Food manufacturers work hard to make these foods trigger the reward circuit. We have evolved to like sugar, salt and fat, so they ensure that at least two of the three are in each product in scientifically calculated ratios.

If you try to eat pure cream, you can only eat a few spoons before it gets too sickly and you stop. Similarly, if you were to eat some spoons of sugar, you’d soon give up. If you mix the two in a 50-50 mix (like ice cream) then you can easily eat a lot.

The best way of avoiding these foods is to not buy them. If they are not in your kitchen then you will not be bothered to make a special trip to get them, and will eat something to hand which is healthier, such as some fruit or nuts.

To not buy these foods you will need the entire family to follow the system. If your partner is filling up the cupboards with crisps and snacks then your diet will be doomed. Don’t go shopping if you are hungry (e.g. straight after a ride) as it will be difficult to resist buying some junk food treats.




You should also avoid ordering take-out food. Such food (pizza, curries) is high in fat, sugar, salt and starch. It has high cravability and you can easily wolf down massive servings of these foods which will lead to weight gain. Once the hot food is in your hands there is no easy way of resisting it, so your best chance is to not order it. Throw away the coupons and menus, make time to stock up on wholesome foods so when you need to eat you have something available.

Sugars
(Sucrose, Glucose, Maltose, dextrose, but also starch like white flour, potatoes).
Sugar has been getting a lot of bad press recently. See this book: Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. He attributes many developed world health issues to an over consumption of sugar. Sugar is now added to a huge number of foods such as bread, pasta, chips, sauces and ready meals in order to make them taste better, especially if fat is removed.

When sugar is consumed through the day, the body eventually becomes insulin resistant. The action of the appetite regulating hormones ghrelin and leptin are also suppressed, which causes an inability to stop eating and food cravings. Immune function is negatively affected and the end result is weight gain and a body that will only burn sugar as a source of energy. For health and endurance performance this is a disaster.

While Lustig’s arguments are compelling, experiments show that a pure sugar diet doesn’t cause weight gain. The test subjects were not healthy, but did not become wildly obese. Dr Lustig himself is a bit fat, despite avoiding sugar.

A fat and sugar mix is the main cause of weight gain. Remember – the food industry works hard to create products that hit the bliss button, so you will buy them more frequently and eat more.

For cyclists, sugar is an excellent source of energy during exercise as it is easily absorbed and used by the muscles. When not exercising or on rides shorter than 90 minutes, sugar should be avoided.


Fructose
Fructose is a form of sugar found in fruit and honey. Fructose is metabolized by the liver and not by the gut as with other sugars. This different digestion path means that fructose doesn’t have the same effect on insulin levels as glucose, which means it is not a high GI food. People think this means it is healthy, so may consume it without limit.

Fruit is good to eat as it contains fiber to match the fructose. The fiber slows absorption of the fructose and limits how much we can eat. For example, you’d rarely eat more than two oranges. When the fiber is removed or pulped, far more fructose can be consumed and its absorption is not slowed. The liver gets a large hit of fructose and this is damaging to it and your body. The rapid metabolism of fructose in the liver and resultant drop in hepatic adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels have been linked with mitochondrial and endothelial dysfunction, alterations that could predispose to obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Fruit juice and smoothies should therefore be avoided except during or immediately after exercise.


Alcohol
There is nothing wrong with a few beers here and there, especially after training. Just remember that beer contains maltodextrin, which is a double dose of sugar. (It is two glucose moleclues combined). Cider and cocktails often contain a lot of sugar. Getting drunk often leads to ordering take outs or eating kebabs or bags of chips, which leads to weight gain.

Red wine or vodka contain very little sugar, so is a better choice if you have to drink socially. Alcohol is processed in a similar way to fructose and the liver can cope with it in small quantities.

There is no need to go teetotal, but regularly drinking beers and shots won’t make you skinny (unless you become alcoholic). If you want to cycle well you’ll need to cut back.

Note that alcohol consumption can disrupt the body's ability to control sugar, which can lead to a faint. It should not be consumed during riding if you want to keep riding fast.

Other Carbohydrates
Cyclists do need to eat carbohydrates if they want to ride at a decent effort level. If you cut out most carbs (such as on an Atkins diet), you will lose body fat, but you will enter what is called ketosis. Your body will be using fat as a fuel, which is fine for slow, steady effort like walking. However if you need to sprint up a hill, you will need to use glucose for energy. Since none is available, you will have no top end speed at all. More information about low carb high fat diets in this article.

If you are very overweight, then cutting out most carbs from your diet makes sense as it will produce the most rapid weight loss, and that would be the main focus.

If you are already of normal weight and are training for speed, then you need to eat carbs, otherwise you will feel extremely sluggish on the bike. It would be like trying to run a race car on heavy oil.

You should try to eat carbs that have a low GI. Oats are good, so is whole fruit, lentils, vegetables - anything fibrous which slows the absorption of sugars.

Try to avoid or minimize refined starches such as white bread, white pasta, sweet cereals and white rice. These have a high GI, so will mess with your metabolism as explained above. They make excellent foods to eat whilst racing, however.

Fat
Fat has been vilified by nutritionists as it contains more Calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein and it has been blamed for heart disease.

This would make sense if we lost weight simply by Calorie control, however as mentioned above, the type of food eaten is more important than the quantity. Many low fat diet products have been produced, with sugar as the substitute for fat. These foods are a bad for health as they taste bad, the sugar is bad for us (see above) and they don’t fill us up. There is no evidence that good fats cause heart disease.

If you eat a meal which contains natural good fat, then it will taste great. You will feel like you ate something wholesome, you won’t feel hungry afterwards and the fat will boost your hormonal and immune function.

Fat is a natural and essential part of our diet. These healthy fats, when eaten in their natural forms (i.e. not with added sugar) make you fat. As explained above, adding sugar to fat allows you to easily overeat.

Team Sky riders eat a minimum of 100g of fat per day. That’s around 600-900 Calories from fat, or around a quarter of their food intake.

Care need to be taken to eat ‘good’ fats and to avoid manufactured fats.

i.e. Eat Omega 3 in preference to Omega 6 in preference to Omega 9 and transfats. Omega 3 and 6 fats can’t be made by the body, which is why we need to eat them. Omega 9 fats can be made by the body so you don’t need to eat them and transfats are bad for you as the body finds them hard to process so they end up coating the insides of your arteries.

Good fats can be found in grass fed meat, coconuts, avocados, eggs, olive oil, nuts, butter, full fat milk and oily fish such as salmon and kippers. Saturated fats are not bad and are used by the body as a source of energy.

The bad fats are found in crisps and chips, pies, margarine, cheap ice cream chocolates and fast food.

You should replace some of the energy you get from carbs with energy from good fats. You will feel a lot healthier for it and it will help with weight loss.

Protein

Cyclists undergoing heavy training should consume about 2-2.5g per kilo of body weight per day. This equates to a lot of protein, about 5-6 chicken breasts of 5oz/150g each for a 155lb/ 70kg man. Fish and chicken are more easily used by the body than red meat. Mark Cavendish tends to avoid red meat for that reason.

For those who can process lactose, milk and whey powder are good sources of protein.

Do consider your gut health when eating that much protein. It can be maintained by balancing the protein intake with a consumption of fresh vegetable juice (see below).

Fiber
Fiber is also vital for digestive and metabolic health for a few reasons.

It slows the absorption of sugar from what you’ve eaten. If you make a smoothie, the fiber is shredded, which means that the entire sugar load of the fruit is delivered quickly to your liver. This can be handy if you are in a bonked state (hit the wall) but the rest of the time it is very bad for your liver and body.

The fiber also fills you up, so you won’t consume as many Calories. (See above – you might eat one or two whole oranges but can easily drink the juice of six oranges).

Fiber is also vital for the bacteria in your gut. Research shows that the bacterial composition of the gut seems to be a factor that promotes weight gain. Fiber seems to make the good bacteria thrive (along with gas), and keeps the obesogenic bacteria at bay.

HOW TO GET DOWN TO 15% BODY FAT
1) get out and ride the bike. You don’t need to ride hard, just keep the pedals turning over at level 1 or 2 (find out about your levels here). If you can manage to ride for a few hours at a time, then do.

If you ride harder you will risk burning yourself out and also injury. Be gentle on your body. You can work on speed and power once you are fitter.

Ride regularly – four to five days per week and to keep doing that for a stretch of several months. Allow for easier rest weeks every 2-3 weeks.

Prepare your food before you go on a long bike ride. When you come home you will be starving and if you open the food cupboard and find a pack of biscuits, then you are going to eat half the packet before you have even thought about it. Prepare fish, rice and broccoli. It might look unappetizing before you go cycling but when you return some hours later, it will seem like fine dining.

Ensure you maintain a good intake of protein. Eat a portion in the morning, such as eggs or kippers, some for lunch such as chicken and a little for dinner. Snack on plain nuts. Fish and chicken is a better source than red meat as it is easier for the body to digest. If you do not maintain protein intake then your body will burn muscle in preference to fat. You will lose power while still being fat which is not the desired outcome.

Allow yourself treats and blow-outs every few weeks. You are not in a prison camp, you are trying to drop some weight in order to cycle faster and be healthy.

How long will it take?
Expect to keep at this regime of long, steady riding and healthy food for at least 6-12 months. By that time your body will have adapted to the exercise and your metabolism will have steadied to a healthier state. You may need two years if you were over 30% body fat at the start.

GETTING FROM 15% TO 10% BODY FAT
Many racing cyclists are in this range. They are quite thin, but may have a bit of a belly or lack of definition.

They will be thinking that they do so much exercise that they can eat anything they want.

The errors here are:
1) Over consumption of high GI carbs such as pasta and white bread, in large quantities.
2) Over consumption of pleasure foods such as cake, crisps, cookies, donuts, juice, beer.
3) Under consumption of protein and fat which assists with rebuilding after exercise.
4) Under consumption of vegetables for nutrients, fibre and alkali gut balance.
5) Over estimation of Calories required.

The ability to burn fat is compromised by the high GI intake at rest. Over consumption of Calories is easily accomplished due to eating pleasure foods. A stressful job or over training may be causing cortisol release which leads to putting on belly fat.

If you would like to lose a bit more fat then you need to adjust your diet, but you don’t need a major overhaul, so the changes should be easy to accomplish:

- Do not buy or stock pleasure foods. This means cake, crisps, cookies, soda, alcohol etc. - Drink water when thirsy, not juice or soda.

- Reduce the amount of carbs you eat. If you are fit, you are more efficient at converting food into pedaling motion, so food guidelines for normal people don’t apply. You need carbs, otherwise you will not be able to cycle at anything over effort level two. Take your carbs from fruit, vegetables and brown rice, lentils, quinoa.

- Eat more good fat. You need to make a conscious effort to buy foods with good fats. This fat will replace the energy of the carbs you have cut back on.

- Eat protein through the day, especially for breakfast. This will stop muscle wastage and will allow you to lose fat without losing muscle.

- Don’t starve yourself or count Calories. The fat loss will happen due to change in diet rather than conscious Calorie restriction.

If you follow the principles above, you will get down to 10% body fat. You’ll see definition on your abs, you might start seeing veins popping up in new places like the tops of your thighs and shoulders. People will ask you in a concerned tone if you've lost weight.

Best of all, you will become better at burning fat. You will suddenly find yourself with the front riders and not blowing up after three hours of hard riding.

GETTING BELOW 10% BODY FAT
To get below 10% body fat is more complicated than simply avoiding junk foods. The main difficulty is to lose the body fat without losing power. You can’t go on an Atkins Diet like a body builder as you need carbs to ride at high intensities.

In order to drop below 10% body fat, eat smaller portions of carbs than you are used to. At this stage, your body is getting efficient, so requires fewer carbs than you might expect. Limit intake to a moderate portion of pasta or rice. Don’t go back for seconds.

People with the time and resource could have a lab test done to find out what percentage of carb to fat is being burned at varying exercise intensities. This is accomplished by analyzing exhaled gases (RER test). You can then map carbohydrate intake to energy expenditure through the day, ensuring that not too much is consumed, which would be turned into fat. This is the method used at British Cycling, and shows just how finely tuned the diet can be to get the very low body fat percentages.