Do Energy Gels & Sports Drinks Make You Gain Unwanted Body Fat?

As you're aware, sports drinks and energy gels are commercially available to buy and have been shown to enhance exercise performance.

This is the foundation that Fuel The Ride is built upon.

The issue is that many non-athletes drink and consume these high-sugar products, to which high-sugar diets can contribute and are associated with obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension, and CV disease (Johnson et al., 2010).

So, it's evident that non-athletes should avoid these because:

1. They're not training hard enough to warrant them.
2. The sugar-based foods are not satiating, which can lead to overeating.

But what about cyclists? You're the ones who need these products – Is your 'Bike Food' making you gain unwanted body fat and weight?

Well, a 2016 review by Dragusin and Horswill aimed to answer this exact question.

Their review pooled numerous studies looking at how many calories runners and cyclists consume during exercise and measured it against how many calories they burn.

The ten published studies found that the calories you burn during a session via sports drinks are, on average, three-fold higher than what you consume. This suggests you cannot completely meet the body's energy and carbohydrate (CHO) demands while exercising.

When looking at CHO recommendations during a ride, you typically don't need any CHO if you only ride for one hour. Still, it may be beneficial to start consuming 30-60g of CHO per hour for rides lasting 1-2 hours and increasing to 60-90g per hour for rides lasting more than 2-3 hours. In some cases, there's a need to push even higher to 100-120g per hour, assuming that your gut can tolerate it.

By all means, these recommendations are largely generalised, but the primary principle is that the longer and more intense your ride is, the more reliant on CHO you'll become. Therefore, your CHO intake must reflect this to maintain work capacity during a ride.

In Dragusin and Horswill's review, the athletes, on average, exercised for 110 minutes at a sustained-high intensity pace.

The athletes monitored, on average, consumed 394kcal from sports drinks during but burnt 1600kcal, which landed them in a 1206kcal deficit.

If the 394kcal consumed was entirely through sugar (glucose: fructose mix), this would equate to approximately 99g CHO in total, or 218kcal/54g CHO per hour, which is the equivalent to ~2 energy gels per hour, or four gels in total.

Considering these athletes burnt, on average, 888kcal/hour, they were still in a considerable energy deficit.

Knowing this, if you're a cyclist and training hard, you're not going to get fat by over-consuming sugar during your sessions - It'll be nearly impossible for these athletes to consume more than 900kcal per hour. Their gut won't be able to tolerate it.

Even if the intensity were far lower, say 500kcal per hour, they'd need to consume over 125g of CHO per hour to be in an energy excess. Although consuming this quantity is recommended in some cases, it certainly won't be recommended for lower intensities where the energy and CHO demand are lower.

You'll most likely finish your ride in an energy deficit, regardless of how well you fuelled it. Unless you have a café stop mid-ride and waft down a 250kcal latte, a 100kcal packet of crisps and a 400kcal granola bar in addition to your CHO powders, sweets and gels.

Ultimately, suppose you're consuming energy gels and CHO powders during the ride and are gaining unwanted body fat. In that case, that's when we look at the rest of the diet, and from experience, under fuelling rides cause a significant rebound in hunger and reactive eating patterns following the ride.

Therefore, by fuelling the ride better, your performance will improve, your hunger will be better managed, and your total calorie intake following the ride will be far more goal-enhancing.

- Coach Chris