well, I'm a bit of a traditionalist, but for me, season ends mid-october more or less. I take maybe 6 weeks of "smiles not miles" - i.e. I ride if the weather's nice enough to enjoy it, and only for as long as I'm enjoying things. Takes me through to December, the start of base distance season - from dec-feb I aim to get at least 1,000km in of long steady rides (say Z3 HR or a NP of no more than 70% of FTP) per month - by the end of Febuary, with 3k km's in my legs I'll think about hitting some intervals.

For long hard runs, I stick to Porridge (oatmeal) for breakfast. Other than that, just try and eat "proper food" rather than packaged/processed/"race food" - okay, maybe keep a couple of gels/bars in the saddlebag just in case of complete emergency if the man with the hammer gets you - but otherwise, I stick with ordinary food - I make up sandwiches from baguettes with ham or cheese on them, cut them into 2" sections flatten 'em a bit (for pocketability) and foil wrap 'em individually.

For harder shorter sessions - under a couple of hours, I just take water (or maybe water and electrolyte tablets) and the same "dire emergency gel" in the saddlebag just in case. Under 2 hours, provided you're relatively well fed beforehand, you shouldn't need to eat much, but concentrate on getting something into your system within the first half hour of finishing. In summer I tend to make up a large fruit smoothie (maybe with a scoop of whey protein if it's going to be something that'll cause a little muscle soreness like sprint intervals) and leave it in the 'fridge ready to pour down my neck as I return. In colder weather, it'll probably be a bowl of soup instead.

Really, unless you're racing, most of the supplements etc. are a bit over the top - find an energy drink, bar and gel that works for you and doesn't cause upset stomachs, and keep them for EVENTS where you won't want to be faffing with a sandwich or getting off at a cafe for a mid-ride espresso...

It's tough training hard on a bike whilst eating at a defecit, purely because of the time and energy you CAN displace on something like a century ride. Last year I did one ride for example that was 135km (83 miles) and burned up 3800kCals over and above my allowance. On those figures it's pretty clear that you really DO have to consider eating back at least some of the exercise calories. I am lucky that I have a Garmin 800 thats had the "NewLeaf" metabolic profile customising done, and I'm riding with a power meter, so I'm pretty sure that I know that the Calories figure from the Garmin is somewhere near correct. It's also around HALF the numbers that the MFP database has in it for my height/weight and ride speed, so if you're relying on the MFP calculations for god's sake don't eat all the exercise calories back...

I pretty much concentrated earlier on losing the weight, spending the first 18 months on here following the regime and riding "base mileage" only. 2013 I made the transition to "working on the engine rather than the bodywork" as because I was light enough to actually push myself a bit harder without stroking out it was time to try and get properly cycle fit rather than just riding to burn some kcals. So, I went from "lose 1kg a week" to "lose 500g a week" in the settings, allowed myself to go over a little (maybe 500cals over the week) and upped the intensity for 1-2 rides out of the 5 a week. Still kept the long steady ride on sunday because of the simple joy of riding for 5-6 hours on (relatively) quiet roads but introduced harder sessions into the program as well. It seemed to work, as my FTP went up from a paltry 168 from my first test in Jan 2013 to 265 in early december. I also managed to do a 10 mile TT in 26:51 which I was pretty happy with for a guy just turned 50 who'd done his last time-trial at the age of 26!