A great article. I find the subject of diet interesting both personally and how pro-cyclists manage it.
I wish we could get away from BMI. In my case, although I have an athletic figure rather than a "dad bod", I am classed as overweight which impacts insurance premiums. Also not great for the watts per kg but who cares -I can still get from A to B.
Personally as someone in the second half of life, I work hard on fitness and health, with quite a lot fo focus on diet - eating plenty of vegetables, fibre (it can be soluble), roughage (isn't soluble) and fermented foods. I ignore the five a day strategy and aim for 30+ different vegetables per week to maintain a healthy gut microbiome.
I asked a question elsewhere about how professional cyclists maintain a healthy gut and the medium and long term implications of a low fibre diet. The responses range from fibre has too much bulk to laughter. From which I concluded many amateur and pro-cyclist understand and/or care little about impact of diet on their longer term health.
I was in a simmilar situation, also in a french team(french part of swizerland).
The little comments from the DS and Staff members about my weight or the ammount of food I ate made me crazy...
I was not very experienced and took theyr remakrs personal. I got obsessed with loosing weight, I stopped eating properly on the bike, consumed only the bare minimum of Carbs afterwards and often went to bed hungry. Well in the end i managed to loose about 6kg in 3 Months whilst almost keeping my Power on the same level. But i was really on my limit both mentaly and physically, i was always stressed out got very emotional and for my strength Time Trialing where its more abut Watts / CDA i could not make any improvements. And the promissed climbing performances?, well as it turns out even with 6kg less (74kg) i was still unable to follow the strongest climbers in the races.
Finally I think every rider has to get to know his body, it takes time and experiance to know when it's okay to eat some Junk Food or just some more Food and when better not to. Maybe dieting and getting as light as possible is a way to go for the Jumbo Visma mountain squad, but i think for lots of cyclists, specially younger riders it is more important to supply the body with sufficient energy to ensure proper recovery and therfore stay motivatet and happy and progress in the longrun.
A great article. I find the subject of diet interesting both personally and how pro-cyclists manage it.
I wish we could get away from BMI. In my case, although I have an athletic figure rather than a "dad bod", I am classed as overweight which impacts insurance premiums. Also not great for the watts per kg but who cares -I can still get from A to B.
Personally as someone in the second half of life, I work hard on fitness and health, with quite a lot fo focus on diet - eating plenty of vegetables, fibre (it can be soluble), roughage (isn't soluble) and fermented foods. I ignore the five a day strategy and aim for 30+ different vegetables per week to maintain a healthy gut microbiome.
I asked a question elsewhere about how professional cyclists maintain a healthy gut and the medium and long term implications of a low fibre diet. The responses range from fibre has too much bulk to laughter. From which I concluded many amateur and pro-cyclist understand and/or care little about impact of diet on their longer term health.
Could not agree more with your article!
I was in a simmilar situation, also in a french team(french part of swizerland).
The little comments from the DS and Staff members about my weight or the ammount of food I ate made me crazy...
I was not very experienced and took theyr remakrs personal. I got obsessed with loosing weight, I stopped eating properly on the bike, consumed only the bare minimum of Carbs afterwards and often went to bed hungry. Well in the end i managed to loose about 6kg in 3 Months whilst almost keeping my Power on the same level. But i was really on my limit both mentaly and physically, i was always stressed out got very emotional and for my strength Time Trialing where its more abut Watts / CDA i could not make any improvements. And the promissed climbing performances?, well as it turns out even with 6kg less (74kg) i was still unable to follow the strongest climbers in the races.
Finally I think every rider has to get to know his body, it takes time and experiance to know when it's okay to eat some Junk Food or just some more Food and when better not to. Maybe dieting and getting as light as possible is a way to go for the Jumbo Visma mountain squad, but i think for lots of cyclists, specially younger riders it is more important to supply the body with sufficient energy to ensure proper recovery and therfore stay motivatet and happy and progress in the longrun.