Recommendation for dealing with long distance cycling in calorie counting.
jondthompson
Posts: 2 Member
So, I went and rode 76 miles at a 16.5 MPH average, which isn't abnormal for me. My cyclo computer estimates a 3766 calorie burn, during which I ate roughly 1232 calories. My normal daily intake, as prescribed by MFP, is 1630 pre exercise.
Anyhow, its saying I have 4164 calories to consume today... that's almost two large pizzas. I have no interest in consuming that much food, nor do I really need to. So.. is it ok to run a large caloric deficit when I ride a long distance such as this?
Anyhow, its saying I have 4164 calories to consume today... that's almost two large pizzas. I have no interest in consuming that much food, nor do I really need to. So.. is it ok to run a large caloric deficit when I ride a long distance such as this?
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Replies
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Save some of the calories for tomorrow. You might want them then.
Your computer is overstating your burn. It's large, but not that huge unless all 76 miles were uphill into a headwind.
Giant calorie deficits shouldn't be a regular thing, but you probably don't go this far every day. As an occasional thing is OK as long as you listen to your body.2 -
If I had those numbers, I would first double check the 1232 calories eaten during the ride. You haven't fueled that lengthy of a ride with these figures.
Yes, there are multiple downsides from large deficits. Decreased performance, lethargy, hunger and muscle loss.0 -
Your calorie burn seems very highly unlikely to be that high so doubt your deficit is that large. (Unless you are on a MTB going unusually fast perhaps?)
When riding at a decent pace you can't eat (digest) enough to keep up with your calorie expenditure so a large deficit on the day of a big ride is likely. 90g of carbs/hr is sometimes quoted as the maximum (360cals of glucose/fructose).
Once in a while isn't a big deal but you should go into a big ride fully fuelled and also eat for recovery.
If you are riding next day as well then it's obviously more of a problem and you will need to eat more.
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I've heard 250 cals per hour of sugar is the maximum you can process, so what you should aim to take in on a big ride.
I bet it depends on the person.0 -
The calorie estimate might be a bit high, but you certainly used something like 800 kcals per hour. I find with cycling that hunger hits the next few days. Actually, with this sort of exercise, it's easy to overeat in the off days due to an overcompensating appetite.
http://www.runnersworld.com/fuel-school/how-to-avoid-weight-gain-from-marathon-training1 -
I was definitely needing calories when I got home. As for the calculation's accuracy.. that was the most conservative estimate I had seen thus far. MFP wanted to hand me 7k calories, which I thought was a bit crazy. Strava is telling me 2500 cals, so I updated with that. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so no ride. I got 3500 miles in during 2016 including four centuries, so I'm not new to long rides, nor how to prepare for or eat during, just combining with actually looking at my calorie balance.0
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Btw: awesome riding!
MFP does not give highly accurate calorie estimates for everything.1 -
I did 41 miles yesterday, at a much slower pace, but with ~3,800 (?) feet of vertical. Power meter got me at 1,650 kJ/kCal.
Strava basically assumes you're riding alone with no wind, calculates the power you'd need to go the speed your file says you were going, and figures out the calorie needs for that for your and your bike's weight. It's probably one of the better ways to guess. It'll get it wrong if you're drafting, or there's a head or tail wind though.1 -
Your calorie burn seems very highly unlikely to be that high so doubt your deficit is that large. (Unless you are on a MTB going unusually fast perhaps?)
When riding at a decent pace you can't eat (digest) enough to keep up with your calorie expenditure so a large deficit on the day of a big ride is likely. 90g of carbs/hr is sometimes quoted as the maximum (360cals of glucose/fructose).
Once in a while isn't a big deal but you should go into a big ride fully fuelled and also eat for recovery.
If you are riding next day as well then it's obviously more of a problem and you will need to eat more.
This0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »I've heard 250 cals per hour of sugar is the maximum you can process, so what you should aim to take in on a big ride.
I bet it depends on the person.
@NorthCascades
That would be glucose only - 60g / hour is commonly given as the maximum.
If you have glucose/fructose in a 2:1 ratio you get to the 90g amount. Different transporters and digestive pathways for the different sugars.
But I'm sure there are personal variations as you say. I rarely manage to hit the maximum for my long rides as I can't fuel purely on gels/drinks and need some solid foods/snacks too to prevent nausea.
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My experience both when losing weight and tracking calories and maintaining without tracking....jondthompson wrote: »I was definitely needing calories when I got home. As for the calculation's accuracy.. that was the most conservative estimate I had seen thus far. MFP wanted to hand me 7k calories, which I thought was a bit crazy. Strava is telling me 2500 cals, so I updated with that. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so no ride. I got 3500 miles in during 2016 including four centuries, so I'm not new to long rides, nor how to prepare for or eat during, just combining with actually looking at my calorie balance.
MFP cycling estimates do seem to come out very high - at least for road cycling. The 16-20mph band is also ridiculously wide as there's a hell of a difference between 16.1 and 19.9mph!
Once you get to ">20ph racing" they get astronomical.
Garmin seems generally reasonable but on low intensity/low HR rides it seems to underestimate.
Strava seems also to be generally reasonable for most rides.
I also use a power meter equipped trainer but Wattbike use a peculiar algorithm that tries to take total metabolic cost into account rather than the more normal power X efficiency ratio.
In the end I linked Garmin and Wattbike Hub to Strava and then linked Strava to MyFitnessPal. So really Strava is my "golden source" - I don't expect it be totally accurate but it is consistent and for finding a desired calorie balance reasonable and consistent works.
In the end food logging accuracy makes a bigger impact than exercise logging accuracy even for long distance cyclists like us. A bit of common sense to make adjustments based on actual weight trends over time also works.0 -
jondthompson wrote: »So, I went and rode 76 miles at a 16.5 MPH average, which isn't abnormal for me. My cyclo computer estimates a 3766 calorie burn, during which I ate roughly 1232 calories. My normal daily intake, as prescribed by MFP, is 1630 pre exercise.
Anyhow, its saying I have 4164 calories to consume today... that's almost two large pizzas. I have no interest in consuming that much food, nor do I really need to. So.. is it ok to run a large caloric deficit when I ride a long distance such as this?
I use two methods to calculate my calories:
1) Strava
2) 100 calories for every 5 km.
76 miles is 122 km. 122 km would be 2440 calories by my 100 calories for every 5 km method. Happily Strava agrees ... sort of. Chances are it would give me 2100 calories or so.
Therefore, just one large pizza will do.
jondthompson wrote: »I was definitely needing calories when I got home. As for the calculation's accuracy.. that was the most conservative estimate I had seen thus far. MFP wanted to hand me 7k calories, which I thought was a bit crazy. Strava is telling me 2500 cals, so I updated with that. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so no ride. I got 3500 miles in during 2016 including four centuries, so I'm not new to long rides, nor how to prepare for or eat during, just combining with actually looking at my calorie balance.
Oh look!
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You might also be interested in this: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10366563/ultradistance-cycling#latest0
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jondthompson wrote: »I was definitely needing calories when I got home. As for the calculation's accuracy.. that was the most conservative estimate I had seen thus far. MFP wanted to hand me 7k calories, which I thought was a bit crazy. Strava is telling me 2500 cals, so I updated with that. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so no ride. I got 3500 miles in during 2016 including four centuries, so I'm not new to long rides, nor how to prepare for or eat during, just combining with actually looking at my calorie balance.
Go with that (2500) and save some of your leftover calories for tomorrow's big feast!
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I'm not going to say they cyclo computer is off because I seen similar number and I haven't been gaining weight. As for whether you eat all those calories on the day you burn them or not, my experience is that I'm more hungry on the day after a big ride. If I were going to put several days of riding together I might eat more the day of, but otherwise I just eat what I feel like eating for a couple of days.0
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50 calories per mile at 16.5 mph seems high, unless it was a very hilly or windy ride. My cycle computer (Garmin Edge 800) and Strava usually estimate 28-35 calories per mile, and the two are usually within 5% of one another.
Your updated value from Strava seems reasonable. The way I approach such a deficit is usually a combination of eating over my goal for a few days before a long ride, running a moderate deficit on the day of the ride itself, then eating over my goal for a day or two afterwards. I usually track calories on a weekly basis anyway.0 -
if you were to eat back about half your workout calories - that would be a total of 3533 for the day (1650+1883) - if you were to subtract the calories you took in during (1232) - that would leave you at 2301 for the rest of the day - nothing wrong with that if you break it down into pre/post workout food and regular meals0
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I do find on my long ride/run days if I neglect to eat enough after - that the next two days are going to be horrible because it will be like I can't eat enough0
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Sounds pretty high. The longest ride I done, in terms of saddle time, was a 89.5 mile with 11,588 ft elevation gain at 8:29 moving/10:23 total. Garmin (520/Connect) has me at 4,255 cals. The closest ride in terms of cal expendure to yours is a century last October (100.5 miles, 5:24 moving/6:10 total, and 3,586 feet elevation gain) in which Garmin credited me with 3,577 cals. I have a power meter and Garmin's estimates tend to be higher than what Strava gives me but not by much.
Without the power meter, both Strava's and Garmin's estimates are rubbish. It's based on average speed and tends to be higher than MET.
Except for my first two centuries, I generally can't eat much after the ride but catches up on the next two days.0 -
Without the power meter, both Strava's and Garmin's estimates are rubbish. It's based on average speed and tends to be higher than MET.
While I don't have one, that makes perfect sense to me. (For those who don't know: they are pretty expensive.) You certainly get excellent ride-to-ride energy expenditure data and the power meter tells you immediately if you are slacking off during a ride. All good stuff.
However: To get your calorie burn from your energy expenditure, you need to know your efficiency factor, which I see from one article is about 24%. That means you (or your software) takes the measured energy you applied to the cranks and multiplies it by ~4.17 to get your calorie usage. How universal and constant is this factor? It could change with your level of fitness, age, weight, or sex.
I would be very interested in a paper that compares all the methods (send it to me if you find one; note that the gold standard is oxygen consumption). Here are three methods that are all easy to implement on a cell phone:
- GPS-based: Speed(t), grade(t), body weight, (age, sex?)
- HRM-based: HR(t), body weight, sex, age (most systems use the same formula based on all 4 parameters)
- Power-Meter-based: Power(t), (weight, age, sex?)
Here (t) means "as a function of time."0 -
It seems to me that Garmin is using more than just average speed. I think they are also including elevation gain. That doesn't account for wind, but it would provide an accurate number if the wind is calm.0
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All of the conversation about the accuracy of calorie calculations from exercise aside, the real question here in my mind is how does one absorb into a calorie restricted diet very large energy burns. Again without getting into what it takes to create a negative net calorie count for the day, let's all basically agree that it's possible.
OK, no we are on solid ground. Using me as an example; I'm a 215 pound 53 year old guy with a calorie goal of 1600 a day. On a typical 2-3 hour 30+ mile mtn bike ride with 2500-3000 ft of elevation gain, including eating 3-4 shot blocks and a cliff bar during the ride, I believe that I could easily find myself in negative territory for the day. Again, without getting into how many calories from which flavor cliff bar, etc... let just agree that it's not unlikely that under these conditions I'd be negative for calorie count for the day.
So, the question becomes what's a good rule of thumb for eating back into the positive?
I'm going to toss out there that the two extremes of the spectrum probably are off limits, which would be do nothing, stick to your 1600 consumed calorie goal and at the other end eat back all your exercise burn to reach your net calorie goal of 1600. Those are the easy parts of the rule, there's a lot of room in between.
Thoughts?0 -
That calorie burn seems way too high. I read recently that ~300 calories per 10 miles is a useful average, which would put you at a little over half of what your cyclo computer estimated. I wonder if it reported total calories instead of active calories. That seems to be the case with some devices.0
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caloriemuse wrote: »All of the conversation about the accuracy of calorie calculations from exercise aside, the real question here in my mind is how does one absorb into a calorie restricted diet very large energy burns. Again without getting into what it takes to create a negative net calorie count for the day, let's all basically agree that it's possible.
OK, no we are on solid ground. Using me as an example; I'm a 215 pound 53 year old guy with a calorie goal of 1600 a day. On a typical 2-3 hour 30+ mile mtn bike ride with 2500-3000 ft of elevation gain, including eating 3-4 shot blocks and a cliff bar during the ride, I believe that I could easily find myself in negative territory for the day. Again, without getting into how many calories from which flavor cliff bar, etc... let just agree that it's not unlikely that under these conditions I'd be negative for calorie count for the day.
So, the question becomes what's a good rule of thumb for eating back into the positive?
I'm going to toss out there that the two extremes of the spectrum probably are off limits, which would be do nothing, stick to your 1600 consumed calorie goal and at the other end eat back all your exercise burn to reach your net calorie goal of 1600. Those are the easy parts of the rule, there's a lot of room in between.
Thoughts?
recommendation is to eat back roughly 50-75% of your workout calories - MFP is based on the idea of eating back workout calories (in general)0 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »However: To get your calorie burn from your energy expenditure, you need to know your efficiency factor, which I see from one article is about 24%. That means you (or your software) takes the measured energy you applied to the cranks and multiplies it by ~4.17 to get your calorie usage. How universal and constant is this factor? It could change with your level of fitness, age, weight, or sex
I'm in the garden using my phone to post, so I don't have any links handy. But all the research has shown that there's almost no variation between different people on a road bike. It's a pretty constrained environment, it's not like running where your vertical oscillation and gait and everything else effect your economy. We're just turning the cranks in a circle.0 -
caloriemuse wrote: »So, the question becomes what's a good rule of thumb for eating back into the positive?
I'm going to toss out there that the two extremes of the spectrum probably are off limits, which would be do nothing, stick to your 1600 consumed calorie goal and at the other end eat back all your exercise burn to reach your net calorie goal of 1600. Those are the easy parts of the rule, there's a lot of room in between.
Thoughts?
To expand on my earlier remarks: In the 1546 days that I've been tracking my food and exercise calories, I've had 50 days where my net calorie estimate was under 1000. On three of those days, it was negative; those were days when I had done particularly long or demanding rides (e.g., a 111-mile ride in the Berkshires with 9,000 feet of climbing). The other days involved mostly long rides (40+ miles) or long runs (10+ miles).
My approach to "eating back into the positive" has been twofold. I'll eat a lot on the day of the event itself: I have a larger than usual breakfast, and aim to eat and drink 200-250 calories an hour during the event, which is around the maximum that a typical athlete can absorb during moderate to intense activity. I'll also have a calorie-rich meal after the event. I can eat quite a lot: my record was an estimated 4,011 calories, on a day when I did a 90-mile ride that expended an estimated 3,017 calories.
But usually I know that I'm going to do something like that well in advance, and a few days beforehand I'll start to eat a couple hundred calories over my goal. If necessary, I'll also eat over my goal for a few days afterwards. For me, eating more is one of the features of endurance cycling! The main reason is that I enjoy the ride, of course, but the food is a nice extra.1 -
I believe Garmin connect uses just under 25% general efficiency factor (haven't checked since I started using it about 1.5 years ago) which is typical for most people. General range is around 23%-27%, and 25% is used for quick conversion from kj to kcal. Elite cyclist are around 23% range, see https://sportsscientists.com/2010/07/cycling-performance-what-is-possible/.
#1 - Checkout ipbike. The virtual power estimate is ok for flat and no wind. Don't know other apps but suspects same limitation. Without additional sensors, your guessing at the coefficient of drag and wind speed. Not sure why but VP is way off on climbs.
#2 - HRM can be as accurate as MET. Good luck pushing the HR accuracy past 60-90 minutes and for HR ranges over 80ish%/below 60ish% of max HR.
#3 - A watt is a watt. Your threshold power will be the limiter. On climbs power to weight is king, on flats absolute wattage and aerodynamic is king. Power is direct measure of work done so don't see a need to pin down a correlation based sex and age.1 -
A couple of the reasons I have trouble using my heart rate to calculate calories are:
1) My heart rate spikes just before a big climb. I get nervous and it goes up. Then I start the climb and relax and my HR goes down. But while I'm on the flat, just before the climb, when my HR goes up, I'm not actually expending a lot of energy. I start expending the energy when I start to climb, when my HR settles down.
2) If I'm stressed my HR goes up. Did a 100 km ride on Saturday feeling quite distressed about the bad news in the long distance cycling world we all heard on Friday ... and my average HR was a good 10 bpm higher than usual. Did I expend more energy than usual? Nope. I was just really tense.0 -
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A couple of the reasons I have trouble using my heart rate to calculate calories are:
1) My heart rate spikes just before a big climb. I get nervous and it goes up. Then I start the climb and relax and my HR goes down. But while I'm on the flat, just before the climb, when my HR goes up, I'm not actually expending a lot of energy. I start expending the energy when I start to climb, when my HR settles down.
2) If I'm stressed my HR goes up. Did a 100 km ride on Saturday feeling quite distressed about the bad news in the long distance cycling world we all heard on Friday ... and my average HR was a good 10 bpm higher than usual. Did I expend more energy than usual? Nope. I was just really tense.
Another example ... my HR is consistently about 10 bpm higher when I'm riding in traffic as when I'm riding on an empty country road. The terrain could be the same, the effort could be the same, the speed could be the same, same bicycle and everything ... but traffic gets my HR up.
And if I'm nervous about a ride for some reason ... I rode the first 75 km of a 200 km randonnee with a club I'd never ridden with before, on a route I'd never ridden before, and my HR sat at about 155 bpm the whole first 75 km ... and then I relaxed when I realised it was going to be OK, and my HR suddenly dropped to about 135 bpm.
But yes, it's good to check several different methods and I tend to go with whatever is the lowest.0
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