Comment by hervature

You are forgetting about the efficiency of the human body. Roughly, only 21% of your power is transferred to the bike. So a professional adding 400W to the bike is actually consuming ~1900W of power. This all matches up with their nutrition [1]. Namely

> They averaged 91 g of carbs every hour across all of the stages.

That's nearly 400 calories worth of sugar simply while riding the bike. In fact, I would say cycling is a clear counterproof of this article. Their equations are literally (calories in)*efficiency = power and they know exactly how much to feed. I don't disagree that 99% of people are better served eating less, but doing cardio for 2 hours a day + diet management will lead to very quick weight loss. "Very quick" here is 2lbs/week but people have some insane expectations.

[1] - https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2021/07/01/how-much-do-th...