How to make winter productive!

By 

Giles Elmore (BSc Hons) MRSPH

As the evenings get shorter, the weather becomes less predictable and those midweek rides gradually disappear, the eight or ten hours a week of riding that seemed so easy to accumulate during the summer months become much harder to find. As cyclists, after a regimented summer, it is tempting to see the end of it as the point where we can relax focus. But perhaps a better approach is simply to change the focus. Rather than accepting that the cycling is going to drop off and letting the winter happen around us, we could use the quieter months to understand our nutrition properly and make some positive changes that will benefit us when the riding starts again.

If you gain a few kilograms over the winter, it is tempting to think that you can simply ride them off when the weather improves. But, as I discussed in my previous article, using cycling to create a calorie deficit isn't necessarily as straightforward as you might hope. More importantly, if losing those kilograms becomes the primary objective once the new season starts, there materialises a conflict between losing the weight and training well.

To improve FTP, VO₂ max, endurance and cycling performance, you need to be able to train hard, recover from that training and progressively adapt to it. Adequate energy, and particularly sufficient carbohydrate around harder or longer sessions, supports that process. Trying to maintain a significant calorie deficit at the same time can mean arriving at key sessions under-fuelled, recovering poorly and compromising the quality of the training that is supposed to make you faster.

Body composition can certainly be part of performance nutrition, and for some cyclists losing excess body fat can improve power-to-weight ratio. The important distinction is between gradually improving body composition while supporting training, and spending the first month of the season trying to eat as little as possible while riding as much as possible. The latter isn't necessarily a particularly effective way of becoming a better cyclist.

This is where I think winter becomes particularly interesting from a nutrition perspective. During the summer, the amount of cycling we do can sometimes mask weaknesses in our nutrition. We may be eating more carbohydrate because we need it for long rides, eating more overall because of the energy we are expending, and perhaps paying less attention to the quality and variety of what we eat because the priority is simply getting enough food around our training. If body weight is relatively stable and we are performing well, it can be easy to assume that everything is working.

But body composition is only one measure of whether our nutrition is effective. Good nutrition should also support muscle mass, recovery, energy levels, normal immune function, bone health, hormonal function and the many micronutrients required for the body to function properly. A diet can appear to be working from a weight perspective while still having areas that could be greatly improved.

Winter gives us the opportunity to look at what we eat when the demands of cycling are lower. Rather than simply trying to replicate a summer diet with less food, we can look at protein intake, carbohydrate requirements, dietary variety, fruit and vegetable intake, fibre, healthy fats and the micronutrients that come with a varied diet. It is a chance to understand what our diet is doing for us, rather than judging it solely by what the scales say.

And as we get older, this becomes increasingly important. Nutrition isn't then simply about fuelling the demands of today's ride and hitting numbers on the scales. It also becomes about maintaining muscle and bone, supporting normal immune and hormonal function, providing the nutrients required for recovery and helping to maintain the health markers that will matter to us long after we have stopped worrying about our average speed on the bike. This is why winter is such a useful time for a proper nutrition analysis.

There is less pressure to get everything right for the next big event, and there is time to make small adaptations and build long term habits. You can look at the data rather than relying on what you think you eat, identify where the diet is working well and where it could be improved, and then make changes that fit your routine and life demands rather than simply following another generic January 1st diet.

The aim shouldn’t be to spend the winter dieting. It is to understand your nutrition well enough that the changes you make become sustainable. To learn how your carbohydrate needs change with your training, when you're riding less, and when you're back to longer and harder sessions, and how to adapt your intake accordingly. To understand how much protein you need to support your goals, which foods add variety and improve your micronutrient intake, where there may be gaps in your diet, and how eating habits change as your activity changes. That knowledge is useful long after winter has finished.

When the evenings get longer again and the bikes start coming out more regularly, you don't want to spend the first month of the new cycling season solely focused on losing the weight you gained over winter. It’s sad to think that the fitness you built, the miles you rode and the work you put in over the summer haven't been wasted. In fact, winter can be the opportunity to build on them in a different way. With less riding to dictate what and when you eat, you have the chance to step back and look at your nutrition as a whole. What is working? What isn't? Are you getting enough protein? Is your diet varied enough? Are you eating the right amount and type of carbohydrate for the training you are doing? Are there areas of your micronutrient intake that could be improved? And what happens to your eating habits when the hours on the bike fall away? These aren't questions that can necessarily be answered by the scales, or by how you feel after one particular ride. They come from looking at what you actually eat, understanding the demands you are putting on your body and then making sensible changes based on that information.

That is really where a proper nutrition analysis can be useful. Not another diet to follow for six weeks, and not a list of foods you should or shouldn't eat, but an opportunity to understand your own diet in some detail. To identify what is already working well, find the areas that could be improved and make a series of small, practical changes that fit around your life and your cycling.

It is also an opportunity to understand some of the psychology behind nutrition. Why do we sometimes crave certain foods after a meal when we have eaten enough? Why do we describe particular foods as a “treat” and others as something we shouldn't eat? Why can being overly restrictive make certain foods seem even more appealing? How does the timing and distribution of our food through the day affect hunger, energy and recovery? And how much of what we hear about nutrition is supported by good evidence, rather than simply being something we've heard often enough to assume it must be true? Understanding the difference between the two is an important part of understanding your own nutrition.

The benefit to all this is that you aren't simply trying to arrive at spring a few kilograms lighter. You arrive with a better understanding of your nutrition, habits that you can actually maintain, and a clearer idea of how to adapt your food as your training changes. Then, when the riding starts to build again, your nutrition can build with it.

If you think your nutrition could do with a proper look over the winter, this is a good time to start. We can look at what you're actually eating, rather than what you think you're eating, and work out where the opportunities are to make it better.

 

Because wouldn't it be great to get back on the bike in spring and simply pick up where you left off?

If you feel uncertain about whether your daily nutrition is truly supporting your health, performance, and long-term wellbeing, G2 Nutrition offers a highly personalised diet analysis with a bespoke 14 week optimisation programme, available for £250.

This is a tailored, results-driven service designed to elevate your approach to nutrition, refining not only what you eat, but how your body performs, recovers, and thrives day to day.

To enquire, please contact me at giles@g2nutrition.com