Calorify Review: A Game Changer For Sports Nutrition
Cycling and other endurance sports burn a lot of calories and one of the most important aspects to cycling performance is staying fueled for training and racing. Whether it’s recovering from a hard session, keeping your energy topped up on a long ride, or simply getting stronger and adapting from your training, it all takes calories! If we want to get the most out of our training, we have to keep an eye on the fuel we are putting into our bodies.
Massive strides have been made in the field of sports nutrition in the last decade, and we’re beginning to realize that our performance is more closely related to our nutrition than we previously thought. Even ten years ago, most teams racing the Tour de France did not even have nutritionists to oversee their riders, but now practically every team has a nutritionist on board to make sure riders are adequately fueled.
One of the biggest challenges to cycling nutrition is figuring out exactly how much food we actually need on a daily basis to fuel our training. I’m sure most of us have experienced days on the bike where our legs feel like bricks and we struggle to even ride in zone 2. A lot of times this is due to depleted glycogen stores and inadequate nutrition from the day prior.
When training hard, it can be tricky to know how many calories you need to take in. Not enough calories, and you will struggle to recover and adapt from training. Too many, and you might see unwanted weight gain. Many riders unknowingly underfuel their training due to the sheer amount of caloric expenditure from cycling training.
There can also be large individual differences in daily energy expenditure depending on a variety of factors. Your lean body mass will determine your basal metabolic rate, but your occupation, stress levels and other daily activities are also large contributors to daily expenditure. Even those with similar training loads can have vastly different caloric needs.
To make matters more challenging, there can be huge daily fluctuations in caloric needs depending on training volume. A big day of training could require 5,000+ Calories, but a recovery day might only require 2,500.
If only we had a reliable method to quantify all our energy expenditure throughout the day, we could ensure we are properly fueled for training, maintaining optimal body composition and staying healthy.
Well, thanks to Calorify, now you can! The Calorify at-home test offers you essential insights into your nutritional needs that are impossible to gain elsewhere and are representative of your daily life in the real world, not a lab.
The insights gained from Calorify will be an absolute game changer for your cycling and I’ve experienced it firsthand. Want to train smarter, get leaner, build muscle, recover faster and get stronger? Calorify if right for you!
*Use Code “EVOQ” at checkout to get $100 off your Calorify Order!*
What is Calorify?
Calorify is an at-home test that is used to measure your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), which is basically the total amount of calories you burn in a day. The insights gained from the test allow you to quantify your caloric needs and determine your Physical Activity Level (PAL), all of which can be used to optimize your sports nutrition and training.
The test is really easy and simple. You will receive a box containing the Calorify fingerprinted water which you drink at the start of test week, then you take three urine samples over the course of the week. After mailing your results, you will receive a detailed analysis of your data (and a consultation with Calorify PRO).
How Does Calorify Work?
Calorify uses something called “doubly labeled water” to track energy expenditure. This method has been used in research with humans since the 1980s, but it has not been made available to the masses until now.
Doubly labeled water replaces hydrogen and oxygen with their isotope forms and traces them through the body. I won’t pretend to know how it works, but drinking this water and taking urine samples allows us to measure an individual's energy expenditure over a 7 day period with remarkable accuracy.
What Will My Test Results Look Like?
You will receive a lot of valuable information from your Calorify test results in a PDF form. With Calorify PRO, you can also have a consultation with an expert to discuss your results and make a nutrition gameplan. Below is a summary of the insights you will gain from Calorify PRO. These results are a 7-day average from a normal week of training when I took the Calorify PRO test.
Daily Caloric Burn:
For this week, I burned an average of 3901 Calories per day. I trained around 16 hours on the bike this week with a couple of gym sessions.
Energy Balance:
This tends to be the tricky part and the place where people make the biggest missteps. As you can see from this test week, I was pretty much spot-on with my caloric intake and met my caloric requirements.
Calorie Intake By Objective:
Whether your goal is to maintain, gain or lose weight for cycling, you will receive Calorie targets to help meet these goals. My goal right now is actually to build muscle and having these Calorie targets has helped tremendously.
Energy Budget:
As you can see, 1577 Calories came from basal metabolism (the Calories burned at rest), and the rest was from exercise, non-exercise activity, and the thermic effect of food.
Complete Energy Budget:
With Calorify PRO, by providing your training data to Calorify, you can see in more detail where your energy budget is being allocated. I can see that I burnt almost 1500 Calories per day from training alone and 1577 Calories for my basal metabolic rate, but there was almost 850 Calories more unaccounted for from the thermic effect of food and non-exercise activities! When I received these test results I was actually surprised because I was burning more than I thought.
Energy Availability:
Energy availability is essentially how much energy you have left over after exercise for normal bodily functions. One major issue that is very common in endurance athletes is low energy availability, which can impact health and performance (more on that later).
Body Composition:
Another very cool feature of Calorify is that it can also provide you with precise body composition measurements similar to what you would get with a DEXA scan. From this data, you can determine what you might need to do to optimize your body composition. Typically a healthy range is 6-13% for males and 14-20% for females.
Physical Activity Level (PAL):
We go in-depth on this topic in the podcast, but PAL represents your total activity level from all activities combined and is defined as your total daily energy expenditure divided by basal metabolic rate.
Research has shown quite convincingly that humans cannot sustainably train over 2.5 PAL for long periods without having to recover, or else they can become overtrained. As you can see from my test results, I was right at the limit of my PAL, meaning that if I trained harder than this it would not be sustainable long term.
How can this be used?
There are numerous ways in which this data can be used to better inform both your training and nutrition. I highly recommend listening to our podcast with Calorify CEO Hari Mix so you can get the full details on all the applications of Calorify, but I will also detail some of the talking points below.
Improve Performance:
If you want to drive your car across the country, you need to fill up the tank with enough gas to get to your destination. For our bodies, calories provide fuel to maintain good health and train hard and without the right amount of calories, performance will suffer.
If you often find yourself fatigued during training, feeling low on energy and struggling to recover from hard sessions, it might be that you need more calories to help you recover. Cycling burns a lot of calories, and it’s actually pretty common for athletes to unknowingly underfuel their training.
See Also: The Complete Guide to Cycling Nutrition
Improve Body Composition:
If you want to lose weight for cycling in a safe manner without sacrificing your performance, Calorify is a great tool to help you dial in your nutrition for weight loss. It can be very difficult to know exactly how many calories you need to take in to lose weight, and the precise measurements from Calorify are a game changer.
Other athletes might benefit from building muscle, and Calorify gives you calorie targets to build muscle, without excess fat gain.
See Also: Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Race Weight and Maximizing Power to Weight Ratio
Optimize Energy Budget:
You may have heard the old adage: “Never run when you can walk, never walk when you can stand, never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down.”
Oftentimes I hear professional cyclists throwing this quote around, but the basis is simple: the more energy you can save from non-essential activities, the more energy you can put into training.
One reason pro cyclists can train so hard is they can make cycling the centerpiece of their day and minimize stress in other areas of their lives. This allows them to put in better quality training and get even faster as a result.
For the everyday cyclist with a job or school, there can be a lot of other life stresses that can impact training. Those with physically demanding jobs or high stress work environments can expend a lot of extra energy from work and this can detract from training.
The insights from Calorify can help you see where you might need to draw back other activities to save more energy for training. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the amount of calories you burn from non-training activities (chores, work, playing with the kids, etc..). Even things like fidgeting and anxiety can burn extra calories. You might find there are opportunities to decrease NEAT and have more energy for training with your Calorify results.
Stay Healthy and Avoid RED-S:
If an athlete chronically undershoots their caloric requirements for an extended period, they risk suffering from Relative Energy Deficit in Sport (RED-S). In a sport like cycling, it can be easy to become so overly fixated on weight that an athlete's health and performance will suffer.
Eating disorders are a serious issue in cycling, and I’ve heard countless stories of cyclists who have wasted years of their careers because of an eating disorder and sometimes severely compromised their health as well.
However RED-S can also impact athletes who are unknowingly not consuming enough calories. When training hard and burning a lot of calories, it can be easy to undershoot calorie needs if an athlete is not paying close enough attention to their nutrition.
With RED-S syndrome, the body does not have enough energy left over to maintain healthy bodily function and there are numerous health risk associated with it:
Suppressed immune function, increased risk of illness
Hormonal dysfunction (low testosterone, disrupted menstruation in women)
Low bone mineral density and heightened risk for osteoporosis
Cardiovascular health, potentially long term heart damage
Poor mental health (anxiety, depression, low motivation).
Calorify can help you avoid RED-S and help you to remain healthy for years to come. Being able to stay healthy year round and achieve your goals is a worthwhile investment.
Find a Sustainable Training Load:
With the PAL metric provided with Calorify, you can quantify your training load and determine what is a sustainable amount of training. Some athletes might find they can train harder without risking overtraining, while others might find they need to scale back their training to prevent going too deep.
During my test week, I put in around 16 hours on the bike and I was right at the sustainable limit of 2.5 PAL. Now I know that sustainably year round, 16 hours on average is about the most I can handle.
I can now use this to make sure I am getting enough recovery and not overdoing it. There will be times when I go above 16 hours per week during a hard block of training, but I now know that at some point, I will need to come below the 16 hour limit to allow my body to recover.
Consultation:
There’s definitely a lot to unpack when you get your Calorify data, but you will receive a consultation from Calorify (with the PRO version) to ask any questions you might have and make a nutrition gameplan.
Is There a Calorify Discount Code?
Yes! You can use the code “EVOQ” at checkout to get $100 off your purchase.
Final Verdict:
I had a great experience with Calorify and learned a ton about how to better manage my training and nutrition. After only a few months of implementing their recommendations, I have been able to build lean mass and have felt way more energetic on the bike than I had before.
Regardless of your goals, Calorify will be a gamechanger for your cycling and is a worthwhile investment. Proper nutrition is paramount when it comes to cycling success and dialing in your nutrition will catalyze your performance
One thing I love about Calorify is the precision of measurements. Even though I had power meter data from my training and thought I knew how many calories I was burning, it turned out I was actually burning a lot more than I realized, which explains why I was experiencing some unwanted weight loss at the time.
Calorify is also the only way you can measure your total energy expenditure in the real world. While you do have power meter data to provide you with calories burned cycling, the rest of your energy budget is relatively unknown without Calorify. If you have a physical job, you might be burning boatloads more calories than you realize.
I also like how Calorify measures calorie intake. Getting a ballpark figure on how many calories you eat normally can help you make adjustments up or down depending on your goals. If you’re struggling to lose weight for cycling, getting a grasp on this number is hugely helpful.
The test was as easy as taking a few sips of water and mailing some samples, and the insights I gained I will carry with me for many years to come. If you want to learn more about Calorify, check out their website and listen to our podcast with CEO Hari Mix to gain some more insights.
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Contact the Author: Landry@evoq.bike
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