Weight Management

In regards to cycling and my mtb racing hobby, one thing I have been struggling with for the past few years is my weight. At the end of last season(2019) I was weighing in around 215. One metric that is interesting to me relates directly to weight, and that is my power to weight ratio. For my FTP around 250 and  weight 97.5(kg) at the end of the season, w/kg is around 2.5. Knowing my FTP wasn’t going to go up significantly, the best way to improve my performance was to lose weight.

For me this was no easy task, having tried different diets, and regardless, my weight was around 215. From the research i have done, this all boils down to calories, if you consume less than you need you will lose weight. Another resource was a very informative video from Dylan Johnson (See his video below) an ultra-endurance bike racer/coach which lays the obvious out very plainly. There are calorie dense foods and calorie non dense foods, eat the non-dense foods and you will get filled up faster without the number of calories. Taking this approach a little further and cutting out meat products i was able to get below 200.

So far I have lost around 20 extra pounds and hopefully more, I have noticed an increase in my w/kg and also increased performance especially in my climbing.