Tough Girl Podcast Amanda Duling: Endurance Sport After Gastric Bypass — Grit, Fueling & Radical Honesty
Amanda Duling is an endurance athlete, writer, and founder of One Gear Short of Normal™.
A post-bariatric, perimenopausal gravel cyclist and Ironman 70.3 finisher, Amanda uses grit, science, and unapologetic humour to tell the stories no one else is telling about endurance sports, women's bodies, and doing hard things later in life.
Through her writing and community work, she challenges the "suffer in silence" culture of endurance athletics and advocates for smarter fueling, better hygiene, realistic training, and radical honesty—especially for women navigating menopause, major weight loss, and endurance sport at the same time.
When she's not riding gravel roads or lifting heavy things, Amanda writes research-backed, laugh-out-loud essays on endurance life, parenting, and why choosing your hard matters more than perfection.
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Show notes
- Who is Amanda
- Living in Kansas City, USA
- Working as an IT professional during the day
- Mum to a special needs son
- Building a brand in relation to being a post-bariatric endurance athlete
- Publishing an e-book in relation to saddle sores
- Why reinvention is possible
- Growing up in a small rural community
- Being into reading, writing and art
- Having a lot of anxiety about her body and body image
- Enjoying being active
- Not having the confidence when she was younger
- Getting married and settling down
- Having gastric bypass surgery in her early 40s
- Having an Roux-en-Y gastric bypass - having a large portion of her stomach removed along with a large portion of her small intestines
- Having the surgery at the beginning of COVID and being stuck at home
- Her journey with food, health and fitness
- Going for walks with her husband
- Finding the motivation for the next step
- Feeling uncomfortable wearing shorts and form fitting clothes
- Starting to walk a little quicker
- Hiring a personal trainer at the gym to gain some of the lost muscle back
- Seeing her strength coming back
- Thinking about doing a half marathon
- Finding a couch to 5k program
- Not making a lot of progress due to not being able to eat a lot
- Starting to work with a dietician
- Having to re-learn eating
- Passing out after exercise and having no energy
- Dumping syndrome - when the body is not able to process sugar
- UCAN and Waxy Maize
- Finding support through community
- Joining a run club and meeting new people
- Being able to complete the half marathon
- Confidence and having confidence around her body
- Building her self confidence
- When things started to change
- Showing up to different races
- Doing hard things
- Wanting to encourage individuals starting out to volunteer at a couple of events
- Overcoming a challenge during a race
- Gravel cycling/racing, and why it's the hardest disciple in endurance sports
- Unbound Gravel Race
- Breaking down the challenge into smaller and smaller steps and grinding it out
- Logistics of gravel racing in relation to hydration and fuelling
- Electrolytes
- UCAN Fuel— ucan.co
- Running on sheer grit
- What training looks like and why she needed a lot of structure
- Training Peaks
- Learning about heart rate training
- Training in the morning and making training work for her and her family
- The importance of social interactions during workouts
- Being surrounded by the right people and how it can help with motivation
- How to connect with Amanda on social media
- Her love for writing and sharing her stories on Substack
- Final words of advice to motivate and inspire you
- The importance of showing up
Social Media
Website: onegearshortofnormal.gumroad.com/l/prrdc
Instagram: @onegearshortofnormal
Facebook: Amanda McMahon
Substack: @onegearshortofnormal1
Youtube: One Gear Short of Normal