Patrick Dempsey · September 10, 2026 · 4 min read
There's a version of this most of us have lived. Four hours out, a real hole dug in the day, and you walk through the door and cannot face a plate of food. An hour later you're fine. Two hours later you're hungry. By then the afternoon has moved on and the meal never properly happened.
For a long time I read that as a discipline problem. It isn't. It's a hormone response with a name and a timeline, and once you know the timeline you can just step around it.
Below: the mechanism, how long it actually lasts, who was in the studies it comes from, and the one thing I'd change about your next long ride.