Refueling when training more than usual

[HillRPete]

Usually I do running in winter, and cycling in summer. This year though, it went quite well with the running, so I kept a few regular workouts between my cycling outings. The result is, I'm apparently burning lots more calories, and could eat all day. My weight is slowly on the decline too (no worries yet, though, at 186cm/75kg).

So the question is, from a health and performance point of view, what is the best strategy coping with the increased demand. Simply bigger meals -- although I can not eat as much in one sitting like, say, 10 years ago. More snacks? An extra late meal in the evening (I have dinner fairly early usually)?

I try to eat healthy and don't really think there's need for any supplements besides the odd cup of Isostar after training. Need just more of the usual apparently

[devinci]

reasonable portion for meals plus multiple snack makes it for me. I have a very settled in routine and I always have my pre-bed snack too. Got to get in the right amount of calories and macronutrients

[KWalker]

Eat within the general guidelines needed for endurance athletes:

CHO: 4-6g/kg/day. Generally closer to the 4 mark if you aren't very high volume i.e. rarely have sessions that last longer than 2 hours and/or do not often do fully depleting exercise. Closer or above the 6 mark if you are doing those things and often.

Protein: Ranges from .7g/lb to 1.5g/lb depending on what you eat with it, your training volume, and where you are in a training block. I find that during some really intensive training blocks I often get in around 1g/lb simple from eating lots of nutrient dense foods that have trace proteins (think legumes, beans, quinoa), meets, and eggs. Glycogen can only be resynthesized at a certain rate so if you do a 5hr ride and burn 3600kj and have a 2100cal baseline just to maintain bodyweight, you'd want to avoid a massive cortisol spike and drop in thyroid hormone production, but stuffing in more CHO will just increase fat spill over. I find that increasing protein helps in this regard.

Fat: Get in what is necessary to maintain proper sex hormone balance. I don't buy into keto or fat based diets especially since my target events are all under 3hrs and highly anaerobic. Studies show that what you burn is largely based on your steady diet and within a short window i.e. if you drop CHO and raise fat higher, you'll oxidize a slight amount of more fat (but nothing substantial), however, you won't somehow make substantial changes to energy production i.e. increase percentage of fat burning from 50% to 60% and have it stay that way.

From there its just calories in vs. out.