How many calories?

Philsybob said:

I....cycling an hour a day, I should be consuming 3900 calories a day. This seems to be a fairly large number. I have also been logging my food consumption and getting around 2000-2500 per day. Is this telling me that I should be eating more Or are their calculations a bit skeww-whiff.

Those tables are estimates. First they estimate the calories consumed during a one hour ride. Well that depends a lot on terrain(hilly, flat, mountains), wind conditions, your bike (mtn. road, etc.) your frontal area and drag (position on bike, body build, etc.). Then they have to make assumptions about your basal metabolic rate which varies between individuals and lifestyles(do you drive everywhere or walk for quick errands?, do you have other routines like a dog walk or any other calorie burners during the day?)

It also depends on your goals, are you trying to maintain your current weight, trying to build mass(pretty rare for a road cyclist) or trying to lose weight?

If you've been tracking your caloric intake and weighing yourself you've got all the info you need to make a real measurement and forget about the on line estimates. If you're holding your weight steady on your 2000-2500 calorie diet and your training and lifestyle has been fairly constant for a while then you know what you need to eat to maintain your weight (2000-2500 calories). If you've been gaining weight you need to cut back and if you're losing weight you need to eat more. Just remember there's 3500 calories to a pound so you've got to be hypocaloric to the tune of 3500 calories to drop a pound. Whether that happens from increased exercise or decreased intake isn't really important as long as you fuel yourself well enough to train on subsequent days. Make sure you're well hydrated when you make your weight measurements since workout dehydration can show up as a loss of 2 pounds (a kilo) or more and lead you to think you're losing or gaining weight that is actually short term water.

Off the cuff I'd say 3900 calories per day with a one hour ride for an 81 kilo male is very high and will result in added pounds (not necessarily muscle either). I'm currently at 81 kilos myself and riding an average of 1.5 hours a day this time of year, mostly tempo and sweet spot (sub LT) work. I'm consuming approximately 1800 calories a day and losing about a pound (~.5 kilos) per week. I'm religious about replacing glycogen and some protein in the critical half hour after exercise and otherwise trying to eat a balanced diet(my wife's a registered dietician, helps a lot in terms of getting a balanced diet). As I get closer to the season, start riding longer rides and start increasing workout intensity I'll increase my daily intake accordingly and won't try to lose any more weight.

Hope that helps,
-Dave

I use the site and find it pretty accurate. You have to be honest about what you eat, of course. And like the previous poster said, a lot of those numbers are estimates. For me it works out pretty well. I've been carrying about a 400 calorie deficit average for a month and have dropped about 3 pounds in that time.

In edit: I just went back for the last 3 months and calculated my calories eaten versus my calories burned, and checked it against my weight lost. I used a 3500 calorie differential to predict a one pound loss in weight.

Over those 3 months the site says I should have lost 6.83 pounds. In reality I lost 7.13 pounds. That would be a 1050 calorie differential over 3 months. So for me, it works really well. I would never have imagined it was that accurate.