Boost your ride

Performance Q&A The big cycling questions answered by our team of expert coaches, nutritionists and riders

- 

01 MY WEIGHT LOSS HAS SLOWED TO A STANDSTILL. WHAT CAN I DO TO GET BACK ON TRACK?

At its most basic level, weight loss is easy - you need to either eat less or exercise more, so that your calorie expenditure is greater than those you take in. But as most of us know, it's not that simple to execute the plan in real life. There are many physical, emotional and psychological reasons why your weight-loss journey may have plateaued. Thankfully, there are solutions to most of these stalling problems.

Know thyself

One of the finest books to keep you on track is The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down, written by Dr Simon Marshall and multiple off-road triathlon world champion Lesley Paterson, and published in 2023. I spoke to Marshall a few years ago (before he sadly died in 2024) and, as is illustrated in the book, he was a master at helping folk hit their goals through a mixture of psychology and neuroscience. There were many takeaways from that enlightening chat, but here are three of the key ones...

Too many people are outcome-focused, meaning they don't concentrate on the smaller victories before the bigger win (which more often than not, is never reached, because of not focusing on the smaller wins!). This approach sidesteps the most important element of goal-setting biology - the neurotransmitter dopamine. Although it's associated with pleasure, dopamine's main role is keeping us on the right path toward hitting our goals. If you teach yourself to microdose dopamine at regular intervals, you'll receive a happy-hormone squirt that'll please your brain and crank up encouragement. To open the dopamine floodgates, Marshall said, try to watch and listen to inspirational stuff, especially before a ride or meal. This is an individual thing, but you can't go wrong with YouTube hits of athletes overcoming adversity.

When it comes to self-control, early mornings are almost always better for exercise.