GCN’s Top Ten Ways To Lose Weight Through Cycling
One, try pre-breakfast riding.
When you get up in the morning, you're in a fasted state, having
probably not eaten for eight hours or more. Going for an early morning ride
pre-breakfast will encourage your body to burn fats, particularly if you have a
double espresso. This is a method that Team Sky Riders have used in the past. The
ride doesn't need to be long or intense. Thirty minutes to an
hour is steady riding, so this is ideal if you commute to work.
However, the important thing with this strategy is that you follow the ride
with a good, healthy breakfast, oatmeal of similar. Never skip breakfast
totally. Two, save energy bars and gels for racing and use natural products for
training. Energy bars and gels are very dense in calories. This is how they should
be, able to deliver very quick energy to your body when you most need it. However, in general, it's unlikely that
you'll be using as many calories per hour in training as you would do in a race.
So,
why not try making yourself some natural products for training? Homemade flapjacks,
or mini jam, or honey sandwiches will not only provide you with enough energy,
but they also taste great as well. Three, use electrolyte drinks instead of
energy drinks. Energy drinks provide just that, energy. They're designed to give you
carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, which means that they get into your
muscles very quickly, plus electrolytes to replace the salt that
you lose through sweat.
If you're trying to lose weight, it's a
good idea to replace your energy drink with an electrolyte drink, which is all
the electrolytes you need but none of the calories. This is particularly relevant if
you're not riding for more than two hours at a time. Four, make a plan and stick to it. It's
much easier to stick to something if it's planned in advance, and that applies to
your training and your diet. Try to plan at least one week in advance, because
remember, five one-hour rides a week make you fitter and leaner than one
five-hour ride at the weekend. When making a plan, it's important that
it's achievable.
Setting your sights too high will inevitably mean that you
falter and then get fed up. In general, plans should progress gradually. Either
increase in the duration you ride at a certain intensity or the
intensity at a certain duration. Five, cut sugar from tea and coffee. When
Bradley Wiggins lost a lot of weight in 2009 proceeding to finish fourth at the
Tour de France, one of the things he changed was to cut sugar
from his tea and coffee. It makes sense. If you have four cups of
coffee or tea a day, that's 60 calories that you could be saving. Now, over the
course of a year, that's an amazing 22,000 calories, equivalent to nine days of food
for the average amount. Six, remove high calorie drinks from your
diet. It's easy to forget about drinks when we think about diet, but certain
drinks contain calories equivalent to an entire meal. For example, a Starbucks
venti White Chocolate Mocha contains an incredible 580 calories, equivalent to
two McDonald's cheeseburgers. We've already recommended taking
sugar out of you tea and coffee, but it's also worth bearing in mind that
milk and flavorings will normally contain a lot of calories, too.
Unfortunately,
the same applies to alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is secondary to fat in caloric
density with seven calories per gram, so try to reduce your intake of
alcohol or opt for lower calorie drinks, such as Wiggo's favorite, vodka tonic. Seven, eat whilst riding to
prevent a post-ride binge. We've told you how to reduce
your calories when training. Now, we're going to tell
you how to get enough. If you've never blown up on a ride,
then you're not a proper cyclist. It's happened to us all, running
out of glycogen, and feeling weak, dizzy, and like you could eat an entire
warehouse of chocolate. The problem, apart from feeling so terrible, is
that we often overeat when we get home, or to the cafe, because it takes too
long for our brain to catch up with what's being ingested.
To avoid this, make sure
you eat and drink enough on your training rides to prevent a
huge post-ride binge. Eight, increase the distance of your
commute to work. Whilst having a routine can often be a good thing, sometimes
it means that you don't progress. If you commute to work, why not try doing
a longer route, either going in or on your way home once or twice a week? The extra
kilometers might well reignite your weight loss, helping you
achieve your goals. Nine, don't drop your calorie
intake excessively. It's very easy, especially on January 1st, to try and cut
everything bad from your diet in the attempt to be perfect athlete. However, we
know that's not going to last very long, and if you deprive yourself with every
little treat, it's not going to be very long before you crack completely.
Whenever
you start a diet, the reduction in calorie intake should be small, so they
can keep to it and still lose weight. Ten, reduce calories later in the evening.
The alternative to pre-breakfast riding is to stack your calories at the start of the
day. It's a technique that many pro-riders put to good effect. The theory is fairly
simple. Eat as much as you want for breakfast, but that's going to be your
biggest meal of the day. Then eat a good, healthy lunch with less calories than your
breakfast, and then a smaller dinner in the evening. Studies have been carried
out to show the effectiveness of this strategy, which is based on the fact
that you're more likely to burn off the calories that you consume at breakfast
than those you consume in the evening which often sit in your stomach.
If you
adhere to even some of these principles, you'd be well on your
way to losing weight. For more videos like
this, subscribe to GCN. Now what are we going to do? So, now
we are ready to make the two knots, so, starting at one end of the inner
tube, just put a simple knot in it..
