Hey all~ just a quick Q and I'm off to bed for the evening.
If I rode, say, over 8 hours per week how skinny would I get?
I'm already rather thin (tiny muscles, between 13-15% bodyfat), but I'm where I want to be muscularly. I'm just concerned that if I keep up my current riding level that I'll become nothing but a pair of legs - I don't want to look sinewy and skeletal from the waist up! Is this nothing but an irrational fear? How catabolic is cycling (endurance cycling, that is, not tooling aroud at 5 mph on a flat trail for 20 minutes - not that there's anything wrong with that at all...) and how does it effect hormone levels?
thanx, sorry about the verbose nature of this thread... I'm too tired!
I've done a google image search for an extreme example of what I do NOT want to look like. Methinks my fiance would demote me to dude-she-used-to-know status! Too lazy to insert, just copy and paste:
I've been rowing for years and ended my college career with big legs and lots of muscle. Then 5 years of desk job and driving many miles put on the fat.
So I started cycling and noticed a big weight reduction but also a muscle wastage at first. I think it depends on the individual but I lost loads of strength.
Simple remedy: Increased protein (I try to get about 1 gram per pound of body weight). I try to acheive at least 60-70% from real food rather than powder. It isn't easy to consume that much.
Plenty of iron. 200lbs should be enough for most upper body problems. Take it slowly. The legs and [censored] might need more though.
Of course, I'm never going to win any competetive cycling events with my current weight but I do have a lot of fun cycling, even in the mountains.
Well, it depends what type of riding you do, what intensity, what other activities you would build into your exercise regimen, what kind of diet and lifestyle you would have... 😕
If I rode, say, over 8 hours per week how skinny would I get?
Diet has a far more powerful influence on body composition than training volume. I trained for about three years at a 10-12hr/wk volume and saw absolutely *no* weight loss over my untrained state. When I made a conscious effort to watch what I ate, etc., I immediately lost about 15 pounds.
Your brain and body have an amazingly intricate, finely tuned mechanism for keeping your energy balance stable. If you ride more, you'll find you're hungrier, and therefore eat more. Don't sweat it.
