[quote]HK24719 wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Don’t post.
You clearly weren’t helpful. Yes, losing muscle mass takes its toll on the body. But endurance athletes do often lose muscle mass as a by-product of their training and still perform at a high level and improve performance.
You do not seem like someone who has experience with this who can give advice about dropping weight while maintaining performance as much as posible. Your glib ‘don’t eat’ is asinine.
To the OP, I WAS an endurance runner, but I never specifically targeted weight loss. Things just seemed to work themselves out. So, I’m afraid I’m not too helpful either. But this may not be the best place to seek advice. You should also post to some bike-specific training forums. I’m sure they exist.
Actually, I work with elite cyclists and other endurance athletes on a regular basis.
Granted, some may be lucky enough to be able to lose “weight” through training alone, but most can’t achieve ideal weights for their sport unless they are in a relatively low-intensity base period during which they can restrict caloric intake. The reason for this is that they are ravenous during mid to high intensity training periods and need large volumes of food for glycogen recovery. Restricting calories during these times will negatively affect recovery.
At the highest levels, thyroid hormone and cortisol are used during base periods to lean out. Often low-dose AAS are used as well to help maintain lower body strength. Luckily, the average weekend warrior doesn’t need to get so drastic.
Amateurs can often lose fat by increasing protein intake and decreasing carbohydrate intake within reason. Obviously, this depends on where your diet is in the first place.
We often use supplements such as Se7en, Beta-7, and Carbolin 19 to help once we’ve corrected any dietary issues.
Unfortunately, effective dietary and supplementation information is rarely found on endurance-oriented training sites. These sites seem to be significantly behind T-Nation, and similar sites, when it comes to such information.
I recommend John Berardi’s articles in particular as his theories seem most applicable to such athletes.
Feel free to contact me by PM with any questions.
jsbrook, since you clearly weren’t helpful either, does that mean that you will refrain from posting?[/quote]
There you go. You actually gave some advice. I would not have not posted on this thread at all if your post did not seem so devoid of information. I certainly would’ve found it unhelpful and frustrating back in my endurance days if I sought help and someone took the time to respond but your intial post was all they said. But in fact, my post turned out to be useful. I advised him to seek advice from sites specifically geared towards his athletic pursuits. It also resulted in you posting something other than ‘don’t eat’.
To the OP, I will say that on the rare occasions when I needed to lean out while a competitive runner, targeted nutrition was useful for me. You are going to need to be in a caloric deficit to drop the kind of weight you are talking about, an amount I never needed to drop. But what I did when I felt I needed to reduce a bit, and what I think you should do at least initially, is focus a lot of your calories and carbs around the workouts. You will need the fuel to get you through your training. You also have some time to accomplish this. So, before going on a truly extreme starvation-type diet that will compromise training, I would focus on first getting as lean as possible before actively targeting muscle loss. Can I ask why you need to race at a specific number?
