Cycling Performance Simplified : Naturally Thin

Cycling Performance Simplified

Updated December 14, 2009

Naturally Thin

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The reason this chapter is so late in Cycling Performance Simplified, whereas most training books present this aspect right away (often as the central focus), is because the truth is so simple it really needs not be restated.

Besides, if you are only cycling to get thin, it is exactly the same as needing the promise of heaven in order to be a decent human being.

Actually, I guess it is closer to needing the promise of chocolate to enjoy having sex with your clothes off.

There are plenty of books that will help you with stuff like that, but this is not one of them.

I will only mention this.

Awhile back I worked like a dog on my bike, recorded weight, calories, and percentages of fat, protein, and carbohydrate for every morsel of food that went into my mouth while constantly improving my tracking of every aspect of my nutritive life, and I did all this over an extended period.

I eventually achieved what some were calling my high-school weight.

Immediately people began telling me I was naturally thin.

Another part of this story came from a time when I was not so thin and somebody was telling Mary about the wonderful great new diet they were on (after having failed over the years on about 40 other fad diets) and how this new diet involved eating specific food types at specific times of day then rubbing some metal beads behind the ears.

In particular they were expected to eat almost nothing before noon.

Mary railed, "Wait a minute! Look at me. I'm under 120 lbs, and I often eat almost my entire food intake before noon."

"Yeah, but you are only thin because you exercise so much."

Mary was so shocked she failed to mention that she did not exercise nearly as much as the person describing their new diet, nor how Mary used a nutritional database I developed for my own use which provides fast entry of very complex data resulting in a convenient simplified report that helped her focus on what she eats.

The database allows her to record meals without massive distraction, so Mary quickly records and ponders the effect of everything she eats.

Mary also could have said, "Excuse me, but my husband Bob is with me on every ride, and he works harder than me on every hill, and he is still a fat, fat, fat fuck. How do you explain that?"

It is easy me to explain my weight... and your own as well.

Body weight is a direct function of the amount of calories you eat versus the amount of calories you burn.

Compared to Mary, I eat lots more foods that are fat dense (therefore calorie rich) and topped off with sugar (therefore even more calorie rich), and I often do it compulsively without thought while writing, or programming, or doing some other panic ridden activity which seems absolutely essential at the time.

As for the sugar, it is in (and/or) on just about everything I eat—including hamburgers.

Some people like to call sugar carbs in order to sell you on the idea that if you just don't eat the bread served before dinner at a restaurant, you are free to eat the rest of the meal consisting of three weeks worth of fatty, salted, sugary sludge that is put on a few plates and called a serving.

The problem is that sugars actually are carbs, so it is easy to fool people with that kind of talk.

Now, get real folks!

You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong stuff, and your overweight body has been a long term project, so it's going to take time to remedy, and you are not going to get into that bathing suit in the next three weeks no matter what diet you go on.

Part of your problem may be the stigma that society places on overweight people. I myself have a strong distaste for fatties, but I have learned that it is not all their fault.

Being fat does not mean that you are a bad person. It merely means that you are an ignorant sedentary sloth.

Of course, that is not your own fault either.

You are only a sloth, because you are sedentary and can't move anymore.

You are only sedentary, because you are ignorant about how badly it affects your health, and you are only ignorant because nobody has ever told you the simple truth (about how bad your lifestyle is for you) in a way that might convince you.

Let me fix that right now.

A sedentary lifestyle is the absolute worst thing for you.

No matter how much they promise you that if you will only just sit in a car for half your day coming to work, then spend the rest of your day sitting around munching snacks and waiting to get back in your car, and no matter how much they try to convince you that you have absolutely no alternative and you are doing the right thing (important work) by wasting your time commuting, for which you will be eventually rewarded with riches beyond your imagination... well, forget it.

You are killing yourself, and almost every single one of your supposed major physical ailments can be traced back to your fat-assed scared as shit daily routine.

There.

Now that you know this, you are no longer ignorant, so you can start fixing your sedentary slothful lifestyle, and maybe someday you will enjoy the final insult of being called naturally thin.

Here's how: find an exercise that you really enjoy (maybe cycling), and pay attention to what you eat.

Make both of these activities (moving around and eating correctly) your inalterable habit, and if you fail or have a lapse just come back to it and keep trying again, and again, and again.

It has been said before, but let me say it once more, "Dieting doesn't work. Exercise doesn't work. Only exercise and diet works."

Wasn't that simple?

Now don't forget to read a bunch of other books about nutrition after you finish this one about improving your cycling performance, because there are certainly a lot of good books on health and exercise written to help you figure out that careful eating and vigorous exercise is a necessity for good health.

Just about any exercise or diet program is going to make you feel better almost immediately, so enjoy as many books as you can on the topic, but the moment one promises you a shortcut to easy weight loss and vibrant health, slam it shut vigorously and move on to the next.

A great general exercise book is Egoscue 1992 (listed in references), and you can tell it is a great book as soon as you get to page 79 paragraph 2 where it says, "A workout lasting about an hour each day should be sufficient."

No quick fix there. Not to mention you had to get to page 79 to read it.

Maybe the best book on diet is Kleiner 1998 (also listed in references). It is called: Power Eating: build muscle, gain energy, lose fat, and it is one of the most thoroughly researched books on the subject ever written.

Cycling Performance Simplified (the book you are reading now) is about achieving high level cycling performance; and, like all true excellence, achieving cycling competence takes time, so you might say this is a book about the slow way to get really fast.

Taking off weight during the process is just a side effect.

By the way, during the writing of this book I managed to get my weight back down to below my high-school weight, so all the losers in the world have once again started calling me naturally thin.

Now that you have satisfied your curiosity by reading this chapter first, get back to the beginning and read the book for real.

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this page last updated: 12/14/2009 06:45:57 AM