How to lose weight cyclist

Cyclists with optimum weight faster and more technical. But what is the optimal weight for the rider and how to achieve it?

"Excess weight is the enemy of the cyclist," said Matt Fitzgerald, author of the article "Race for the masses" (VeloPress). Excess weight is spending more energy, slows down performance and affects the joints makes it difficult to work.

You can not change the basic physiology of such data as the length of the limbs, the potential for weight loss, but, says Fitzgerald, "You can reduce your weight to a level that is optimal for your body, taking into account genetic constraints." You can improve the ratio of the power of your body weight through exercise and proper nutrition.



Fitzgerald cautions against the use of body mass index (BMI), which is touted by many doctors to assess the optimal body weight. "BMI is intended to detect unhealthy people from the population as a whole. This is too vague a way to determine the ideal weight of an athlete," says Fitzgerald.

Instead, he said, lowering body fat is key, as it increases your aerobic capacity, because the muscles will experience less competition from fat in the supply of oxygen and fuel. (You can use commonly available scales with the determinant of body fat).

Good nutrition

If you focus on one of the five steps to achieve optimum weight, the taste of food will be the basis.

Fitzgerald breaks the food quality in six categories: fruits, vegetables, lean proteins such as meat and fish with a fat content less than 10%, nuts and seeds, whole grains, low fat dairy foods and essential fats such as omega-6 and omega- 3 fatty acids, which are the best source is oily fish.

Junk foods you must avoid, into five groups: food from refined grains, sweets (including soft drinks), dessert cakes that contain large amounts of sugar, all prepared in oil, all fatty dairy products and fatty proteins, such the meat with a fat content exceeding 10%.

The balance of energy sources

Instead of strict dieting and the proportions of macronutrients, such as 60% carbohydrate, 20% fat and 20% protein, Fitzgerald suggests a more balanced approach. "You need not worry about the percentage of total carbohydrates consumed calories. Try to have more carbohydrates, and that their number is consistent with your training load, you still get enough protein and fat from the total number of calories eaten."

Time of supply

The time when you eat has a great influence on the structure of the body, the process of how the calories will be stored and used during the day. "The key here is to shift the balance of the storage of calories for immediate use," says Fitzgerald.

Eat early, eat often, before, during and after workouts. Early diet will eat less in the afternoon, which means that most likely you will use the right products in place of candy and sweet water. Try to eat 25% calories from obschesutochnogo number in the first hour after awakening.

Frequent meals will increase the metabolism, and thus will burn more calories. It will also reduce your appetite and avoid overeating. Ideally you should eat 2-4 hours before you go on a bicycle, and the food should include 100 grams of carbohydrates.

Snacks during exercise on a bicycle will increase your productivity and help you burn more fat.

Backed up on workout energy drinks and gels you get a compact and high-quality food.

Eating soon after a workout also promotes weight loss, as the balance shifts to the synthesis of glycogen and muscle protein accumulation of fat.

Office of appetite

It is important to monitor not only what you eat when you eat, but also the fact, what you eat. There is such a popular phenomenon of emotional eating - are cases when sad, happy, bored - a spontaneous power to which many people do not pay attention.

Eat small portions as an appetizer before eating nuts, low fat yogurt - it will help you better manage your appetite.

Technology lose weight

There are two ways to lose weight:

1. interval to perform high-intensity exercise,
2. to carry out long-term exercise of moderate intensity in the pulse area of ​​fat burning.

These two methods equally effective, but most cyclists do not want to simply lose weight and still get the best racing shape. Therefore, one chooses a suitable program to him.

Fat-burning zone is usually located between 59% and 64% of maximum heart rate in trained cyclists, and between 47% and 52% of the untrained.

Weight and dimensions

"What can be measured. So you can manage," says Fitzgerald - referring to the Minneapolis Heart study which showed that the subjects lost weight at a pound more than when they were weighed every 11 days. To do this, Fitzgerald has to keep a diary of body weight: burn fat percentage, record-eat foods, as well as accounting of calories burned. To account for the daily intake of calories to the calories spent on training Turn up the calories expended during the period of rest. How many calories you burn with the rest can be estimated on the basis of height, weight, age, for greater accuracy, you need to know the percentage of body fat. The Internet has many resources to calculate this figure.

For a rough estimate: the eight-hour sit-in of a man weighing 68 kg will burn 984 calories.

One of the control weighting is sufficient, but must be not less than once a month.