss journey for cyclists, where Dr. Jinger Gottschall and Coach Jeff Hoobler share the latest research, strategies, insights, and tips to fuel your body for weight loss and peak performance while cycling."
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Dr. Jinger Gottschall and Coach Jeff Hoobler dive into the world of cycling nutrition and weight loss. In this week's episode, they will be discussing the latest research and strategies for fueling your body to lose weight and perform at your best while cycling. From understanding macronutrients to meal planning and supplementation, Jinger and Jeff will share their own personal experiences and insights to give listeners actionable tips and strategies for their weight loss journey. Join us every week as we navigate the world of cycling nutrition and help listeners make sustainable changes for a healthier and happier ride.
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Jinger Gottschall 0:00
Eat nutrient-dense foods. So what does that mean,Jeff?
Jeff Hoobler 0:04
We're talking about foods that provide a lot of vitamins and minerals with or calorie content. Also seafood, lean meats, eggs, peas, beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, vegetables, vegetables.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the knowledge podcast by Wahoo. I'm Jeff Hooper, senior strength research scientist.
Jinger Gottschall 0:39
And I'm Dr. Ginger Gottschall, Director of Sports Science Research. And today we are going to talk about some hot tips for weight loss and make these specific to an endurance athlete. So there are definitely some unique aspects we want to touch on. For those of you who are training some pretty long cardio hours.
Jeff Hoobler 1:01
You know, there's a lot that goes into this discussion, when we start talking about nutrition and weight loss, many different factors. There's a lot of information out there, some of its good, some of its bad. And some of it is just how you put that information together. So we're going to try to cover some of the main topics and give you a pathway forward to help you make good decisions about your nutrition,
Jinger Gottschall 1:26
we're going to get into seven specific tips. And these are the most widely accepted and researched options. But before we even get there, Jeff has got four things for you to keep in mind when we're talking about all of these.
Jeff Hoobler 1:44
Yeah, I think at the top of the list is we want to make changes that we can be consistent with, right, so pattern changes over time, not just radical, quick behavior change that you can't stick with, right, so be consistent. And then overall, make good choices, check with the plan that you're on, and make sure that the information that you're getting is good. And we're gonna give you some of that research information here. But make good choices. And this can go pretty deep into behavior change and all that we don't need to dig too deep into right now. But most people know if their choices are good or bad, right? And if you're getting that little person on your shoulder tapping, you're saying that's probably not a good idea, then listen to it. The next one would be kind of similar, don't get caught up in a radical change or fat, there are a lot of trendy diets out there. Every year, something new comes out, whether it's intermittent fasting, or whether it's low fat, or whether it's about sugar, or like we said, there's a lot of good information and bad information, stick with the facts that we're gonna give you here. And just don't get too far down the rabbit hole. And the last thing is to listen to your body. If what you're doing is feeling good, it's probably the right thing for you. But if what you're doing is not feeling good, and you just be okay with saying you know what I need to, I need to correct this,
Jinger Gottschall 3:07
right. So in short, we're really just saying, to chill out a bit. And eat what feels good to you. And try to make it something that you can repeat the habit and continue to feel good. And with that is consistency, the good choices. Don't make a radical change and listen to your body. Yeah. All right. So let's get into the seven big tips. And the first one kind of goes along with those basics that we just shared, which is there actually is no single solution. There's no magic pill, there's no voodoo liquid, and no mail order, unfortunately, anything you get in the mail, especially in pill form is probably not going to be the answer. And the dietary Association for the country in 2020 recommends that you eat 45 to 65% of total calories from carbohydrates, 10 to 35% from protein, and 20 to 35% from fat. Now what you can see here is that we're not restricting any macronutrients. And by macronutrients, I mean carbohydrates, fat protein. So you want to listen to your body when you're hungry and make sure that each meal contains about that percentage. Now I also want to follow this up with a very large review of endurance athletes who came out with these similar percentages, and we'll kind of touch upon the endurance athlete part as we continue to go on.
Jeff Hoobler 4:41
It's important to remember that we are giving you these tips, these nutrition tips in conjunction with endurance training with that in mind, so you got to be really careful when you're, you're talking about weight loss and endurance training want to be we don't Want to get carried away with that. So let's bump back up to those three macronutrients that you just mentioned ginger. And the big takeaway here is to get protein, get fat, get carbohydrates in every meal, and make sure that you're consistent on that don't exclude any one of those,
Jinger Gottschall 5:18
right. And something that we've learned recently with data collection that we've done is that protein is critical in your very first meal. So make sure that you're having a substantial amount in the morning, which means at least 10 grams of protein for all of us out there, and make sure that your fat content throughout the day is pretty consistent. So you don't want to have any meal that doesn't have any fat. This just really helps with your vitamin and mineral absorption and your overall energy level,
Jeff Hoobler 5:48
that protein and fat early on and throughout the day provide satiety, yes, so that you don't have as many hunger cravings, and you're less likely to overload on simple sugars and that kind of thing, right?
Jinger Gottschall 6:02
Exactly. You don't want to get to that low point where then you start to make decisions that aren't as smart,
Jeff Hoobler 6:09
right? And correct me if I'm wrong, but those two macronutrients protein and fat are gonna also stabilize your blood sugar.
Jinger Gottschall 6:16
Absolutely. Yep. Really helpful. And you want to strive for that lower variability. So the second one goes right along with this. And I know Jeff feels strongly about this, in particular with respect to measurement. But number two is striving for energy balance and portion control. You can do this by tracking your calories in What are you drinking? What are you eating? tracking your calories out? What is your approximate resting metabolic rate? And how much are you burning in physical activity? And I think this is good to do occasionally, an honesty check just to see if you're kind of lining things up.
Jeff Hoobler 6:53
Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of like doing the accounting and making sure that you're in the ballpark. And we really just need to be close to that ballpark, if you know how many calories you're burning per hour, in a training session. Say it's right around four to 600. And you can account for that in your dietary intake. And just as you mentioned, knowing that base metabolic rate, what you burn every day in general, and then kind of staying on track with that, you don't have to get down to the calorie.
Jinger Gottschall 7:27
So true. It is not an exact science. Very true.
Jeff Hoobler 7:31
There are a lot of ways to track those calorie counting, you know, there are many apps out there that will help you do that. And you can keep a spreadsheet, just like you said, it's a fact check.
Jinger Gottschall 7:40
Exactly. If we go back to also one of those specific focuses from the beginning that just said is to be consistent. It's also great to have in general, some foods that you know, are helpful for you in terms of including those macronutrients and giving you great energy for your day, and then kind of including them on a regular basis. And with that is tip number three, which is to eat nutrient-dense foods. So what does that mean? Jeff,
Jeff Hoobler 8:08
we're talking about foods that provide a lot of vitamins and minerals with calorie content. Also, seafood, lean meats, eggs, peas, beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, vegetables, vegetables, whole grains. And, and I think that's a really, really key thing that people it's really easy to get, you know, sorry, a side note here, you know, when you're on the run, people are busy. And a lot of times what we kind of resort to is packaged food, right? And packaged food tends to be less of these things that we just mentioned, especially vegetables. So really going out of your way to getting vegetables in your diet is really helpful, you know, for the fiber for the nutrient density. And calorically, they're not that high.
Jinger Gottschall 9:01
Right. I love the saying. And it sounds good. But they eat from the rainbow saying, I love that isn't that it's true. If you were to just line up everything that you eat in one day and
Jeff Hoobler 9:13
sit next to a unicorn while you do it.
Jinger Gottschall 9:15
Absolutely, it will be magical. Yes, you will then want to have represented each color of the rainbow at some point during the day, which is a fun little game that you can play with yourself and your friends and children.
Jeff Hoobler 9:32
So while we're on this, you know, eat nutrient-dense foods. We're also again thinking about things in the context of endurance training, right and and that comes with workouts, making sure that you are fueling for the workouts that you're doing, or have just done is key. And this again goes back to these things that we mentioned with a heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetable meals. And you know you're providing a lot of carbohydrates, but you're getting the nutrients in there with it. So eating those foods near a workout before or after is going to help you fuel properly.
Jinger Gottschall 10:13
Another tidbit would be before the workout, you do want to make sure that you have some carbohydrate-rich foods both two hours before and then maybe a shorter timespan. Some simpler carbs, about 20 to 30 minutes, then after what is critical is protein. Absolutely. And that's for tissue repair. And also then getting you on track for it actually is crazy, but your next workout. Without that, it's difficult to actually recover in time.
Jeff Hoobler 10:42
Yeah, that protein is absolutely key for protein synthesis, tissue repair, and building muscle. If your workout is a strength workout, these things apply as well.
Jinger Gottschall 10:52
Absolutely. And this gets then into our tip number four, which is to eat multiple meals in a day. And this doesn't mean if you love having breakfast, lunch dinner, awesome. But then make sure that there are some smaller meals between those three big ones. So we're talking about maybe four to six times per day,
Jeff Hoobler 11:14
this makes me want to step aside again and think about energy management. Okay, there are a lot of opinions out there about how many times a day should you eat. This is standard, it's been researched, and we know it works, essentially what we're trying to do is keep your energy up and fuel your brain. So they make really good choices. Everybody knows willpower is not a good solution, it can work, and then when you get fatigued, that's when you tend to make poor choices. So if you eat frequently, you're less likely to have those drops and that brain fatigue or, or decision fatigue about what to do and making the right choice. So this sets you up on a good path to make those good choices throughout the day.
Jinger Gottschall 11:57
And maybe one of the most important ones out of all of the meals is breakfast. Now that doesn't mean you can't do a lower-intensity cardio session before you eat anything. That's also one strategy that works for a lot of folks. But your first meal of the day should be one that does provide a high amount of protein and balance of those macronutrients to kind of set you up. And that's also the meal that's been shown if you skip it, you have a greater chance of weight gain
Jeff Hoobler 12:28
put you on that roller coaster where your blood sugar's all over the place, and then you're constantly playing catch up trying to balance it out. Right,
Jinger Gottschall 12:35
right. This goes into something that Jeff mentioned earlier today, which was intermittent fasting, which is the exact opposite of what we are recommending. But for some, it works. And so it is important to trial and error with you, yourself, and what works for you what gets you through the day with a high energy level, and how you can maximize your training. So we are not nutritionists, we are not dietitians, and we do encourage you to make the choices that are best for you.
Jeff Hoobler 13:08
And that goes right back to that first recommendation of listening to your body. If it feels if it's feeling good, and things are on the path that you want them to be on. Your energy is good, great. But don't be afraid to reassess and listen to your body. If you're feeling really lethargic, you're having mental fog mental fatigue, then that's probably not the thing for you. And this is in regard to that intermittent fasting, right? So yeah, check back in, you start, we talked about behavior change and consistency throughout. And in this tracking, we don't just necessarily want to track caloric intake on, you know, a semi-weekly basis or weekly basis, but we're gonna check, how do we feel? Yes, is this working for us? And if it is great, let's, let's continue. And if it's not, let's make a change. That gets us back on the path we want to be on.
Jinger Gottschall 14:08
Excellent. And there could be different times of the year depending on your training schedule where you make these modifications based on the number of hours and or intensity that you are putting in. So again, don't be afraid to make changes if it's not feeling right.
Jeff Hoobler 14:21
One thing to remember is that you know, we're talking about two different things here. They can be opposite each other like weight loss and endurance training. We want to make sure that you fuel for the work that you are going to do or that you need to do for your event or for your training schedule. Right. So, under-fueling is not a recipe for success. We want to fuel ourselves to be able to do the work to burn the calories to grow the muscle
Jinger Gottschall 14:55
exactly, to maximize your power output and future performance. So true. Last with this fourth tip, eating four to six times per day is with that just be aware of your hydration. There's some great research out there that says, to drink six to eight ounces of water before each meal. And then having some sips throughout is one strategy. Again, just being aware of how much liquid you're taking in at the same time is helpful. Alright, tip number five. We're going to go for one more nutrition one. And then we're going to talk about activity. So the last nutrition one is reducing solid fats and simple sugars, solid fats, folks that have a lot of higher saturated fat contents. And we're talking then about full-fat dairy products, meat products, the kinds of butter that are solid. And we also want to avoid the trans fats that are added to a lot of processed foods, things that come in packages, when we speak about simple sugars. That's all of the white sugar products. A lot of this is found in beverages,
Jeff Hoobler 16:06
sprinkles on your latte, oh, yes, I
Jinger Gottschall 16:08
know, are so good. But in moderation, fine. In moderation, fine. desserts, obviously include the simple sugars. And a lot of the again, packaged snack foods will contain additional,
Jeff Hoobler 16:21
you know, I think it's it's pretty straightforward that sugar and simple sugar and added sugar is probably the biggest contributor to unwanted weight gain. If I had to make one change, and I would know that I wanted to lose some weight, the first thing that would go would be sugar, a no-brainer start. The second thing would be alcohol, which contains a lot of sugar, and it's just a kind of wasted calorie. So refined sugar and alcohol are the biggest contributors to excess useless calories.
Jinger Gottschall 16:54
Yes, that can be a simple one just to limit. Yeah, it doesn't mean moderation can't
Jeff Hoobler 16:59
have a drink a glass of wine or whatever it is. But you know, when we're looking at behavior change, those are the behaviors that were key,
Jinger Gottschall 17:08
which leads to something that we've talked about a lot, which is don't drink your calories.
Jeff Hoobler 17:15
Don't drink your calories. Yeah, that's
Jinger Gottschall 17:17
a bad idea. Yeah. And that even includes shakes. I know, they're so convenient. But the shakes and what you put in them, a lot of times have additional sugar, additional processed chemicals that we don't need. They don't include the fiber that we can get from actually eating fruit and a vegetable. So again, it's an excess. That's an easy way to
Jeff Hoobler 17:41
and it's monetary, really easy to get way more calories than you need. Yes, drinking, just, you know, at the end of it during a race during a workout post-event when you need to replenish quickly. Yeah, great idea. But for weight loss. Just that's a slippery slope, I'd stay away from it.
Jinger Gottschall 18:04
Totally agree. Totally agree. And last tip number seven has a bit less to do with nutrition and more about moving. Since we are talking to you the endurance athlete, we understand that a lot of you are going to be training six hours plus in your cardio, but just take a moment to evaluate how much time you're sitting during the day. And if you've got these large chunks of four to six hours of being stationary, just try to break it up with 20 minutes of a walk, get some fresh air, stroll around do some chores, however, those actually make a difference. One other thing to keep in mind is that we are talking primarily about nutrition, we gave you just another little tidbit with respect to activity and moving but sleep and your emotional health are also two incredibly important variables in this equation of weight management.
Jeff Hoobler 19:00
Sleep has an effect on pretty much everything that happens in our bodies, including hormone regulation, and that kind of thing. So if you haven't got that dialed, start there,
Jinger Gottschall 19:11
love that. That's an excellent way to kind of end this. Gonna give you the seven from top to bottom. No easy single solution. Strive for energy balance and portion control. Eat nutrient-dense foods, eat multiple times a day, and reduce solid fats and simple sugars. Don't drink your calories and try to move more.
Jeff Hoobler 19:32
Right on. So there you have it. Trust your body.
Jinger Gottschall 19:34
Yeah, and vegetables, vegetables,
Jeff Hoobler 19:37
and vegetables. Anybody got
Jinger Gottschall 19:41
well, that is it for another episode of The Knowledge by Wahoo. We hope that this helps you. Take away some tips and things to think about that makes you a better endurance athlete.