The Benefits of Whole Food and Slaps in the Face
A Q&A with pro cyclist Thomas Portsmouth about nutrition on and off the bike.
There’s no shortage of books and shows regarding the inner life of pro cyclists. Ranging from streaming documentaries to in-depth tell-alls, they often focus on the Tour de France and/or the veterans who race this sort of grand tour. As much as I devour this media, it can oftentimes feel rehashed, like if every rock ‘n’ roll documentary out there was about the Rolling Stones or the Beatles.
With that in mind, Thomas Portsmouth’s Substack newsletter, He Who Learns, is more refreshing than a pre-dawn rollout on a chilly April morn. Thomas is a 21-year-old professional rouleur who rides with the Belgian team Bingoal Wallonie Bruxelles. As a freshly-minted pro, he approaches his sport with curiosity and a sense of adventure that the Mick Jaggers and Paul McCartneys of the road have long forgotten.
That said, he’s not new to the bike. He got his start racing in Guildford, England, a small town outside of London that he described as “the Flemish Ardennes just with the cobbles substituted for leaves and slippery roads with potholes.” From there, he quietly pedaled his way up the ranks, signing his pro contract in October of last year.
As a teenager, Portsmouth learned some hard lessons about under-eating that helped him realize the importance of keeping his diet on point. “Food is at the top of the priority list when it comes to bills under housing, because you'll perform better in everything else that you do,” he said recently after a 166-kilometer team training ride along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. “If I invest in the food and then wear free clothes that I get from the team, I’m sorted in my opinion.”
He’s also learned that proper diet isn’t just about fueling today’s race—it’s about fueling your races for the next 60 years. “I want to do sport until I'm 80. I don't care which sport. I'm just an athlete in a cycling phase right now. That could be in the next 15 years, it could be in the next two years.”
Then he paused for a second, adding, “I hope it's the next 15 years.”
How do you eat and how has it evolved from when you were a kid?
Thomas: The evolution has been exponential in the last eight months. It’s unfathomable to my brain how I even managed, how I survived. I had vegetables, but it was more a carb-based diet. It was quite heavily weighted towards the front of the day and then I filtered down as the day went on. I fueled the ride, fueled the recovery, and then controlled afterwards. Now, I have a veggie-based flexi diet that’s more evenly spread across the day.
Why do you feel that's a benefit?
Thomas: The sugar highs are less. I’m not as bloated after eating. I still feel full, I eat slower, and I enjoy the meals a little bit more.
Any other strategies?
Thomas: I went lower carb at the start of this winter to increase fat metabolism rates, but after the ride I couldn’t make up for that caloric deficit. I really struggled especially considering how obsessive I was over the carbs off the bike as well.
You're saying you would do fasted-state training or low-calorie training, and then afterwards you couldn't build up the kind of glycogen foundation you need to train properly?
Thomas: Exactly. And I got quite over-obsessive on lowering the carbs for weight loss. But I value that journey because it taught me the limit that I could go to, what it does to your brain and body when you push it too low. Once I’d learned lessons from being too high and too low on the carbs, I could find that middle ground. You have to have some food or you're just not going to grow and develop.
How many carbs do you shoot for when training? And what food specifically do you eat on the bike as well as before and after?
Thomas: In typical training, I'd be looking for a bowl of porridge with fruit, nuts, and honey and some eggs. Depending on the quantity of training loads, I would either have eggs with no toast or eggs with toast and a little bit of ham or something like that.
During rides, typically it's about 50 to 65 grams carbs an hour on an endurance day, but I've started incorporating higher carbs for the threshold and above work.
I've been trying to test gut load with the nutrition products that we have available—SANAS is our sponsor. It's 30 grams per packet or whatever, which is more specific than having homemade rice cakes. It's a carb mix in the bottle with bars and gels for the threshold work.
And for recovery?
Thomas: After the ride it's a bit more relaxed but I'm still finding the balance. As I mentioned, I was on the low side and I've started picking up the balanced side now.
Since Christmas, it's pasta. I weigh out about 1.5 grams of carbs per kilo within that first hour, hour-and-a-half window. I try to get that in with a mixture of proteins, either tofu, eggs, or a tuna lunch, because it's quite easy to make, quite quick. And then I mix a bit of veg in there as well.
I like to finish with a yogurt bowl because it satisfies the need for a little bit of sugar afterwards with fruit like strawberries, blueberries, kiwis. Also, the fruit is for reducing the inflammation.
Do you also go in for any supplements?
Thomas: Multivitamin and vitamin D. That's it.
No pre-workout supplements or caffeine or anything like that?
Thomas: Sometimes I have an espresso before.
Who doesn't?
Thomas: Exactly. It took me two years to have caffeine on a bike. It took my nutritionist two years to convince me to take a caffeine gel.
Why is that?
Thomas: I don't know. I was just so against it. And then I took caffeine gels on the bike one year, and I was like, "Okay, that was quite something." Now, yeah, it's caffeine before and after the ride. It also helps a bit with hunger and to build that fat metabolism. And I quite like the drink.
You mentioned quite a bit of protein pre-workout, is that a personal preference or is there a nutritional reason?
Thomas: Based on knowledge as I have gained these last four years, protein settles the blood sugar levels and creates that filter so you feel a little bit full because the protein is harder work to digest.
That ham doesn't come back to haunt you when you're climbing?
Thomas: No, I don't have very many GI discomforts. I think I found all the foods that work for me. And then I just stick with that routine, really.
Does the team give you access to a nutritionist?
Thomas: I'm working with a dietician I was put in touch with through the team. I can choose to have him.
All the riders get that option?
Thomas: Yeah, they get the choice. I don't know how many have gone with him. But I recognize the need to have someone within the field to know how that works.
How's that going so far?
Thomas: It's really fresh, I started only a week or so ago with him, so I'm still building up that relationship. I think the main thing I'm looking to get from him is periodization. That's what I struggled with before, breaking from that cycle of high carbs. This week is high carb because I'm on a nine-day training camp and we're doing five-hour plus rides. That's a big caloric deficit that you need to replenish all the time, even on the rest day. I just need that external source for periodization to say, "This is what you need to do for the next week."
You want to better understand how to pivot your diet depending on what you're doing on the bike.
Thomas: I know how to do it; it's just the accountability. I've got the habits in place; it's just an external, trusted source saying, “Now's the time.” It's more of a psychological game at that point rather than a nutritional one.
You mentioned weight loss. Is that something even amateur racers need to worry about?
Thomas: I think your hormones need to be stable—so I think you need to be old enough for sure. I don't think there's much point in telling a rider to be lean at anything when they’re less than 20 years old and their bodily situation is that they're still going through puberty.
I started finding balance last year when I was 21, so I started pushing it. I think once your hormones are balanced out then you can start pushing that weight and testing the field. But if you're going up and down in your mood, you can't control the diet because you're just going to eat with how your hormones are going.
So, for you, mood is an indicator that you're undereating—in addition to bonking and things like that?
Thomas: Yeah, I rarely bonk, it's more the mood. If my mood's swinging a lot then I'm not in a good way. That tells me—or it tells the people external to me—what's going on. If they're seeing that, then they should get a hold of me, which my parents did, which I'm very grateful for.
Do you have any particular philosophy about supplementation?
Thomas: I like whole food. That's my philosophy. If you have a blood test and you have deficit and you need a quick fix to get back up, then supplement, but if you can get it from whole foods, get it from whole foods.
It sounds like you really only supplement on the bike because you need that specificity.
Thomas: Exactly, I need that control, I need to know that I'm getting the right carbs in, the right nutrition in, on the bike for performance.
For amateurs who really want to perform, what have you learned that you would stress to them?
Thomas: The gut usually tells you what it wants, and you should learn to listen to that, learn its signs. I felt a little bit hungry this afternoon, so I had a banana. In the past I might have controlled that until dinner. Listen to that gut and spend time to understand it as you would a friend.
Otherwise, on the bike it's just power. If you have power, you're going to win. I believe it's arguably the same at the pro level now given Mathieu van der Poel, Arnaud De Lie, Mads Pedersen—they're athletes and strong. And they're all on the big side for traditional cycling. At the amateur level, weight difference is much less of a factor. I think it's just pure power. So, if you eat and you eat well, it will be what it will be.
If you try to lose weight and you don’t know what you’re doing, you'll lose power right along with it.
Thomas: Yeah, that's what I did. The Real Science of Sport Podcast explained phenotype shouldn’t matter, so long that you eat for the performance parameter that you want to achieve. The condition that they used was rugby. Obviously, you want to be strong and stable and powerful. But you also need to be agile. So long as you achieve both those performance parameters, it doesn't matter if you’re a fat bloke or a lean athlete.
That translates very much into cycling, if you're racing flat surfaces like crits, no need to be skinny. It doesn’t matter.
Thomas: Exactly. You can be a freaking rugby player if you want to. You'll have 2,000 watts and have endurance for one hour. You could effectively, on paper, do two sports. If it's a hilly crit, then yeah, you're going to struggle, but if you've got a flat American crit that goes around in circles, why not?
Which performance parameters are you working towards?
Thomas: Fundamentally I'm a sprinter, rouleur, and a bit of a puncher, so I can do a lot of things and I can adapt my body between the three, depending where I'm at in the season. At the moment, after the last year, the goal is sprints. That's what I'm working with a dietician to achieve, because a number of the closest people in my circle, including my gut, have told me that's what I want to do.
It seems that you've had a lot of really good advice over the years and you’re figuring out that when you get that good advice, you should probably listen.
Thomas: Yeah, but with those mood swings, it's easier said than done. When you are pushing that limit, you need that second pair of eyes.
I think a lot of cyclists put in hundreds of miles a week. They beat their body down and they tend to have mood swings due to that stress. If you’re one of them and someone gives you a reality check, take it.
Thomas: Yes. Yes. The proverbial slap around the face is very much needed sometimes, even from people that you love.