that being said look at typical endurance athletes who rely on high carbs to perform work. they arent shredded and full of muscle. they are typically skinny fat.
i have asked someone who knows a great deal about energy requirements for cycling im hoping he chimes in here. theres def a path we can find here in getting to 5-6%bf and killing it on the performance end. once you are there, just like with holding tissue, itll be much easier to maintain than it would to get there.
Hi no one!
From what i remember the marathon runners aren't ripped because of the cortisol that fires back into their body. But we are talking hardcore runners doing monster hours of training. Then consider the majority of people who exercise are still fat anyway and it's hard to make a clear judgement call (unless you specifically look at the pros).
For me as a cyclist (i used to race track) my energy requirement has always been pretty low. I don't believe the calories burned number because there are soooo many fat cyclists out there doing huge hours but getting fatter! I have done 20hr weeks on the bike and still gained weight (fat) and that was at 8% BF eating 4,000cals/day. All the super fast, thin guys on bikes struggle with their weight. Basically it's an eating disorder to stay thin and fight the urge to eat.
I ride fasted. Energy only seriously becomes an issue for me after 2.5hrs (depending on how hard we are riding). I do 2hr hard rides fasted, no food during, no food after all the time. Going 3hrs-5hrs it's a food game and you need to eat each hour otherwise in hour 3 it's to late and you run out of carbs because the body can't process it quick enough (unless you are pounding gels or cans of coke constantly).
I am currently using no one/galeniko diet method as i need to drop weight to improve my watts/kg in order to climb quicker. I'm around 800-1000cals/day and 3 of those days consists of a 24hrs fast eating just dinner.
A 2.5hrs ride i did on the weekend was fairly hard including all out short hill sprints. I had my cheat meal last night (2,500cals) so i was fully carbed and during the ride I had 120 calories and felt perfectly fine at the end. I didn't eat until dinner 8hrs later which was 800cals. This morning i feel fine and will be on the bike doing an easy 40mins today.
I think people mistake nerve exhaustion for carb exhaustion. Bonking/hitting the wall is a lightswitch effect and your legs literally just stop. It's not a slow thing, it's not a nerve fatigue feeling, literally your legs seem to stop working out of the blue no matter what you do. If you are carbed that would be hours. A 20min HIT session is going to fatigue the nerves and cardio system. You feel exhausted but your muscles still function because they are carbed.
If i don't need food for a hard 2hr ride, i don't see how a 20min session requires food. What we see in the real world is people in gyms doing cardio, eating after, staying fat/getting fat vs hardcore cyclists/runners doing huge amounts of cardio eating like birds to balance performance/weight.
