Why am I putting on weight?

on-yer-bike

It seems that the more riding I do the more weight I am putting on and my diet hasn't changed. For years, and before I started cycling, my weight was below 70kg sometimes as low as 67kg. I started road cycling 2.5 years ago and this year my weight has crept up to
73 kg after a busy season. My legs are getting bigger but so is my waist. Has my metabolism changed due to the amount of cycling? I don't eat junk food or drink beer. The only thing that has changed is that I used to do spin classes at least once a week at the local gym (I ride now instead). I'm 55 so could it be age? Im just over 5-10, light build, and don't really want to be more than 70 kg.

ut_och_cykla

I believe your basic metabolic rate decreases as you get older which may account for some of eth increase - but you are probably just eating marginally too many calories for your level of exertion. 3 kgs equals 24000 kcals of fat - just 461 per week - or 60 or so kcals a day - almost nothing but doen every day it becomes something over many months. One slice of bread, half a banana, a small galss of orange juice or something similar. Don't just blame your age!

scapaslow

A recent Cycling Weekly article about cycling when you get older remarks that muscle mass declines and is replaced by fat mass which is hard to get rid of by cycling. Here's what they say-

Building lean muscle requires a larger protein intake. Protein synthesis of a 50 yr old is approx 25% of a 20 yr old.
Their solution is for more protein in the diet and resistance training rather than aerobic training to shift the fat. It claims that the resistance training exercises will increase the resting metabolic rate resulting in weight loss. Don't reduce calories in general as you need them to keep your fat free mass. Reducing them could make hit recovery and general immunity.

To paraphrase: cut back on the "fat burning" winter miles, hit the weights instead to burn the fat and do short intense work on the bike while increasing protein intake.

TCBLUE

Could be to many carbs and not enough protein

Alex_Simmons/RST

scapaslow wrote:

A recent Cycling Weekly article about cycling when you get older remarks that muscle mass declines and is replaced by fat mass which is hard to get rid of by cycling. Here's what they say-

Building lean muscle requires a larger protein intake. Protein synthesis of a 50 yr old is approx 25% of a 20 yr old.
Their solution is for more protein in the diet and resistance training rather than aerobic training to shift the fat. It claims that the resistance training exercises will increase the resting metabolic rate resulting in weight loss. Don't reduce calories in general as you need them to keep your fat free mass. Reducing them could make hit recovery and general immunity.

To paraphrase: cut back on the "fat burning" winter miles, hit the weights instead to burn the fat and do short intense work on the bike while increasing protein intake.

Or you could just use more calories than you eat.

Let's say you were able to increase your BMR by 5% by doing all that. That would be ~ 75-100 Calories / day. You could also burn that many Calories by cycling moderately for 10-minutes.

jgsi

Something has changed to make you put weight on and it is not being 1 year older, I bet.

furrag

I have never ever been able to get over 11 stone in my life. Even when I was inactive doing no exercise, and consuming lots of food and lots of midnight junk food such as pizza, sweets, cakes etc. I would always hang around 10.5 stone.

I then took up running and cycling, and within 10 months I'm now 11.2 stone. My diet's better, though I do also wonder how much of that is muscle mass. My legs certainly look a lot bigger and look more muscular. I just find it amusing that I couldn't get near 11 stone while inactive, and now 5000 miles of exercise later, I got there.

Glycogen stores are worth about 0.3 stone in a 150lb man, and a litre of water is worth about 0.15 stone. An educated guess would be that increased weight on rest days could just be rehydration and restored glycogen levels.