Realise this is mostly down to stature etc, I’m 5’10 and when I’m not trying to leave off the cakes to hard I’m usually around 12.4 with training thrown in.

I don’t have a huge upper body, fairly average, I’ll bench about 60k reps, deadlift 120s squat 60k’s all 4×12 so fairly muscular, although no where near the size of most guys at my gym.

So far this year I’ve used MFP to lose 1lb-1.5lb a week with an aim of going from 12.4 to 11.8 (this was randomly chosen as the lightest I’d dropped to whilst racing/training a few years ago) – not the greatest science.

I’m currently 11.10 and always hungry, I’m using my Garmin to add used cals back in but for a few weeks my daily intake has been 1590cal, which I’ve stuck to pretty religiously, 50% carbs, 30% protein, 20%fats.

For the past week I’ve felt constantly drained.

I did 90mins tempo on sat, repeated on Sunday, then a 5hr endurance ride on Mon, this was a huge slog av 15mph throughout (17/18 would be normal) I’ve had the week off so ridden 3hrs most days, eaten good recovery meals and slept a lot. I still feel wrung out.

I’ve upped the cals to maintain 11:10 for a few weeks just to see what happens, racing seasons fast approaching though and if I go in like this I’ll last about 30mins!

Anyone experienced this? Did you hold it down and start to get used to it, or go up a few lb?

Ab’s are showing well but I’m not super ripped, on photo’s I imagined I’d be able to go to 11:8lb fine, maybe people do, then just sit around on the beach for two weeks, maybe it’s different for being competitive?

I’m looking to get a body fat analysis done next week to quantify this random 11:8lb number I’m using…

Rest days? 1600Kcal when also exercising is low. What’s MFB?

Back in the day when I was young and fit and doing lots of rock climbing, there was a weight that if I dropped below it I’d lose strength and stamina, it was like a floor.

I always have a complete rest day on Fridays, every week for the last few years.

MFP – My fitness pal – Calorie tracker.

Yeah ‘floor’ would be another way of describing how I’ve felt lately, think I’ve reached it.

You should probably be eating double that amount.

racing weight could be summarised as be the leanest (note not lightest) you can be without it being detrimental to your speed

are you including exercise on MFP to earn extra calories. you might be well under daily calories if not.

are you having rest weeks as well as days?

Been meaning to pick that book up Thom!

Yeah I know it’s all a bit rough but all exercise cals are recorded by the Garmin and chucked back in, so I’m usually eating say 1000cals extra if the rides recorded that giving 2500 or so total.

Yeah, I’ll build each week then recovery in the final of 4 knocking everything back down to first week levels to allow adaption.

Really, I probably just need to go around the chippy, large fish, white bread and a tin of mushy pees and a couple of Guiness…just a shame to put some back on when you’ve worked hard to lose it.

What is your objective? You mention upper body training, losing weight, ripped abs and road racing, but what are you actually trying to achieve?

If you have some sort of specific road race objective, I would stop worrying about an arbitrary weight target and concentrate on the training, fuelling and recovery that will help you achieve that. Start measuring things that will make you a better road racer, like power output (if you have a meter) or your times and capacity for intervals of various different types.

Weight does matter in road racing, of course, but it sounds like you might be giving it too much importance, and losing sight of the main objective, which is riding a bike fast and trying to win races. Trying to combine restricted calories with heavy training might not be a good idea.

The original question was “Has anyone lost too much bodyweight?”

I have once – I came back from Pakistan with some exotic gut condition that meant I couldn’t absorb vitamins or fats. By the time we’d figured it out I’d gone 10Kg under the above mentioned floor weight. Not pretty.

It’s not your weight that’s the issue (you aren’t that light yet) but the recent lack of calories, you just can’t train hard and lose weight on that sort of intake.
Get some food down you and you’ll be going loads better – it’ll have impacted on long-term recovery as well as one-off days where you’ve felt rough. As said above, at least double what you have been taking in.

Oh and in answer to the original question, yes, absolutely. At one point I was 56kgs. I’m 6’2″. I could fly up anything but had zero ability on the flat or in sprints, and became very, very inconsistent. Tried it as an experiment and it clearly didn’t work!

What kcr said. Eat more. I’d not want to do that sort of volume on restricted cals.

Also I don’t think it’s a good idea to set a daily target and then top up on a specific day based on what work you’ve done (e.g. days you don’t ride you’ll have 1500 cals, other big ride days 4500 cals.) I’m not sure I’d cope well with that!

Thanks all, I think I’d describe it best as how LS states, it is an experiment, the calorie tracker has helped a lot, I’ve never used this before. I just wondered if to stick with it, or to ease off taking other peoples experiences into account.

British cycling do state the above, to not lose weight while training hard, I’m aware, just thought a lb a week or so would be do-able, I’m just reducing cakes and booze here.

Road craft, fitness, tactics, weight and luck all come together to win races, I’m well aware of that. Its the first time I’d really been able to experiment further with the weight area so was interested in what other people had done/felt.

KCR – I’m hoping for a few more 2/3/4 top 10’s, a lot of the opening post was to give a general idea of body shape more than anything, as it helps with these kind of posts, I’m not brave enough to put a photo up!

A power meter would be incredibly useful but unfortunately even though they’ve come down massively in price I’m still not lucky enough to be able to afford one, I’m saving for a set of Garmin Pedals (2s) at the moment.

looks like overtraining and possibly under eating combined. try a proper 2 or 3 day rest and see how you feel afterwards.

yeah, it’s an easy week for me next week so now was the time to re-access.

The power meter is not essential by any means. I just used that as an example of cycling specific training, and you can still train very effectively without one.

The good thing is that you have recognised you are going like a bag of spanners and are questioning why. Some people never do that.

Now stop worrying about your weight and your abs and practice the things that make you a fast cyclist. Get that right, eat enough to train hard, and I bet the weight will take care of itself. God luck!

I’m 5’10 and when I’m not trying to leave off the cakes to hard I’m usually around 12.4 with training thrown in.

I don’t want to upset you…. But I’m 5’10.5 and my race weight is 67 kilos – or 10.5 in imperial. You have a long way to go if you want to really get down to “competitive” for more lumpy races. I have always been on the stick side though, and definitely not sprinting material.

If you have a heavy distance training load, you will lose weight almost regardless of what you eat. And you will feel hungry all the time. Tiredness can, however just be a sign of pending illness.

no where near the size of most guys at my gym.

Does not compute. Unless you are a track sprinter, what are you doing to improve your road racing in a gym?

Just to reinforce what TiRed has said – I’m 5’10.5″ and my practical (i.e. not getting too silly) race weight is just over 10 stone (64kg).

Perhaps you would be better off playing to your strengths (no pun intended) and focusing on building your legs whilst losing upper body mass. By the sounds of it you should have a pretty potent sprint so I would focus on working with that if I were you.

Thanks TiRed / Jamz, other side of the coin…

On the whole my races arnt that lumpy, and hopefully quite a few will be made up of flat crits/10TT/25TTs, I wasn’t looking to be alpine light, just thought shaving a few more pounds off would help a little on these courses to.

Sorry the gym guy comparison was just to describe overall build, I have a gym a short walk away so have been doing deads and squats and a bit of upper body through the winter just as a break from the bike, high reps, lowish weights, these eased in Jan with bike specific sessions taking over (past few winters have been very bike specific and poss led to burn out late last year) anyway…

haha my sprint is garbage! 🙂

Really, I probably just need to go around the chippy, large fish, white bread and a tin of mushy pees and a couple of Guiness…just a shame to put some back on when you’ve worked hard to lose it.

You won’t; your body isn’t that stupid. As TiRed states, it’s very hard to put on weight if you’re doing a large amount of cycling. I’d up your food intake by at least 1000kcals; you’ll be able to ride better, and I bet you’ll lose more weight quicker.

I’d get a decent coach not a power meter

I went from 91kg to 79kg (nearly 6’3 and not dainty).i got a six pack aged 42! Every extra kilo lost was like having a motor uphill. However if I was a half hour late with a main meal I started to feel dizzy and get a headache and became slightly obsessed with how long to the next meal.
Back to 92kg now and much happier (and slower).

Another 5’10 65kg whippet here. I don’t road race but as I’ve upped my road miles (500+ miles a month year-round, a big chunk down to commuting) I dropped from 68 to 65 and have plateaued. If I was into TTs and crits I’d be trying to increase power and expect to put weight on. I raced this last CX season and I was far more of a spinner than most of the field, the preferred approach to mud in CX appears to be higher gear/lower cadence/moar power so I’ll probably do some power work before next season.

If you haven’t read it already, this is worth a read

https://wordery.com/the-cyclists-training-bible-joe-friel-9781934030202

If I was into TTs and crits I’d be trying to increase power and expect to put weight on

Mostly race TT at the moment and seem to have settled at around 71kg at 6ft (I’ve been lighter but around 70kg seems to be my “floor” right now.) There is a relationship between drag and weight and a lot of TT riders will say they’ve set some of their best times when lightest (though there’s probably a correlation between lightness and fitness too!) I’d happily put on a kilo or two for a few more watts.

5’9 and a half and race around 61/62kg, and it feels a struggle to keep this up during the season despite feeling like I’m constantly eating. I feel fatigue after big days and efforts, but mentally don’t ever feel lethargic or tired, in fact I have have to enforce some down time to recover before bigger events. Winter weight is about 63/64kg and during the dark months I embrace trash food and booze, but this drops as soon as spring kicks in. I don’t do any other sport, apart from the odd bit of pilyoga, and that’s only because my saucy neighbour runs the class. To be honest, I would do a 45 minute class of sticking forks in my knackers if she was running it. The yoga type stuff always seems to encourage a most satisfying bowel movement after the class. Last week my post class stool was so immense I had to have a little lie down and a snooze after it.

For contrast I’m also 5’10” and my race weight is 70kg – that was good enough for me to win the NE regional hill climb league and an open or two. I am more than competitive when it comes to climbing hills. I wasn’t doing too badly at 75kg and was won a lumpy road race at the start of the year.

For climbing you need to consider power output also. This is probably where the floor idea comes in.

I lost weight through trial and error. I had some spectacular bonking experiences where I didn’t eat enough to sustain long periods of hard riding.

Like training blocks you need to think about rest days on restricted calories. I tend to alternate high workload intervals and low calorie periods. You can’t do both. There needs to be some break between them.

Take a week off the restricted diet, up your calories a bit – try and stay on the healthy foods but a pizza or some junk isn’t going to kill you.

The ideal way to measure this is by monitoring power output but for that you need a power meter. When your power drops you’ve gone too far. Can be a bit late by that point though.

big_n_daft – Member

I’d get a decent coach not a power meter

+1

There is a relationship between drag and weight

there is, but I’d guess it’s less than the relationship between weight and power, given drag is based on your frontal cross sectional area so is 2 dimensional, and mass is based on volume so is 3 dimensional (and that before you get into the effect of density and muscle being heavier than fat so you could increase mass/weight without increasing volume greatly).

So

though there’s probably a correlation between lightness and fitness too! I’d happily put on a kilo or two for a few more watts

I’d agree with both points.

to be honest, I would do a 45 minute class of sticking forks in my knackers if she was running it

now wiping coffee off keyboard, so thanks for that…. 😉

I race on foot, not on a bike, but the underlying nutritional principles are the same. I’m 6′ and crashed out during the autumn at 64kg. At that weight I’d reached the stage of being dead on my feet, not just during & after exercise, but on rest days too (so most days became rest days as I was too tired to do anything). I’ve increased my calories overall, added in a bit more fat, and now feel much better. I’m only ever racing myself anyway, but my performance has also picked up a bit (not just because I’ve got a bit more energy, but also in terms of being more resilient generally, both to injury and the mental aspects of keeping going – the wrong nutrition / too much fatigue impacts *everything*).

An easy (and in retrospect 🙄 , common sense) summary is that you can’t train hard and reduce intake to loose weight at the same time (although it kinda feels ok to start with, that’s how I fell into the hole).

From the podcasts I’ve heard with Matt Fitzgerald, he talks a lot of sense, so that book ^ will be worth a read.

How are you getting your carbs?

There’s a fair bit of controversy about ‘diet’, but plenty of people do seem to be coming back around to finding that eating healthy, real food is actually working out pretty well. In a balanced diet, fat isn’t really an issue, but the simple carbs (sugars) primarily found in processed food are.

There was an interesting TRN podcast about healthy eating in recent weeks – granted it’s based on the US dietary guidelines, but throw that specific bit out and get down to the details, and whether you agree with none, some, or all of it, it’s something to think about.

Well, that experiment was a total disaster!

First road race of the season on Sunday, one I’d had a top 10 in the year before and favored the draggy hill finish but I got dropped after about half way around the first lap,
In the weeks preceding I’d upped the cals to 3000 a day or so, all good cals not cakes and chocolate etc and had carb loaded heavily on the Friday / Saturday before but it was simply too late by then.

Thinking back to the few weeks prior I’d felt incredibly lethargic and knackered, exactly what you’d expect from an over trained condition, low energy at all times, not being able to hit correct training zones, although weirdly my RHR was very low, but yeah total disaster / huge learning curve for me. I’d thought by just using a calorie tracker and reducing in/out slightly it’d have some positive effects, and I guess for 90% of the population it works, but when riding 10-12hrs per week, with structured training thrown in its just more complicated than that. My take away, as BC and others mention above is, lose weight (OR) train hard, not both, by being in better condition for training and not just eating everything in the house when back, the weight will just come off anyway.

I’m now trying to rectify the mistake, I have another RR on Saturday and will decide later in the week how I feel, there are reserves so I’m tempted to give one of them a ride rather than me holding on for a half the race.

I’m upping my carbs from 300g daily to more like 350-600 when there’s longer endurance rides to do in training, currently have plans for 50,100 and the 12hr TT later in the year.

I’m also ignoring ‘work done’ cals as provided by the Garmin, I’m simply tracking Cals in, weight, and level of fatigue felt that day (mark out of 5) then hopefully I’ll have a better picture of what’s going on in a few months time, realise I’ll also have to keep an eye on waist size etc as any muscle put on will need to be recognised as not fat.

This probably sounds incredibly obsessive to most, but I’ve spent years trying to get rid of the gut and taken a few semi-tongue in cheek comments from lads I ride with so I’m keen to stick with it and see how the experiment progresses…..

My coach when I used to race told me “lose as much weight as you can until you start getting sick, then put on a kilo”. Seemed to work. However I did see a cycling nutritionist who looked at my training and my standard eating regime and gave me some good advice.

Stop obsessing, it’s unhealthy, I knew loads of woman racers who only trained and raced as it gave them an excuse to cover up their eating disorder. Take out the racing and you had Karen Carpenter.

I also find that I can’t lose weight just training any more. It is one or the other. Although dieting and very low HR exercise e.g. hillwalking seems to do the job.

I do the same as you op. 5’11.5 and 11.7 after 3 months of averaging out my cals at 2100 per day. I was 12.5st on Jan 1.

You are “averaging” right? So on ride days you eat more than your target to get the nominal in/out back to the balnce on MFP? For example, if your nominal cals goes up to 3000 after a ride, are you trying to get there? I say trying because sometimes I physically can’t eat as much as a I use, but after a 600cal turbo session I’ve nearly always eaten 2700 cals approx

Yes, there are some worrying signs of obsession in this thread. If you haven’t made it into professional sport by now, perhaps you need to accept that you’re never going to be a pro, ease off on the weight training and concentrate on enjoying life a bit more.

there are some worrying signs of obsession in this thread.

Well, some of us enjoy being fit and healthy. 20 years ago I was trying to bulk up and in the gym with about 3500cals protien heavy cals per day to maintain 13.5 stone (rugby).

Its about being sensible & healthy about it.

It’s about diminishing returns. I’m about to turn 60 and as a fit, slim cyclist I’m probably amongst the fittest 1% on the planet, which is enough for me most of the time. To achieve greater fitness while holding down a full-time job including sedentary overseas business trips, raising a child, being married and maintaining my own home would require an enormous effort in my few spare hours, and then if I didn’t use that extra fitness it would just re-stabilise back at the level my lifestyle requires. Those few spare hours a week are too precious for me not to be enjoying myself.

Too many people over complicate this stuff IMO, firstly eat healthy home cooked stuff but don’t worry about the odd chocolate bar, beer or whatever here and there.

Weight and height don’t tell you all I’ve always been around 6 foot and 69 kg, but depending on training my power and hence, performance will vary wildly.

Increase carbs to 80% and cut fat and protein to 10% each… you only need 1g of protein per kg body weight unless you’re gonna go shoving weights for some swol physique. I weigh 67kg at the mo, avg 400km per week and the 80-10-10 holds me around that weight. In the summer I go nuts with 800-1000km per week and I usually drop down to 62-64kg on the same diet eating until I feel full. I should also add that I’m vegan so really have to cram a lot of food to get the calories however I don’t calorie count. (60 yo and 178cm)