Weight Loss for Track Days: The Nutrition Based Approach

This is a guest post from Aaron Gillies of TrackDayFitness.com.

Aaron is a nutrition and fitness coach with over 11 years of experience in the athletic training, rehabilitation and sports fitness profession.

He is also certified by Precision Nutrition and by the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA).

It’s safe to say he knows his stuff about fitness and weight loss.

Here is his take on nutrition based weight loss for those looking to lose a few pounds. Whether for track days or not. Enjoy!

Most trackday riders and racers are always looking for ways to save weight on the bike. It has so many benefits for the rider that it’s the first place most trackday riders look to improve performance.

On a motorcycle that weighs somewhere between 350-450 pounds, dropping 10 pounds from the wheels makes a pretty significant difference. The same could not be said for dropping 10 pounds from the weight of a car.

However, sometimes it is much easier (and less expensive) to shed weight from the rider. This has a few key benefits to trackday riders.

First, and most obvious, it reduces the total weight of the rider + moto equation. The less weight the motor has to push around the track, the quicker the bike begins to move forward. Call it an extension of Newton’s 3rd Law: Inertia.

Secondly, it removes weight from higher on the bike, lowering the center of gravity and making the bike more stable. This is one of the main reasons why underslung exhausts such as on the KTM RC8 or Ducati 1199 are showing up. Not to mention, getting a big belly out of the way also moves the rider closer to the front wheel which will reduce reach to the controls as well as sharpen handling by moving weight forward.

Lastly, a lighter rider is easier to move around and support! Fatigue is a major factor in trackday spills and reducing body weight certainly helps reduce fatigue as well as improve recovery.

So you could spend a few thousand dollars on the latest carbon fiber bits and pieces, and end up dropping 12-pounds from the bike. But you could spend a few months and a lot less money and drop 12-pounds from your own frame and reap very similar benefits, while saving the extra money for consumables like tires.

But how do we go about losing weight? It seems there are dozens of fad diets that will quickly drop 10-15 pounds at the cost of overall health and performance.

But that’s not going to work for us. How much would our riding improve if we lost 10-pounds but 5-lbs was muscle and 3 of it was water? We would be one dehydrated, weak little scab waiting to be manhandled by the first quick esses that showed up.

Being athletes, we need optimal nutrition for health, performance AND weight loss. The Precision Nutrition model does just this quite well. By focusing on nutrition density, we are able to keep our calorie intake in the perfect range for fat-loss while still preserving much needed muscle.

There are 5-habits that when incorporated into your life have almost miraculous effects on weight loss AND performance. I’ll give you a brief rundown of the Precision Nutrition 5 Habits and then a sample day so you can see what that looks like.

1. Eat slowly until 80% full. Most people eat because it’s “time” to eat, because they see food or because everyone else is doing it. Rarely is hunger the trigger for eating.

As a result, we eat far more frequently and far more food than we need to. Imagine your stomach is a gas tank. Put fuel in the tank when it’s about 75% empty and fill until it feels 80% full. This requires that we pay attention to hunger cues.

Try this for a day and watch what happens. You’ll find first that we are hard wired to eat breakfast. Secondly, you’ll find that most people eat until the food is gone or they literally can’t stuff any more food in themselves.

2. Eat protein with each meal. Protein is the building block for muscle. It’s also the fuel for fat-loss. Eating a serving of protein that is about the size of your hand with each meal would go a long way to maintaining muscle as well as repairing muscle breakdown (especially after a long day at the track!) Protein dense foods are primarily beef, eggs, fish, chicken, pork, or dairy.

3. Eat 4-5 servings of veggies each day. This can be a tough one to accomplish. But adding vegetables to each meal goes a long way to increasing that feeling of fullness, while keeping calories very low and simultaneously increasing energy.

Veggies are nutrient dense foods that are like octane boosters for our body’s primary fuel source, carbohydrates. Most often when riders are feeling like they are dragging and have some foggy-headedness, it’s a result of poor nutrient density.

You can plug fruit in about 2-3 times to help meet this habit goal. How big is a serving? Make a fist with your hand. If your veggies are packed that tight, that is one serving. Having a salad? Better make it the size of 3 fists.

4. Eat whole grains and starches only. White breads, pasta, bagels, crumpets, and other grain based products are nutritionally empty, not providing much in the way of fiber or any other vitamins or minerals. Instead aim for 1 palm of starch dense foods such as potato, sweet potato, yam or sprouted grain bread/pasta.

These starchy carbohydrates help to increase fullness and are quite nutrient rich which is really what we’re after.

5. Drink calorie free beverages only. It’s very easy to drink calories. One beer has roughly 140 calories and a soda pop has about the same. But even worse is that both of these beverages contribute almost nothing nutritionally!

Yet even some juices, which many people think are “healthy” have just as much sugar as a soda pop. So to keep everything in check, just make a habit of drinking calorie free drinks. Now you’re asking, “Is diet soda pop okay?”

Rightfully so. After all, it is a calorie free drink. While I don’t have the time to get into the specifics of it, after calories, think nutrition. What is this drink offering me nutritionally? How will it help my riding?

Now here’s the kicker: you don’t have to follow these rules 100% of the time. 90% is still an “A”! If you eat 3-4 meals a day, that means over the course of 7-days you will have 21-28 meals. 90% of 28 is 25.

So you get 3 meals where you can veer off course. Heck, if you’re looking for 80% compliance, that is 6 meals – almost 1 each day – that you can go off course! But just be aware that if your compliance is 80% instead of 90%, that extra 10% will show up in your body weight and eventually on track performance.

Remember, the better you get, the more important even a single percentage is. Need proof? How much money are MotoGP teams spending to gain 3/10’s of a second per lap?

Now, although I’ve covered the 5-habits for optimizing your body composition and losing unnecessary weight, what does this look like practically? Here’s a sample day of meals.

Breakfast: 2 eggs (made any way you like), a thick slice of cheese, and 2 slices of ham, ⅓ cup of oatmeal + chopped apples

Lunch: Grilled chicken breast over large garden salad, olive oil based dressing, 1 hard boiled egg

Snack: Palmful of almonds, banana, 1-cup cottage cheese

Dinner: Pork chop, apple sauce, 1 fist sized serving of potatoes, carrots & peas, medium sized garden salad.

For beverages we can do coffee or tea in the morning, water with lunch and dinner.

Remember rule #1: Eat slowly and to 80% full. If you can’t get in tune with your body’s hunger/fullness cues, you’ll always be a slave to calorie counting (which has many flaws of it’s own). Need some other ideas?

Check out the Precision Nutrition System. It has the tools you need to learn the habits to lose weight as well as 4-amazing recipe guides to direct food choices for the high performance physique you’re looking for: Plant Based Eating, 5-Minute Plant Based Meal Guide, 5-Minute Meal Guide, Super Shake Guide.

Have more questions or looking for a training program? Email trackdayfitness@gmail.com and we’ll get a program in your hands ASAP!

Photo by Stacy Spensley