That is an impressive workout indeed!
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Youâre welcome, Dave.
I understand the struggle. Many of my clients struggle with this. To understand it better, I gained 15 kg over the last year. I have been helping cyclists with their weight through my Ideal Weight program, but I wanted to rewrite it based on my own experience.
I now understand the mental side a lot better. I used to say reaching your ideal weight is easy. Although the science is still easy, I now understand the mental issues that come along with it.
I didnât fit my clothes anymore. That only used to be a problem when I was doing too much gym time, and my arms and chest grew too big. But now my waist has got so big that I couldnât fit my pants, and my belly button was visible through my shirt.
I noticed that I started to wear wider clothes, just to try to mask this. I started to blame myself whenever I ate things that didnât support my weight loss.
The whole experience was harder than I anticipated. I now understand that support is maybe even more important than the science.
Although this isnât the 15 kg struggle youâre referring to, there are some similarities.
Eating is just like training.
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It takes consistency
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Everyday is filled with distractions
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There isnât a one-size-fits-all solution
There are, however, some things that do work very well.
Weight training helps improve metabolism. Less processed food is always better. Finally, weight loss isnât a goal.
The goal is to get healthier, perform better, or both. If you focus on this and do all the right things, your weight will follow.
You may be struggling because you havenât found the right balance yet. From what I have seen on this forum, you are the expert in experimenting. Iâm sure you can find the right solution for your body.
Let me know if I can be of any assistance.
Have a great day, Coach Robert
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Wow Robert, sorry about your gain an I love your honesty, being a real cyclist this must be hard on you.
I also am very intimately aware of this struggle and have 20 years with a continuous focus on understanding it via extensive reading and personal testing. I know your 15kg extra is still lower than my body fat % but I am not a real cyclist like you.
I am usually running about 5kg over what I like to be 10kg over what I consider optimum health (optimum being around 18% body fat or so for me)âŚ
I believe it is mental but I canât even begin to say what is perfect for others or their personal solution. I know consistency seems to be the biggest barrier for me. If I ride 10+ hours a week and eat how I typically eat then it seems pretty easy to be on the right path or in a good spot. But staying highly consistent with a decent volume with sick kids and every other excuse is tough.
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I didnât have a very good diet in early adulthood. I ate basically the standard Western junk food, ultraprocessed diet. I donât fatten super easily so despite this at my peak I was only 195 lbs at 5â10".
I started cycling more the summer of the pandemic, probably ate even worse, and from March 2020 to New Yearâs 2021 I actually gained weight going from 182 to 188 lbs.
I started eating better and cutting carbs at that time. The weight came off effortlessly and by end of the year I was down to 154 lbs for a 34 lb weight loss in the year, almost exactly the 15 kg weigh you mentioned. I felt so much better and looked better.
2022 to November 2024 my weight my stable and carbs were typically ~ 50g or less. My cat was going through a steep decline at that time and passed just before New Yearâs 2025. Somehow during that period due to stress/eating/whatever I went up to 158 lbs.
Iâve been hovering 158-160 lbs all year. I havenât been extremely serious about losing it, but I have been trying to focus on satiety, have done some tracking, etc⌠while not being willing to be hungry.
Iâve had tremendous success in low carb and had hesitancy to move away from it because the dietary change improved my life so much, but at the same time I wonder if I was at the end of the benefits from it.
There are theories going around that all of the gluconeogenesis required to produce glucose if you arenât eating it causes a lot of stress on your body and you burn out on it. Iâm not sure. All I know is that I hit a plateau and my wife actually gained a fair amount of weight. Seeing her challenges too made me think it isnât working for us.
All that said I have nothing to complain about. Iâm at a good weight for my height, but it would be better to lose a little fat and add muscle.
Dave
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My block of these starts next week.
I have scheduled two back to back days of 3x 20â
I will post the outcome here.
Yeah I had good weight success with low carb too and seems that most of the people that I know that have had 5+ year continue success have an element of low carb. I have done a lot of continuous glucose monitoring more for the fun and to prove the theories to myself and they donât require a prescription in Poland but that mixed with other variables make me realize that my belief is that processed carbs are the problem and high fiber can bring similar glucose and weight loss as low carb.
To me most low carb diets mean high cholesterol and while I do believe their is a pharma induced paranoia around this it just not feel as health as a reduced animal / animal fat diet. Even âMr Ketoâ Dr Berg, reversed his opinion saying you should be careful with it after years of saying it does not matter.
What you doing interrupting this diet conversation about something totally off subject like the original point of this post 
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I donât have anything to add on diets.
I know this isnât normal, but I donât own any scales that I could weigh myself on.
The only time in the last 20 years that I have been weighed was May 2021, in order to be able to have a go in a little helicopter. I use that weight as my current weight.
I donât know my % body fat (never have and never will).
I donât know my cholesterol numbers (never have and never will).
Super cool lucky you⌠I really was kidding. I love testing, but I rarely weigh myself unless I am testing something.
Two consecutive days of 3x20â @ ~85% completed.
I was gifted an 8w FTP decrease by TrainerRoad AIFTP the day before the first of these workouts (that is what happens when there was no workout above 85% FTP in the prior 28 days).
The temperature difference from Day 1 to Day 2 was 8 centigrade (+4 to -4). It was really cold (by my standards) in my training shed on Day 2!
Day 1
Day 2
I am toying with the idea of doing the same tomorrow too.
Good job. Its interesting your HR seems higher on the first intervals.
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The negative splits are amazing where HR goes down each interval. I would like to have that trait.
Did you purposely add the 3 minutes at higher power in the beginning or is this just the standard workout design?
Dave
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I either need to do more warmup, or it is taking me longer to recover from the warmup than that rest period before the main block of work starts.
It was really cold (for me) in my shed this morning. I only used 1 small fan for cooling and I realised that I was actually quite cold when I got off the bike.
It is a Trainer Road workout called Round Bald. That warm up period is pretty standard stuff for TR workouts.
Itâs funny back about 4 years ago. I actually had discussions with Nate (I had previously talked to him and then I reached out to him since I had his email) and asked if we should clean TR stuff out of TrainerDay⌠I think he was happy I brought it up.
Eventually once they did their AI stuff they seemed to stop caring⌠but Nate originally gave me a long list of their workouts and I just blocked the searches but I do provide results that matches the idea⌠based on similarity matching⌠but itâs in many cases itâs not an exact match or not even the same workout.
The 3x30 version is in the catalogue âas isâ
The move to adaptive training plans on TR must have increased the variety of workouts that users are being served very significantly compared to the previous plans.
Yes it was always more of a concern about TRs static plans before AI as people would share those too but again for good reasons they stopped caring and people stopped sharing them. Overall all signs suggest they are contracting but for sure we are a very small part of that.
From my perspective, the value for money at the current pricing is not there with TR. Moreover, I think the segment of the market that does see it as value for money is probably shrinking, rather than growing.
The Training Peaks acquisition of Indie Velo back in October 2024 spiked the guns of TRâs integration with Zwift.
Couple that with TD (with HR+) and then the (marketing) rush towards âAIâ training by so many competitors these days, and I can see that TR is more likely to be getting squeezed, rather than doing the squeezing.
The acquisition of Runna by Strava in July of this year made me wonder if a Strava / TR combination was also in the pipeline. Maybe it is.
I know TR Zwift was in the works way before Indievelo but yes, maybe that sped it up, really Zwift was slowing it down as they had to build a way to make workouts api based not files on the computer. TP wanted to buy us for our app even before any of this. They wanted an indoor training platform for their coaches for a long time.
I think if you have the money, you like to just trust the man, then even at current pricing TR is fine. They offer a very quality polished product, content, comunity that takes much of the thinking out of training. When shopping for things, sometimes I just buy what seems like the market leader even if it is not the best value. apple/android mac/pc⌠these days even linux is very viable for someone like myself.
Runna had millions of users and very mainstream. I donât see them buying anything like TR, nothing so small niche focused⌠Strava is primarily an outdoor platform. I do think Strava would like something in cycling but more like buying TP not TRâŚ
Even though I donât run, I know quite a few people who do run (across quite a spectrum of seriousness) that use Runna.
Strava acquired The Breakaway cycling app in May 2025, but I havenât heard of anyone I know using it.
Strava did say that âPower Skillsâ is the first piece of The Breakaway being fully integrated into the Strava ecosystem. Does anyone use that? Has it caused any new users to sign up to Strava?