{"id":3039,"date":"2021-07-05T11:56:29","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T11:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2021-07-05T11:56:29","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T11:56:29","slug":"how-much-do-the-pros-eat-at-the-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/2021\/07\/05\/how-much-do-the-pros-eat-at-the-tour-de-france\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much do the Pros Eat at the Tour de France?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Do Tour de France competitors really eat crazy amounts of food every competition day? Researchers from the University of Granada set out to measure the amount of food riders take in during Grand Tours such as Vuelta Espana, Giro d\u2019Italia, or Tour de France. They cooperated with Team Movistar and the results of this study are fascinating!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/30016187\/\">This study<\/a> is truly unique because it comes from working with elite cyclists in a Grand Tour setting. The researchers worked with nine Team Movistar riders at the 2015 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2020\/11\/09\/what-we-learned-from-la-vuelta-and-the-2020-season\/\">Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a.<\/a> Movistar won the team classification both in the Tour de France and Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a that year.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3040\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3040\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2020\/08\/profimedia-0379515236.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3040\" src=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Tour de France Food\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236-272x182.jpg 272w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/profimedia-0379515236.jpg 1250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3040\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bauke Mollema enjoying his sandwich at the 2020 Tour. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>Every bite of food was tracked<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The researchers were truly meticulous when tracking the food of all nine <a href=\"https:\/\/movistarteam.com\/en\">Movistar<\/a> riders. They weighed every food plate of every breakfast and dinner before it was eaten, and sat with the riders to see how much of each ingredient they ate. Likewise, food and gels were weighed before each stage and the remainder re-weighed to determine how much was actually eaten. The team also recorded the number of bidons handed out to each rider.<\/p>\n<p>Here is how many calories, carbs, fat, and protein per day the riders averaged during the whole tour.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>5,415 kcal per day<\/li>\n<li>872 g of carbs per day (12.5 g per kg of body weight)<\/li>\n<li>230 g of protein per day (3.3 g per kg of body weight)<\/li>\n<li>98 g of fat per day (1.5 g per kg of body weight)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are impressive numbers. Just to compare, even if you\u2019re fit and live an active lifestyle with a lot of cycling, you probably only burn around 2,500 kcal per day and that is typically made up of around 350 g of carbs, 90g of protein, and 82 g of fat.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3041\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3041\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3041 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831.jpg\" alt=\"Marc Hirschi\" width=\"1000\" height=\"666\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2021\/07\/Hirschi-drinks-profimedia-0557255831-272x182.jpg 272w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3041\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The bidons handed to riders were counted as well. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>Breakfast was the biggest meal of the day<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The study also shows when the Movistar riders consumed this amount of food throughout the day. To start, they had such a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/series\/healthy-breakfast\/\">big breakfast<\/a> that it would feed a typical sedentary person for almost an entire day. Here\u2019s what they took in on average.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1,317 kcal<\/li>\n<li>199 g of carbs<\/li>\n<li>47 g of protein<\/li>\n<li>37 g of fat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>They consumed over 43% of daily calories on the bike<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>On the bike, riders ate nearly half of all the calories for the whole day. They averaged 91 g of carbs every hour across all of the stages. The minimum they ate on the bike was 66 g per hour and the maximum was as high as 119 g. Don\u2019t try this at home\u2014you might experience digestive discomfort!<\/p>\n<p>Riders shifted away from a high-carb focus towards high protein for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/series\/recovery-nutrition\/\">recovery.<\/a> After a stage ended, they had a relatively low 147 g of carbs and 16 g of fat but a respectable 55 g of protein. This repeated for dinners too.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2030\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2030\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2030 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Ineos\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589-272x182.jpg 272w, https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/14\/2020\/10\/ineos-profimedia-0446002589.jpg 1250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2030\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Team Ineos fuelling for the next ride. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>Calories burned were also calculated<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The other side of food intake is energy expenditure. To find out how many calories riders burned during each stage, the researchers used power data from their bike watt-metres. They used a scientifically validated figure of 20.7% when converting kilojoules of power at the crank to calories.<\/p>\n<p>From these measurements, the researchers found the average energy expenditure for different stages. It varied a lot depending on stage length and intensity. Also, keep in mind, these are only numbers of calories burned on the bike, not for the whole day.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>373 kcal during the 7.4 km team time trial<\/li>\n<li>1,090 kcal during the 37.8 km individual time trial<\/li>\n<li>3,107 kcal during the flat stages<\/li>\n<li>4,707 kcal during the high-mountain stages<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Their body fat decreased<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Researchers evaluated changes in body composition of all riders by doing skinfold measurements before the Grand Tour and after. They found that the average rider dropped about 1 kg throughout the Vuelta. Measurements of arm and thigh circumference suggested that muscle mass was fairly well retained throughout the race. This shows that most of what they lost must have been fat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do Tour de France competitors really eat crazy amounts of food every competition day? Researchers from the University of Granada [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":3043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[111],"global-categories":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition-training","tag-tour-de-france-2021"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Much do the Pros Eat at the Tour de France? - We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/ie\/2021\/07\/05\/how-much-do-the-pros-eat-at-the-tour-de-france\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Much do the Pros Eat at the Tour de France?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do Tour de France competitors really eat crazy amounts of food every competition day? 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