What should i eat to get more endurance on my cycling and running?

Question

i was a fatty... about 240 pounds (110 kilograms)

Answer 1

here is the thing with diet, it is a self-study process.  you can use a calorie calculator to get an idea of where to start, but everyone's body is different.  you have to get to know your body.  you should know how it feels when it is fully recovered and strong, how it feels when you havent recovered yet, how it feels when you need to rest it.  listen to it, and it will tell you what it needs.  what it comes down to is eating a healthy diet of enough calories to recover fully and keep the muscles fueled.  the healthy diet remains the same as it has always been, fruits, veggies, lean protiens, whole grains and limiting sugars and fats as much as possible.

Answer 2

There are some good answers already so I'll just add a little. A professional cyclist builds his diet around carbs. During the season their diet will consist of about 65% to 70% carbohydrate. If you don't get tons of carbs you will lose endurance. Those ridiculous diets that have people eating high fat and high protein will leave you gasping on the side of the road if you try any kind of endurance activity.

With that in mind, if you're worried about your total calorie intake, keep track of the miles you bike or run, preferably with your heart rate. You can do a rough estimate of how much energy you burn. For every hour on the bike I usual take in about 200 calories, sometimes less, but I'm really light so adjust for your bodyweight.

Answer 3

You don't get endurance by eating.  The old saying still goes.  If you want to ride further, ride further. If you want to go faster, go faster.  

Also pedal at a high cadence 70-90 rpm's it will help your endurance by not tiring out your legs.  Fast and easy is better then slow and hard on the pedals.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/ar...

Answer 4

You'll get all kinds of differing answers but it's up to the individual. Your body will burn carbohydrates and sugars so virtually anything that contains them from chocolate bars to bananas or pasta will provide you with energy. My food of choice when doing weight training or cycling was Snickers bars and they worked perfectly okay for me.

Answer 5

This is a very good question.  The answer it not real straightforward, though.

It is important to distinguish between foods you eat while off-bike and the foods you eat while on your bike.

Off-bike, you need to eat lots of fruits and veggies, some protein, carbs and a very modest amount of fat.  If you are still attempting to lose weight, it is critical that you burn a few hundred more calories per day than you take in.  This will allow you to lose .5 to 1 pounds per week which is healthy and sustainable.

To determine what to eat while on your bike, you need to know a bit about how your body derives energy.  

First, when riding at an aerobic pace, energy comes mostly from fat conversion.  When riding at an anaerobic pace fat conversion takes too long so the body burns stored sugar.  

Secondly, the body stores much more fat than sugar.  Thus, even the leanest person can ride for days at a fat burning pace while noone can ride for more than an hour or two burning sugar.  

Thirdly, cyclists call the state in which your body has burned all of its stored sugar: "the bonk," and it really sucks.  You may feel headachy, disoriented, dizzy, nauseated, uncoordinated, etc, when it occurs.

Fourthly, your body can only absorb a limited number of calories per hour while exercising.  If you eat more than your body can absorb you will suffer GI issues like diarrhea, gas, vomiting, etc.  From painful experience, I know I can eat between 200-250 calories per hour.  If you monitor your calorie consumption while exercising, you'll figure out how much you can eat without causing distress.

Finally, because the body can only store so much sugar and bonking is so miserable, during exercise, you should weight your calorie consumption toward easily disgestable, highly convertable carbs.  You really don't need much in the way of protein or fat while riding.  

My suggestion is to figure out what sits well on your stomach during exercise.  I, for example, like Cliff Shot Blocks, Lara Bars and Bananas.  I don't like Hammer Gels and some other stuff.  You may find a particular sport drink, or gel works great while some others don't.

Realize you will run a significant caloric deficit while on your bike.  This is not only OK, it is desirable since otherwise you'll run the risk of digestive upset.  You'll make up the deficit with your normal meals or you'll lose weight.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Whether you know it or not, there are a couple of components to your question.

1. Eating doesn't do anything for the aerobic (oxygen transfer) component of endurance.   The only possible exception is if you're iron deficient.  Angus doesn't seem like a female screen name, so that's unlikely.

2. The other component of endurance is fuel.   You are always burning some combination of free fatty acids and glycogen (carbohydrate product).   The mix changes somewhat depending on how close you are to maximum effort.  Fat is not the limiting factor, as we all have enough of that on hand,  but there is only enough glycogen in your muscles and liver to support a couple of hours worth of hard effort.  If you go for a long ride or run but don't take on some carbohydrate fuel during your event, race or workout, its possible to run out.  Runners and cyclists know this as "bonk".   Its not the same as being tired, or building up too much lactic acid from going over your aerobic threshold.   Its just running out of glycogen.  For me, the symptoms are instant ferocious hunger, and legs going dead, slowing my pace to a crawl.   And no,  your system can't just use more fat to make up the difference.  

How to prevent this?  Take on fuel as you ride.   Gatorade, Cytomax and other fluid replacement products provide some carbohydrate fuel.  Clif Bars, Powerbars, powergel and others are specifically intended to provide quickly and easily digestible carbohydrate fuel.   "Easily digestible" is of course key, because digestion isn't as efficient when a lot of blood flow is being diverted to muscles.

Regular foods like bananas, cookies, fruit work just as well, assuming you're in a situation where you can stop to procure them, or have a means to carry them with you.   Bars taste pretty nasty after the 4th or 5th one.  

As for eating when you're not working out,  a regular balanced diet is fine.   Endurance athletes actually have a little more leeway than couch potatos in what they eat, because its easier to get all the essential micronutrients when you're taking in a larger quantity of food to fuel your efforts.

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Note to sfr:  the "fat burning zone" is something of a myth.   At higher heart rates, the total fat calories burned increases, although carbs burned increases faster, so the percentage changes.   There's a chart about a third of the way into the following article that shows this:  http://www.gssiweb.com/Article_Detail.as...

For more information than you probably wanted, see below: