An interesting idea for weight control

Josh Horowitz is a cycling coach who posts articles over at Pez Cycling News. This is from an article he wrote on being your own coach. One of the tips he discusses is for losing/maintaining weight while still keeping energy levels up for cycling:

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Q #9. I’ve been trying desperately to lose weight, but it’s hard to diet and keep my energy levels up for training. What should I do?

A. Losing weight is a very tough proposition for a cyclist. How do you cut calories while maintaining your energy levels? My philosophy is that rather than cutting calories, you must increase your metabolism so that the more you eat, the more you burn.

Besides eating sensibly (which I am going to assume most of you know how to do), I have picked up a few tricks over the years that seem to work. First, Metabolism is the main thing you are fighting against. Forget counting carbs and calories. The cyclists metabolism often adjusts precisely to match whatever your daily intake is, so if you eat less, it slows down and if you eat more it speeds up (to a lesser extend as we get older). The idea is to trick your metabolism into thinking it is getting more food than it is in order to keep your body from shutting down and going into starvation mode.

My trick is to eat normally all day (especially immediately after a ride) but then eat an early dinner (as early as possible). If possible, substitute the pasta and bread for something like steamed broccoli or asparagus. It’s actually not that bad with a little salt and you’d be surprised how quickly it will fill you up. Don’t worry about the portion size. You’re not going to get fat eating broccoli. Then right before you go to bed make sure to have some sort of low carb protein supplement which you will need to rebuild the muscle that you’ve been tearing down during the day.

Keep in mind this only applies if your morning ride is less than 2 hours long. If you are going to wake up first thing in the morning and do a long ride, you will have to eat a little more the night before.

Finally, always eat a little snack before you go for your morning ride. This will get your metabolism switched on so the engine is running and stays running all morning even though all you are giving it is a measly 100 calorie banana or an apple. I often notice that I will bonk faster on a morning ride after eating a small breakfast than if I had eaten nothing at all due to the fact that my metabolism is running faster than had I eaten nothing at all. Green tea is also a great metabolic booster, especially if you haven’t desensitized yourself to caffeine through years of coffee abuse.

Observe your energy levels on your rides. If you do this right, it should not affect your workouts. If you do it wrong, you will start to notice a lack of energy and decreased workouts. If that happens, just up your calorie intake a bit before your ride. Also, always bring a gel when you ride since while you’re doing this there will always be the possibility of bonking.
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Of note is his observation of bonking faster after eating a small meal vs not eating anything at all. I experience this a lot. But for me I think it's reactive hypoglycemia and not so much that my metabolism is switched on. Not good for an interval workout or mountain bike ride or hard group ride, but for an aerobic road ride maybe ok.

Also of note is the sensible eating. While it's hard, the easiest ticket to losing weight is to cut out the crap. fries, chips, candy, soda, beer, icecream. I feel sort of fortunate that my tastebuds got reporgrammed cause it is not nearly as hard as I expected to have cut out the sugary sweets.