Episode 230 -How to Lose Weight Without Losing Power

Trying to lean up but your power keeps dropping?

If every time you cut calories your FTP tanks, your threshold sessions feel rubbish and you’re dragging yourself through long rides, this episode is your reality check.

In this week’s episode, I break down how to lose body fat strategically without sacrificing performance. Because you don’t get faster by shrinking yourself. You get faster by building a strong engine and fuelling it properly.

You’ll learn why slashing carbs is one of the biggest mistakes triathletes make, how to periodise your intake across the week, why protecting muscle mass is critical for both metabolism and power, and what a small sustainable calorie deficit actually looks like when you’re training for three sports. I also share a real athlete case study of a masters triathlete who lost 45 pounds while improving her FTP and keeping it off long term.

If you’re serious about leaning up without your watts tanking, this is the strategy you’ve been missing.

Links:

Check how well you’re doing when it comes to your nutrition with our 50 Step Checklist to Triathlon Nutrition Mastery

Start working on your nutrition now with my Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart course 

It’s for you if you’re a triathlete and you feel like you’ve got your training under control and you’re ready to layer in your nutrition. It's your warmup on the path to becoming a SUPERCHARGED triathlete – woohoo!

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Episode Transcription

Episode 230: How to Lose Weight Without Losing Power

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

[00:00:00] So how do you lose weight? And by weight I actually mean body fat without losing power that is the ultimate goal that a lot of triathletes want to achieve is how to actually lean up without compromising your performance.

[00:00:17] and when you don't know how to do that strategically and you're still trying to train for three sports work, hold down all of your other commitments and family, It is just a recipe for disaster when you then decide to eat less on top of all of that.

[00:00:32] And if you go too hard, too fast, yeah, you may lose weight. But what's really gonna happen is you will most likely lose muscle mass in that process. And then you run the risk of under fuelling and underperforming in your training and racing, ultimately is not what we want, right. So I wanna give you some clear strategic tips on how to do this the right way so that your performance and power doesn't go backwards. The biggest mistake I see triathletes make when they are trying to lose weight is cutting back way too hard, particularly with carbohydrate and not just the highly processed high GI junk food type carbohydrate. I'm talking about all carbs. ' cause carbs are bad, right? Carbs make you fat. They they're evil, they are the devil.

[00:01:22] And if we get rid of those, we are going to magically reach all of the goals that we're trying to achieve. Triathletes create this calorie deficit that is far too large across the entire training week, yet you still expect your body to perform at a really high level in training,

[00:01:38] but you can't ask your body to hit threshold power on the bike, run off the bike strong, and hold your pace in the pool.

[00:01:46] While simultaneously and significantly under fuelling it, it just doesn't work. Your body cannot perform well when it's in a hole.

[00:01:58] Now fat loss and performance can absolutely coexist, but only. When energy and calories and carbs and all the macros are managed strategically across your entire training week,

[00:02:11] let me give you a real world example of what this looks like when it's done properly.

[00:02:17] Inside the Triathlon Nutrition Academy, which is my online program where I help age group triathlete understand what to eat for three sports and help turn nutrition into your secret weapon. I have the pleasure of working with USA triathlete Erin Burge. Before joining the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, Erin constantly, yo-yo dieted, and she's not afraid to vocalize that she used triathlon to help her manage her body composition.

[00:02:44] Over the last 12 or so months, Erin has lost a gigantic 45 pounds now that's 20 kilos if you run the metric system like I do. But what's awesome about this is that she'd lost body fat. She didn't lose muscle, and her FTP improved through the process for the first time in her life. She's also actually kept that off.

[00:03:08] Instead of rebounding and it all going back on again.

[00:03:11] Now, that did not happen by accident. It's not because she just ate cleaner. It's not because she cut carbohydrate and it's not because she just smashed herself in extra cardio sessions either. it was strategic structured nutrition at the right time in her season.

[00:03:28] She fuelled her key training sessions properly. She recovered properly. She got enough protein. She adjusted her carbohydrate across the week, depending on her training load, not just throw herself in a massive deficit. She created a small sustainable deficit instead of a gigantic one.

[00:03:46] There was no crash dieting, no extreme restriction, and none of that white knuckling hunger that you get when you've gone too hard.

[00:03:54] Just strategic nutrition and consistency,

[00:03:58] That is a difference between dieting and performance nutrition. When you diet, you just shrink yourself, but when you fuel strategically, you support performance while slowly improving your body composition, that is what we love to do inside the academy. And yes, it does take longer than a quick six week shred, but you don't rebound, you don't lose muscle and your watts don't tank.

[00:04:27] So what does strategic fat loss actually look like for a triathlete?

[00:04:33] It's not sexy, but it works.

[00:04:36] The first thing you need to do is you fuel the sessions that matter.

[00:04:40] This is non-negotiable. If you've got threshold work, VO two work a long brick, a long run a race, anything that is performance, You eat before it, you fuel during it, and you recover properly afterwards

[00:04:56] you do not try and create a massive calorie deficit in your hardest sessions because this is where performance is built. Trying to burn more fat by training fast at all the time. And under fuelling just means that you're going to produce less power. and if your power drops, your stimulus drops, and then you burn less calories in that session, and that is not helpful.

[00:05:19] Number two is you need to periodise your carbohydrate, not just eliminate them.

[00:05:24] Carbs are not the enemy. Carbs do not make you fat in isolation.

[00:05:30] poorly timed carbs, way too much carbohydrate and the wrong types of carbohydrate are probably the bigger issue here. On high low days, you need more on lighter days. Rest days you need less. You can pull things back slightly There. That is where some strategic deficit can come from, but it's not from slashing carbs right across the board and putting yourself into a massive hole.

[00:05:55] The third thing you need to do is to protect your muscles. Hold onto those bad boys. If you lose muscle, your metabolic rate drops and your power drops, so you need to protect them fiercely.

[00:06:10] Meeting your protein needs across the day is really important. You need to You need to hit the gym and strength train if you're not already, start now. And recovery nutrition matters as well. you don't just wanna be lighter. You wanna be leaner and you wanna be powerful.

[00:06:26] And those two things are not the same.

[00:06:28] The fourth thing is the deficit needs to be small and boring. This is the part that no one wants to hear. If you are training consistently, your calorie deficit should only be modest. It's not extreme, it's not aggressive. It's not so hard and fast, like six week challenges where you'd lose some weight and then you put it all back on, plus some afterwards, and that is where Erin won.

[00:06:55] She was consistent. She didn't panic when the scales started to fluctuate up and down a little bit on a daily, weekly basis, particularly as a female, those hormones can wreak havoc sometimes, and your weight can jump up and down on the scales by a couple of kilos or multiple pounds, and you have no idea what's happened.

[00:07:14] A lot of people see that and immediately get disheartened and go and eat a block of chocolate. They're not gonna do that.

[00:07:20] Erin focused on the small daily habits that compound over time, not urgency, not I need to lose this weight yesterday.

[00:07:29] And that's also why she kept it off for the first time ever because she learned how to eat properly to support her training along the way through the program. So that once she hit her weight goal, she didn't just flip the switch and go back to doing what she was doing before.

[00:07:46] She's doing things differently and being much more strategic about her nutrition to support her entire triathlon career, not just this weight loss phase.

[00:07:55] So I really want you to understand that you don't get faster by shrinking yourself. You get faster by building a really strong engine.

[00:08:05] And then if your body fat slowly and strategically comes down while that engine is being built properly, that is where the magic happens. The mistake so many triathletes make is trying to force that fast fat loss while also trying to demand performance outta their body.

[00:08:23] But when you fuel your key sessions and you recover properly and you periodise your intake across the week and when the deficit is small and sustainable, you can lean up without your FTP tanking

[00:08:38] and Erin is proof of that. 45 pounds down FTP up and maintaining it long term.

[00:08:44] If this is something that you're trying to figure out on your own and you don't have that structure yet, start with my Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart Course. This is where I can teach you how to build your triathlon performance plate and understand how to do fuelling before training. During training, and recover properly after training.

[00:09:03] It gives you this framework so that you're not just eating less and hoping that it works.

[00:09:10] And if you want personalised guidance from me and the accountability and support of your cohort.

[00:09:15] and the ability and knowledge to adjust your nutrition to your training block, your data, your goals, your lifestyle. That's exactly what we work on together inside the Triathlon Nutrition Academy Program.

[00:09:26] And that's where athletes just like Erin, learn to dial this in properly.

[00:09:30] If you are serious about losing body fat while keeping your performance and maintaining your power, register your interest in our upcoming cohort dietitianapproved.com/academy. I'll link both of those things below. You don't need to eat less. You need to eat smarter.

[00:09:47] If your power is dropping every time you try and lean up, then that tells me that you haven't got that balance right. And honestly, if you're going to put in the hours across three sports, you deserve your nutrition strategy to match that effort. Fix your nutrition, protect your engine, and the results will follow 

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!