Long rides equal weight gain

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Saph said:

It seems I lose more weight on my 15-20 mile rides as opposed to my 50-100 mile rides. I find I am eating to keep from bonking and what I eat and drink has more calories than what I am burning by slow touring type riding. Any thoughts on this?

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Saph said:

It seems I lose more weight on my 15-20 mile rides as opposed to my 50-100 mile rides. I find I am eating to keep from bonking and what I eat and drink has more calories than what I am burning by slow touring type riding. Any thoughts on this?

mmmmm....eat less. Are you eating Big Macs on your long rides, I guess you would pass a lot of maccas on a 100 mile ride. Just kidding.

I'm sorry Saph but you are wrong. I do not know how you are determining your weight gain/loss but you are being fooled by your dayly variation in weight. You will be loosing fat on a 100 mile rides unless you are talking about riding just one 100 mile ride over a very long period and pigging out the day after. Riding 100 miles a day will cause weight loss no matter how much you eat. The only exception is that muscle weighs a lot more than fat so that the muscle you add may ofset some of the fat you loose in weight. I have known two people who ride their bikes 100 miles or more every day and believe me they were lean people.

Saph said:

It seems I lose more weight on my 15-20 mile rides as opposed to my 50-100 mile rides. I find I am eating to keep from bonking and what I eat and drink has more calories than what I am burning by slow touring type riding. Any thoughts on this?

I don't -can't do 100 mile rides everyday. Nor do I want to. I have checked my scales and they are not wrong. I am just telling you what I have noted. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you take in the same amount or more calories while riding that you will not lose weight. I think that happens with a lot of people. I have read some other posts where riders tell what they eat while riding and there is not way the will burn those calories at touring speeds while riding.

Robert Gardner said:

I'm sorry Saph but you are wrong. I do not know how you are determining your weight gain/loss but you are being fooled by your dayly variation in weight. You will be loosing fat on a 100 mile rides unless you are talking about riding just one 100 mile ride over a very long period and pigging out the day after. Riding 100 miles a day will cause weight loss no matter how much you eat. The only exception is that muscle weighs a lot more than fat so that the muscle you add may ofset some of the fat you loose in weight. I have known two people who ride their bikes 100 miles or more every day and believe me they were lean people.

As a matter of fact you don't even have to eat. Just drinking (or whatever you do with those gels) plus sports drinks can add more calories than you will burn. I am going to try just drinkin water and a regular lunch on my long rides

It's all in what you are eating and how hard you are working to cover the miles. Factor One: You probably ride much harder on the short rides and are more conservative on the longer rides. Factor Two: calories are calories but not all foods of the same caloric value digest the same. Consult any of the popular cycle training books on this topic.

Or simply choose between increasing your cadence on the long rides or modifying your diet.

Giving up the end of the ride beers in NOT an option!

Three years back in my early 20s in Japan I did between 60-160km daily, with sporadic rest days visiting folks, for about 6 weeks and gained 5kg of both fat and muscle on my normal 82kg. I reckon I took in more calories than I burned, and probably too much protein, but afternoon-discount chunks of fish are hard to resist. After touring I gradually went back down to 180.
Recently I'm doing more distance again, average around 40km per day, but in a city where for every 20 minutes wheel-time there is 5 minutes stoplight-time. This makes for more of a periodic-sprint ride rather than slow and steady. I still eat a lot but probably space it more over the day and eat less each meal. I'm not particularly scientific about it, but I notice that I have fluctuated between 80 and 83kg over the past 4 months (depending on when during the day I weigh), with some loss of fat and some gain in leg muscle. We're all different, though; this is just an anecdote.

Weight gain doesn't necessarily mean fat gain, and in any case I wouldn't look at your weight after any particular ride as an indication of the weight-direction your body is headed. Keep some stats and check after a few weeks or months.