I started doing Zoe (
https://zoe.com/) - the programme to do with finding which foods fit your metabolism done by the people who did the covid tracker - in January. There's the odd post here and there but I didn't see a thread on it so thought I'd start one.
Tl;dr - I'm enjoying it, am feeling well on it and have lost weight - and think it has told me I need to eat less than I thought when cycling.
It's not specifically about weight loss, but the majority of people who do it want to lose weight, so there is a relationship.
One thing that got me interested in it was that I had a pre-diabetic blood test result a couple of years ago. It was a few weeks after I had done the Transcontinental Race, then been on a family holiday with wine every day (not loads but more than I'd normally drink). A retest a few weeks later was back in normal range (I found it amusing to tell the doctor that I had been able to fix things by scaling my exercise right back and putting on a couple of kilos!) but I wanted to understand more about it - specifically whether riding long hours and eating junk from petrol stations OR a week of French food with wine was more more likely to have put me into a bad place from a blood sugar perspective.
Another thing that intrigued me was Christoph Stasser saying after the Transcontinental last year that he had had a much quicker recovery than the previous year, which he credited from having changed his race diet, from all the petrol station junk, to mainly fruit juice, tinned fish and bread.
Zoe do tests on how well you process fat and sugar, as well as how good your gut bacteria are and how good your diet is. My results were interesting. My diet, gut bacteria and fat management were good - but the latter is entirely down to medication to reduce cholesterol levels so no credit to my system - it would be very bad otherwise. But my blood sugar management was bad. It turns out that if I look at a potato, rice, pasta, bread, beer or white wine, or similar my blood sugar spikes right up. During the test period (too short to be a proper test but still indicative), I wavered in and out of the pre-diabetic range.
I did a 5-6 hour ride while I had the blood sugar monitor on and that was probably the most interesting part for me (although not for Zoe as it doesn't take into account anything to do with exercise). It showed that the cereal bars that I normally eat were really spiking my blood sugar, and I could keep it in a normal / performance range by eating significantly less than I normally would.
I'm planning to explore that more. I was thinking of doing SuperSapiens - which used the blood sugar monitors to show you what is going on when you are riding and eating on the bike - but won't now as they've gone out of business. But I think the latest BS monitors can give you the data straight to your phone so will look to try that instead to optimise what I eat on rides. I'd like to avoid eating in a way that over the long term, will propel me towards diabetes.
Otherwise, I'm enjoying Zoe, really enjoying the food: it has pushed me towards a keto diet with more protein and fat and few carbs. I'm not missing carby stuff and am enjoying not being hungry between meals. I've lost a few kg - not all due to Zoe but a bit more than I would have expected to at this time of year anyway. I can eat some stuff that I always thought was a bit indulgent - I now regularly have a cooked breakfast: kippers or a (vegetarian) fry-up: both score much better than porridge or museli. And dark chocolate scores a lot higher for me than virtually all fruit.
Eating out is tricky, for which I largely have to forget Zoe as hardly any restaurant food works, especially if I have a glass of wine or beer with it!
