On Getting Too Damned Skinny

[lukasz]

Dude, thanks. I think that I needed to read this thread. I'm not fast but I've felt the same way in more ways than one (lethargic, getting sick a bit too often, stupid ideas about body image). I wasn't really watching my weight but I did watch what I ate a bit too much for someone who puts in more than 10 hours of saddle time per week, year-round (not that this is a lot for us but it is a lot more stress/calories than your person). I swear I've had at least three separate groups of cyclists nickname me andy schleck, haha.

I've previously felt in good cycling shape when I'm roughly 155 (at 6'2"... and a too many pounds lighter after a hot ride). Recently I've just been shoving calories (including beer) into my mouth at every possible moment and I think that I feel much better for it. No one is paying me. I have no racing aspirations besides keeping up. Sure if I had to take this seriously then a stricter diet and certain nutritional goals would make sense, but I'm not exactly fueling myself with cheetos and coca-cola here. I think I even go uphill better because keeping bigger gears going feels a lot better. That doesn't make sense for someone in the pro ranks but it makes a lot of sense for those of us who are not having doctors experiment with their body for that extra few watts.

[boots2000]

Nate,
Any updates on your weight and/or condition?
After reading your posts and have it totally hit home to me, I changed my diet.
I started eating more carbs and also mapping out my daily carb needs with the help of the book "Racing Weight".
I was not eating near enough in terms of carbs- really starving my body and sacrificing recovery for that low weight.
In the period of 3-4 weeks I have gained 2-2.5kg of weight.
I am assuming it is good weight since I feel better- power is up, escpecially on flats. Most notable thing is that recovery is up. I am also running faster (I do 2 runs per week)- so still guessing it is good weight.
Hardest thing to get over is the mindf*&k of getting on the scale and seeing bigger numbers.
I guess I am a bit manorexic?
Good luck to you and I hope that it continues to work for you.

[Nate@Scarab]

I spent a little over a month off the bike between the beginning of September and middle of October. Now into week two of my training for 2013.

Weight is hovering a couple pounds over "race weight" -161lbs or so.

I'm now pretty in tune with when my body is glyco depleted. I get insomnia, mind races, can't focus. If I don't eat enough I wake up at 3 AM running full-bore. Pop a melatonin, eat a bowl of cereal, drink some herbal tea, and I'm usually out within 30 minutes.

Balancing act.

[boots2000]

Have you done a testing for bodyfat or hormones?
Wondering if your BF is still low despite the weight gain? I.E. built muscle, blood volume, and now storing glycogen well?
Also has hormone level returned to normal or at least trending up?
I had a blood test a couple weeks ago- after picking up my eating and gaining some weight. My testosterone levels more than doubled- and I am not on the US Postal program!
Also- the tempo climbing that I am currently doing feels easy rather than pushed and I am starting to turn the screws on the guy who I train with for the 1st time in a couple years.

[Shinomaster]

Hey what's the best way to test body fat? I was just at the DR. and only weighed 141 with shoes, and clothes and a jacket.. I haven't been training as much as in my youth, so my muscles may have shrunk a bit, but heck maybe I am too skinny.

[maunahaole]

Use a skinfold caliper. Can be purchased inexpensively. Your result will be accurate enough.

Shino...you are too skinny. Mix in a cheeseburger with egg on top.

[Shinomaster]

Shino...you are too skinny. Mix in a cheeseburger with egg on top.

I only eat cage-free eggs and Organic beef... so usually I just get a bean and cheese burrito for lunch ;)

[d.wilson]

Man, I"m really glad to see a thread like this. Last few years, I was doing a lot of distance riding, and found that I was WRUNG at the end of my first really hard season, and pretty much outright depressed the second. I think it was something akin to the dietary perfect storm.

I'd been a vegetarian for over 2 decades-- and I started riding hard again. TOTALLY wiped me out after I'd put in long efforts-- so I started doing research on nutrition 'cause I wasn't feeling right. I ended up being heinously calorically deficient, and lost like 30#-- back to my high school racing weight ( 155-- when I was 16.. I'm 42 now).. body didn't like it. On top of that-- I basically looked around for info on what endurance athletes went deficient in, and started supplementing some of the obvious ones--- omega 3s, lipids, magnesium, iodine, selenium, zinc, electrolytes, b vitamins. some of it just came straight out of eating eggs, butter and meat again. Cut back on flours and eat the crap out of fresh greens and vegetables constantly.

It's really amazing how much fuel makes a gigantic difference-- and making sure you've got the calories in you to MAKE muscle! I think sometimes as cyclists it's easy to forget that you need something to burn for the day, as well as just 'maintaining weight'.

Thanks for sharing that.

[Beans]

After reading "Racing Weight" I don't think I will every reach sub 180. It has always bothered me how the pros can look like emaciated greyhounds and still put out so much power.

I need to get on the wiggins diet

PIC20455761.jpg

[false_aesthetic]

Beans,

Stop with the Taco Truck and PBR and you'll be golden.

[drietz]

This is a really interesting thread for me, a junior out of the Bay Area.

I'm a stick, yet I think I eat a good amount. Evidently - no. I think a lot of what Nate has to say regarding dysmorphia in cycling is spot on.

[EFHeath]

I can only dream of having these problems! And the last time I saw 180 was in 1992. Sigh.

[wasfast]

Neither. While trying to gain, I was just eating everything - but now that I've stabilized, I just do exactly what I did when I was trying to lose weight - record calories and expenditure, then balance it out instead of burning more than I'm eating.

How exactly are you measuring expenditure? I've seen 600-800kcal's for hard riding in several publications. My Garmin 500 is carefully set and I read the info from the company that designed the calculations. It reads WAY less than that, like 300Kcal's per hour which just seems far too low. Is it somehow possible to calculate it from wattage with a PM (which I don't currently have unfortunately but did in the past)? I'd really like to monitor both sides of the equation but the expenditure part seems fleeting.

[christian]

I think my Garmin measures ridiculously high actually. It gave me 3000 kcal expenditure for a 40 mile ride at a 15 mph average the other day. Um, yeah, no.

[wasfast]

Make sure you set the parameters for how it measures (weight, intensity etc). However, the 3000kcal is silly even at a much higher speed............

[boots2000]

If you just have a Garmin- no powemeter, calorie expenditure is just a wild ass guess.
You can do a steady flat day where you pedal the entire time and it is a lot of calories.
Can also do a climbing ride or mtb ride that feels hard but burns relatively few calories.

[Nate@Scarab]

How exactly are you measuring expenditure? I've seen 600-800kcal's for hard riding in several publications. My Garmin 500 is carefully set and I read the info from the company that designed the calculations. It reads WAY less than that, like 300Kcal's per hour which just seems far too low. Is it somehow possible to calculate it from wattage with a PM (which I don't currently have unfortunately but did in the past)? I'd really like to monitor both sides of the equation but the expenditure part seems fleeting.

I'm lucky enough to have a powermeter on my primary bike, as well as my resting metabolic rate tested in a lab. The PM gives you an exact kilojoule output number, which in ideal circumstances translates to about 1.0kj>1.1kcal. Of course, the actual caloric output can vary based on increased "inefficiency" - like mountain biking, riding at higher elevation, etc. Having used the PM so much, I can estimate rides without it and come out ok. Most "estimators" based off of heartrate/duration/etc tend to be frightfully wrong. My mom was stuck in the delusion that her 45 minute treadmill jogs every morning were torching 800 calories. At 280w you'll burn 1000kcal in an hour. That's quite a bit of effort for most people.

On a typical day:
RMR - 2100~kcal
+daily life activity - 500-1000~kcal
+4hrs - 3000~kcal
------------
5000-6000kcal out

Of course, how much less you can take in than put out before you start getting heavily catabolic on muscle tissue (plus maintaining adequate glycogen stores to keep training/racing) is a whole different can of worms.

Someday (maybe soon), when I suck at bike racing too much to do it for a job, I think nutritional science might be in my future.

[DOOFUS]

How exactly are you measuring expenditure? I've seen 600-800kcal's for hard riding in several publications. My Garmin 500 is carefully set and I read the info from the company that designed the calculations. It reads WAY less than that, like 300Kcal's per hour which just seems far too low. Is it somehow possible to calculate it from wattage with a PM (which I don't currently have unfortunately but did in the past)? I'd really like to monitor both sides of the equation but the expenditure part seems fleeting.

If you had a PM in the past, do you still have some files, where you can look at expenditure for level of effort?

[wasfast]

I have a seasons worth of power files from 2011. I also have this VO2 max test from 3 years ago. Here's a paste of my pathetic output and lung capacity:

Date: October 17th, 2009
Age: 50 years

Test Type: Bike (25 watt step)

Results: Peak VO2: 50.7 ml/kg*min
Watts AT : 325 watts

Anaerobic Threshold (AT):
VO2 AT : 275 watts
VO2 (% of Peak) 86% of max
HR AT : 153 bpm
Watts AT : 275 watts
Power : Weight: 3.24 watts / kg
Total Kcal/min eT:18.7 kcal / min

Aerobic Threshold (AeT):
VO2 AeT : 31.2 ml / kg*min
VO2 (% of Peak) 62% of peak
Heart Rate AeT :130 bpm
Watts AeT : 175 watts
Kcal Total AeT :13.0 kcal / min
Kcal Fat AeT : 4.9 kcal / min
Kcal CHO AeT : 8.1 kcal / min
Percent Fat AeT :35% of total

How much will those 18 and 13 kcal/min vary with fitness? Those translate to 1080 and 780 kcals/hr which I always thought was optimistic as well.

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

[Nate@Scarab]

I wouldn't call those optimistic - but it's highly unlikely you're tooling around at aerobic and anaerobic threshold all day.