Macros and Cardio Help Please

[epno]

I've been researching how to diet for a cutting or lean mass cycle. I'm primarily an endurance athlete and do weight training during my off season. There are great differences between what's recommended for body building macros and an endurance athlete diet. A prominent bike racing coach, recommends 1.2 to 1.7 grams of protein per Kg of body weight and 7-10 grams of carbs per kg. That works out to 12% protein, 73% carbs, and 15% fat (the fat could vary with diet choices). From what I've read in the stickies on this thread, a 40/40/20 would be better from a body building point of view. I'm ok with that but wonder how the fact that I'll be doing cardio 2-7 days per week (depending on the weather) in addition to 3 days weight lifting per week in the gym. I'm guessing that I'll need to keep my carb intake high enough to replenish glycogen stores when I'm riding a lot. This also raises the question of how I should time my cardio (bike riding or running). I understand the theory of doing it before breakfast, but the amount you'd do in a body building program would be under 1 hour a few days per week, and I may well exceed that amount. I often have to cram my cardio and weight work out into one long session and have found that I do much better on weights without depleting myself doing cardio first. I read a post that said doing cardio after lifting is bad for strength gains. Is there any truth to that? Thanks for your help!

[AandF6969]

Those macronutrient ratios are not typical for bodybuilding... usually you'll see 40/40/20 or 35/45/20 something like that...

You'll definitely have to take in more carbs, and total calories for all the cardio you're doing.

[sprintr]

I too am in the beginning of a winter program. I am dropping body fat like mad with my ratios around 55/30/15 p/c/f. I've made it a priority to get lean early for next year and not have that lingering winter training body fat around my waist for half the racing season. I'm just coming off of a 'sort of' bulking phase where I went hog wild with food, sups and hard lifting (mostly legs) and gained about 12lbs and not all of it was muscle either In fact i bet most of it was fat, if I gained 1lb on the thighs collectively it was worth it imo. So I'm loosing fat consistently at the moment. Hoping to get under 10% by december (should be doable with all the miles)

One thing that I have noticed is that during longer slower rides I don't feel like I deplete my myself of much glycogen. From my perspective that seems to happen to me more so when I do hard riding or sprints, I get depleted very quickly in those instances, which calls for more carbos. So for winter I don't really carb up that much until the intensity sets in. I think 55% carbs is more than sufficient for low intensity training.

Now total calories this is something you gotta watch - you need to find out how many calories you need to maintain your weight and adjust it according to your needs. I like to short myself 500 calories if I am trying to drop some fat, and increase it by 500 if I am trying to gain some muscle (which clearly isn't what I just did previously - live and you learn). This obviously means taking into account how many calories you burn on a training ride etc. Usually on a 2 hour ride I'll burn about 1000-1400 calories so I make sure I replace that and get my total to where I want it for the day, one day at a time.

If I don't replace that and watch it closely I recover like shit, and recovery is the name of the game.