What's a good thing to eat whilst riding for energy

[Blue Hills]

On what basis do you think that? Gut feel?

I seem to remember that it was calorie consumption quoted by myfitnesspal when I was using it to lose weight.
I did lose a fair bit of weight but that was mainly by restricting intake rather than lots of pedalling.
That and my patented wetherspoons diet.

 

[Punkawallah]

you sure of this?
I thought it was a fair bit less - hence a fair few bulging cyclists.

Sure? No. But according to t’Interwebs, given my wieght and the fact that I ride a ‘heavy’ machine and cover ‘x’ distance in ‘y’ time, then it’s a working figure. Serendipitously works out to an apple, orange, banana, cereal bar, coffee, brownie, fish & chips and a beer at the end :-).

YMMV, T&CA.

 

[RoubaixCube]

Ive gotten into the habit of making my own flapjacks. ive looked at quite a few recipes online and just adapted them to my own tastes. Most of them ask for either too much butter and sugar so i cut back on them as the dried fruit is often sweet enough.

You can go to you local aldi and spend about £10 on ingredients for flapjacks and depending how much seeds, nuts or dried fruit you like in your flap jacks, A £10 spend will last you a very long time -- at least it did me but I only tend to knock out a batch when the weather is really nice and I expect to be out and about a good few hours.

Ive tried to adapt my recipe even futher and make it more healthier by substituting coconut oil for butter (as suggested from a few vegan recipes) but i found them absolutely revolting and ended up giving the batch away to a neighbour who loved them. Ive switched to plant based butter made by Flora. Can be bit more expensive than regular butter but I buy a few more blocks when they are on offer or promotion as they keep for a long time and nobody in this household eats butter on toast or uses it for cooking


Flapjacks are quick and easy to make and a lot more better value for money.

 

[dretbon]

I sometimes keep a bar in my jersey's pocket and just pull it out to eat.

 

[Sharky]

Lots of replies already on this subject, so I probably can't add much else.
Except for when I had a longish commute. 23 miles each way. The morning ride was no problem, following a normal breakfast. Canteen lunch midday.
But the ride home, taking 90 minutes min, sometimes drained me completely. However at the halfway point, there was a village newsagents and many a time I was tempted to stop and treat myself to a Mars bar.

 

[Amazonian]

A great snack I love is marshmallows, but it has to be the ones in the kiddies packs you get in the 4 for a £1 section in Tesco/Asda etc. Just cut the top off and put in a jersey pocket. Super easy to eat and cheap energy source.

 

[yello]

I remember I quite liked crystallized ginger as a snack. Good on a cold morning too, a warming sensation. You could buy bags of it at that high street health shop (I'm sure other places sell it too) and I'd just take maybe 4 or 5 cubes with me on cold mornings. More as a treat than fuel thought obviously the sugar provided some quick carb.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

On what basis do you think that? Gut feel?

I did a quick search around and there seems to be a broad consensus on the range of figures (400 ish to 800 ish per hour) Any attempt at giving a precise figure outside a lab is doomed. I don't have any specialist knowledge to challenge that.

Personally, I don't cycle for weight loss so the calorie figures aren't of much interest to me other than as a vague yardstick of how much work a ride took. I look at the guess that Ridewithgps gives me and 4000 is a fair ride. 5000 a hard ride. Seems to broadly correlate with how tired I feel.

They reckon the body is about 25% efficient at generating power.

Lets assume you average 100 watts of power over a ride. That means you burned on average 100 x 4 joules per second = 400 joules per second. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour. So you burn 400 x 3,600. = 1,440,000 joules in that hour. That translates to 344 calories. If you averaged 200 watts you are somewhere around 688 calories. If you average around 200 watts. Your average speed will be in the 17-22 mph range depending on how hilly / windy etc.

You are not just burning energy to propel the bike. So add in another 60-112 extra calories an hour for the rest of the body and brain and you are back in the 400-800 calories an hour range.

Like you, I think the range holds unless you are at the extremes of fitness / and / or weight.

 

[ExBrit]

You didn't bonk after 30 minutes unless you skipped breakfast in which case you were halfway bonking at the start of the ride.
Eat carbs 30 minutes before the ride starts - toast, oatmeal, potatoes, eggs. Easy on the protein as that's harder to digest while exercising.
Top up every 2 hours (you can go longer with practice). Avoid sugar because of the rush/crash effect. Long chain carb water additives such as Perpetuum are a very easy way to stay topped up without getting bloated. Gels are next. Energy bars are an expensive but flexible way of carrying extra energy. Aussie bites, date/raisin bars, rice bars are all cheaper and more edible but don't have the shelf life.

Me bonking