“Historically I literally just have had one set of targets.”

An athlete told me that about their nutrition. One set of numbers, the same every day, through strength blocks, speed blocks and everything in between. Their training changed every few weeks. Their fuel didn’t.

I see the opposite too. Another athlete told me, “If it’s a lighter week, I’ll try to lay off the carbs.” And another said that on easy days, they now just eat the main meals and tend to snack less.

Both approaches come from a good place. But neither one quite matches how your body actually uses fuel.

The short answer

Yes, your nutrition should change with your training, just not the way most people think.

It doesn’t need to be the exact same amount of food every day. It should be the amount of food that supports the work you’re doing. And the work you’re doing includes the hard session tomorrow, not just the easy spin today.

What changes and what stays the same

Not everything on your plate should move up and down with your training. Here’s how I think about it:

• Protein stays pretty consistent. About 25% of your plate, no matter the day. In numbers, that’s roughly 1.2 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, leaning toward the higher end if you’re strength training.
• Fat stays pretty consistent. At a minimum, I like athletes to stay around 1 gram per kilogram per day. It’s totally fine to go over that.
• Carbohydrate is the lever. As your training load goes up, the carbohydrate part of your plate goes up with it. For endurance athletes training 2 to 3 hours a day, that can be anywhere from 6 to 10 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.

So when we talk about fueling for your training, we’re mostly talking about carbs. Protein and fat hold steady in the background.

Rest days are refuel days

This is the part that feels counterintuitive. You’re thinking, but I’m not exercising as much, so why should I eat as much?

Here’s the thing. Your rest day isn’t really about today. It’s the opportunity to set yourself up for success tomorrow. It’s the day your glycogen stores get filled back up and your muscles get primed for what’s coming next.

Say Wednesday is your rest day and Thursday is a big session. There’s a tendency to lower your intake on Wednesday. But Wednesday is when you finally have time to eat enough to support that bigger effort on Thursday. If you have a rest day on Thursday and then hard days on Friday and Saturday, you want to eat enough on Thursday to support what Friday and Saturday are going to bring.

Sometimes I’ll have athletes do a hard day of eating on their so-called easy day. And if you usually snack between meals, keep the snacks on your rest days too. They’re doing more work than you think.

Why most endurance athletes can skip the “easy plate”

If you’ve seen the athlete’s plate model, you know it has three versions: an easy training plate, a moderate one and a hard one. The harder the day, the bigger the carbohydrate portion.

For most endurance athletes, I tell them to ignore the easy training plate and focus on the moderate and hard ones. Even when you have a rest day, that’s your opportunity to fuel for your hard days. Most of the endurance athletes I work with stay in that moderate-to-hard range even on an easy day or a day off, because their training week as a whole demands it.

Easy weeks vs. big blocks

One athlete asked me whether I’m more of a fan of changing targets by training block, or adjusting them day to day based on training load. The answer is that it depends, and it’s probably a little bit of both.

• Block to block: As your training becomes periodized, it makes sense for your nutrition to follow on a bigger scale. A high-volume build asks for more carbohydrate across the board than a recovery week does.
• Day to day: Within a block, there’s plenty of wiggle room. You don’t need to hit every macro in the exact same amount every single day, because your training isn’t the exact same every day either.

What about a strength block? If you’re shifting into more gym work and less volume, my starting point is usually to keep things the same, see how your energy and recovery feel, and then shift if needed. Changing everything at once makes it hard to tell what’s working.

And a lighter week isn’t a reason to strip the carbs out. A recovery week is when your body actually has the chance to absorb the training you just did, and it needs fuel to do that.

Signs you’re not keeping up

Sometimes your body tells you before your plan does. One athlete who was building mileage for a marathon told me, “This past week I was just so exhausted the first two days.” Their training had ramped up, and their eating hadn’t.

If your training has gone up and you’re suddenly wiped out, the fix is usually one of two things:

• Eat more of what you’re already eating. Keep your usual routine, just increase the amounts.
• Eat more often. Try to eat something every three to three and a half hours, especially in the gap between lunch and an afternoon or evening session.

Adjusting without drowning in numbers

I’m not a huge numbers fan when it comes to giving athletes a direct calorie count. You can do all of this without weighing every meal.

• Check your plate at the end of the day. If you’re a three-meals-a-day person, each meal can look roughly like a training plate. If you’re more of a snacker, ask whether your whole day added up to about half carbohydrate, a quarter protein and a quarter color from fruits and veggies.
• Start from where you are. A few days of writing down what you already eat gives you a baseline to build from. I walk through that in How to Carb Load for an Endurance Race.
• Increase slowly. If you need more carbs, add them gradually, something like 50 grams a day more each week. That’s an extra scoop of rice here, a glass of juice there, not doubling your portion sizes overnight.

The bottom line

Your fuel should follow your training, but not in a straight line. Protein and fat stay fairly steady. Carbohydrate is what moves, and it moves with the work you’re doing across the whole week, not just today.

Rest days are refuel days. Lighter weeks still need fuel. And if your training goes up and you’re suddenly exhausted, that’s usually a sign your plate hasn’t caught up yet.

If you want help matching your fueling to your actual training plan, block by block, that’s exactly what we work on inside the Gravel Performance Nutrition Course and in 1:1 sessions.