Cycling: Fit or Fat? Balancing Weight Loss With Fitness Goals

Originally Published in Cyclesport Magazine

Written by: Chris Carmichael

Question:
Over the seven months, I have lost about 25 pounds by gradually increasing my weekly training hours and watching what I eat. I try to estimate my energy needs for the day and then eat 300-500 calories less. Recently, though, the weight has been coming off more slowly, and I am worried that I won't be able to lose the 10 additional pounds I still want to lose. Is there something I should change in my diet or my training to help me continue losing weight?

Answer:
Many people I hear from are interested in pursuing two goals at the same time. They want to become stronger cyclists and lose weight at the same time. These two goals complement each other in that the effort required to become a stronger cyclist burns a lot of calories and weight loss is almost inevitable. There is a point, though, where these two goals start to come into conflict.

You have to work hard to become a stronger cyclist, and working hard requires a lot of energy. To train effectively, it is important to eat enough food to provide you with adequate energy for each workout. Improving fitness involves building and developing energy systems and muscle tissues, and that can only happen when the proper nutrients and energy are present. So, first you have to eat enough food to get through your workouts, and then you have to eat more food to aid in the recovery from workouts. And after that, you need to add even more food to help your body repair structures that were damaged during workouts and produce the necessary adaptations to your training. It is also important to meet all your nutritional needs so your immune system and energy systems are fully functional. When you increase the hours or intensity of your training, you need to consume even more fuel to provide more energy.

In order to lose weight, you need to burn more energy than you consume each day; it is a simple matter of mathematics. This is where the goals of improving fitness and losing weight come into conflict. At a certain point, it becomes increasingly difficult to burn more calories than you consume while still getting everything you need in order to build strength and fitness.

Improving your fitness takes priority over losing weight because improved fitness provides the mechanism for losing weight. If you lose your fitness in the process of losing weight, you are much more likely to regain those pounds. As your fitness increases, your ability to produce energy increases, which means your ability to burn calories goes up. It is like building more computer factories in a city. Two factories can only produce so many computers, no matter how much energy is available. Building more computer factories makes it possible to use more of the available energy because now there is somewhere for it to go, into building more computers. Training provides the stimulus that lets you build the factories that make use of the energy that you consume.

You should also look at your body fat percentage. Most people gain muscle mass as a result of training, even aerobic training. When you add muscle and lose fat at the same time, your body fat percentage drops, even though your total body weight may remain the same. Your goal should be to increase lean muscle mass and decrease body fat percentage. There are several methods for determining body fat percentages. Some bathroom scales can measure it by determining how fast electricity travels through your body; it's a process called bioelectric impedance. It turns out that electricity travels faster through lean tissue than through fat. Many health clubs and physicians' offices can also determine your fat percentage by measuring the thickness of a few skinfolds on your body. Both methods are comparable in accuracy. Lean body mass burns energy, so adding some muscle to your body may help you lose some more of that not-so-lean body mass.

The bottom line is that good health takes precedence over improving athletic performance. Everyone has an ideal weight, the weight at which the body functions at its best. For some that weight may be a bit higher than they would like, so they force themselves below their ideal weights. Attempting to stay under your ideal weight for long periods of time often leads to fatigue, immune system depression, and illness. If your goal is to be a stronger, lighter cyclist, concentrate on becoming a stronger cyclist first and you may realize you don't need to be a lighter cyclist.