BALANCING THE SCALES DO YOU REALLY NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT?

The next time you find yourself thinking, 'if only I could shed a few kilos, I'd be so much fitter, faster, happier...' - pause! Dr Eimear Dolan provides a framework for a careful, considered weight check

-  Dr Eimear Dolan

Body weight and composition are widely discussed, and sometimes hotly debated, topics among cyclists. That's hardly surprising, given that your body weight - along with the nutrition and training habits that got you there - has huge potential to influence your performance, for better or worse. So how can an individual cyclist know what's best for them? When does weight loss benefit performance, and when might it be detrimental? These are the questions this feature will investigate, to help you figure out whether you really need to lose weight.

When asked about how weight influences performance, cyclists generally talk about wanting to be lighter and narrower, so as to improve their power-to-weight ratio while decreasing aerodynamic drag. They are not wrong. But it's also more complicated.

Reaching optimal performance is about harmonising body weight with your training load, fuelling needs, sleep, rest and recovery. It's about tailoring your own individual goals and strategy to find that sweet spot where you can maintain a healthy weight in a way that's harmonious with all other aspects of your life.

In an ideal world there would be a simple formula to calculate where your own personal sweet spot lies. Sadly, no such formula exists. The best we can do here and now - is to examine how body weight influences performance and health, to define our personal goals, then to combine this information to develop a strategy that helps you to feel strong, light and comfortable in your own skin.

Step one: define your goal

The glorification of weight loss is so ingrained within many cycling circles that the practical objective gets skewed by toxic skinnier-the-better rhetoric.