Why You Need To Stop Worrying About Your Weight

Having learnt the hard way about body weight obsession, Charlie Graham-Dixon goes in search of a healthier perspective

- Charlie Graham-Dixon

Cycling websites and fitness magazines publish endless features exploring how riders can and should lose weight, through diet and training, to improve their performance. When super-lean pros take to social media to post photos of their legs looking like road maps of bulging veins, we amateurs sit back in wonderment. But focusing too intensely on weight can have unintended consequences. Lightest isn’t always best, and the reality is, pros and amateurs are very different. As I found out to my cost, some amateur riders really need to stop worrying about their weight.

Despite the now widespread acceptance that it’s aerodynamics (above weight) that offers cyclists ‘free speed’, the relationship between weight and performance is inextricable. Riders have long sought the lightest bikes to enhance performance on the road, and road bikes and related componentry continue to become ever lighter. Recognising this relentless clamour for lightness, the cycling industry has pushed the message, ‘lightest is best’.

Away from hardware, body weight has come under even more intense scrutiny as riders strive to reach their ideal race weight — that magical number, the perfect balance between power, effciency and lightness. From WorldTour pros to Sunday club riders, cyclists wanting to go faster for longer follow a mantra epitomised by former pro David Millar: “I am light, I am strong.”