I'm a similar age. I've found that diet plays a more important role in weight loss than exercise. Race weight = 158, normal weight = 163ish. Leading up to a 70.3 in december, my training load was arounfd 14 hours a week, weight wasn't dropping though, reduced how much I ate, removed all sugar and virtually zero alcohol and the weight came off in 2 weeks. Post race, was leading up to Xmas, still was training, plus surfing, OWS etc but weight quickly shot up with all the beer and mince pies. I did a 16 hour week, week before Xmas and still managed to put on weight!

Same age, I found timing my carbohydrates as an as needed macro helped me shed weight without being miserable

I found in the 40s it was harder to keep it off in the winter or off seasons as well. While I don't have a OFF season I maintain minimal training when I need to do other non-tri related things and get them off my plate (no pun intended there). You'll find a lot of good comments about losing it again.

First, get into a eating habit where you eliminate all late night eating. Exercise each day, even if a bit. Likely you can cut out a lot of sugar. Eat salads and anything that is just junk you can cut out. That means chips, cheese, soda. My goal was to burn off more each day than I took in. Beyond that, look at what nutritional requirements you need to be strong throughout the day & no more. Eat smaller meals. No booze--junk calories. Good luck!

Eat less.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Welcome to my world. Race weight is low 150s. Since late August IM, I have been putting on weight. I've gained ~12 to 15 lbs since then and the scale just keeps getting worse.

I don't think I eat that bad but obviously that's not the case.

I need to start tracking what I eat and make sure it's < 2500 cals per day. That's the key for me.

 
I need to start tracking what I eat and make sure it's < 2500 cals per day. That's the key for me.[/quote]=========================================================
here's where it is, no matter how it's done. in the end it's how many calories your specific body burns per day---and fewer than that number will result in weight loss. the rate of that loss varies wildly within humanity. but tracking and noting every calorie you consume will give you the information on what your body's burning with your specific amount of activity. that this process is a drag goes without saying…….
peggy

You just described my last 6 months, down to the pound.

I've tried a couple things to get the scale going in the right direction again, but no luck. I'll be interested to see what kind of responses you get, because I'm getting frustrated.

Even though I had planned to skip long course this year I signed up for a fall Ironman just to see if getting back into a heavier training routine will help.

This. To put it less harshly, it takes a lot of discipline. As a male exercising consistently, if you are honest with yourself and eat a healthy diet (individual for everyone) of a true 2000 Kcal or less per day diet, you will lose weight. As with everything the most success come from religious consistency over time. Its that simple, yet that hard

Same age, and put a tonne on over xmas due to gluttony and laziness.

It is falling off now, but I am tracking every calorie that passes my lips, and taking into account every calorie I expend through exercise. I'm using myfitnesspal and to lose 2lbs a week it is setting me a baseline of 1500 calories a day, before exercise. This is based on my age (and therefore my slowing metabolism), starting weight, height, gender and normal daily level of activity based on my occupation... exercise is treated separately. So the 1500 calories is based on a deficit of however many hundred a week to lose 2lbs, taking into account the fact that I am a total desk jockey. 1500 calories is a surprisingly small amount of food!!

The plus side is that I'm encouraged to train every day so that I can earn food to eat. I doubt the accuracy of the app in some circumstances... you have to take a bit of a punt on some foods, and the exercise calorie estimate is probably a good way out sometimes (for example, Zwift was offering me 700 cals for my ride last night but myfitnesspal estimated 800-and-something, so I tweaked it). But as long as you make honest estimates and don't try and cheat yourself, it works.

The biggest difference I think comes from simply being more aware of what you eat and thinking about it in the context of the exercise you take and the deficit you are trying to achieve.

Boils down to simple mathematics in the end;

A (calories you stuff into your mouth) - B (daily calories for your base metabolic rate) - C (extra calories burned by exercise) = D (calorie deficit or surplus)

Weight gain or loss is defined by D.

Tracking made a BIG difference for me. It is amazing how many calories are in some food... and how little in others. I have learned what to eat that gives me the most bang (satisfaction) for the buck (calories). I'm also tracking macros, although not as hard of a line as the calorie total.

With the myfitnesspal app, I have noticed the calorie "credit" can vary wildly with what is recorded in Garmin, Strava, Training Peaks. I'm still unsure of where it actually gets the number from. I actually ignore it and target my daily goal instead, maybe allow 1/2 of the credit as more food, and on big days that means I can have a beer too.

Consistency is the key. I dropped about 5 lbs in the first 3 weeks of the year because I was absolutely religious about it, tracking, eating right, and working out. Since I have had some lapses on the weekends (and yesterday, my fat number was WAAAAY high, and as such, protein was too low) and the weight has stopped melting, but I'm not doing big volume yet.

Yup, this is what I was alluding to. The way I deal with that is to compare the estimate through other means (Strava, Garmin, Zwift etc) and then tweak it based what I think is reasonable. It is never going to be a precise science, however I'd usually trust an app that is measuring my actual work done on the bike above a wild guess from myfitnesspal. But the real trick for me is thinking about what I eat in the context of how much I move.

52 and in a cold climate, so I find it easy to put on weight in the winter and hard to take it off. Summer weight loss seems easier.

Calorie tracking sucks, imo, and even using an app, I've never been able to do it for more than a few days. So, I've come up with some shortcuts that seem to work:

--No alcohol. (When it's dark at 5pm and negative degrees, this is tough.)
--Eat earlier at night and later in the morning.
--Go to dinner: Salad with grilled/roast chicken, as many veg as can pile on, drizzled with olive oil and vinegar (so no sugar in the dressing). I can eat this for days on end.

Works for me.

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Strava

I think we need a support group for guys in their 40's that are 20lbs over race weight. Count me in.

I'm on the doorstep of 40 and have been fascinated by how efficient my body is getting with respect to calories. I've always been pretty active and can keep my weight under control with minimal effort but over the last year or so it's been damn impressive how little food it takes to maintain a steady weight with respect to how much exercise I get. At the end of the day it's amazing to me that three reasonably portioned 'healthy' meals and a couple modest snacks, amounts that seem like what a normal person would be eating, can power a human through a normal day plus several hours of good honest training. To be fair I don't count calories so it could just be that what I consider a normal amount of food is considerably more than 'normal' but from where I'm sitting it seems like the regular Joes and Janes of the world must have to eat like birds to keep a steady weight.

To contribute back to the start of the discussion, you screwed up by letting your weight fluctuate so much, don't do that. You gotta constantly play with the input knob to match the output setting and when you hit 40 apparently you have to watch the weight dial like a hawk, since you didn't do any of that you're going to have to flip all the discipline switches for a while.

For me the only thing that works is to keep a food diary and track everything that I eat. I set my baseline total calories at 1600 for non-exercise days and try to hit around 1200 to 1400 on days I exercise (So if I burn 1200 calories cycling, I'll consume around 2600 calories for the day).

Also, I almost always take the calories burnt figures that sites like Strava and Zwift give with a grain of salt. I think they all overestimate. So I usually knock a few hundred calories off those amounts.

The trick is not to under eat to the point where you are not recovering from exercise. It's a tricky balance between eating too much and not enough.

I calculate my daily expenditure (going to work, walking to the train,etc) with no exercise at 2700KCAL. I'm 58, 190lb, 6'1".

First, does this sound reasonable as a baseline to calculate how many calories I need to maintain weight.

Second, I add in exercise and discount the amount to roughly 80% of what an app calculates it at.

Calorie counting helps but without weighing my food, it doesn't seem very accurate.

I eat way too many carbs and sugar.

I'm nearly in the same boat as you, few years older but 20lbs overweight at 181. But I have had it on for so long that it has its own zipcode, and thus does not want to be evicted. I just found a calculator that says my base burn is 1660 calories, so I will start there with my short workout burns. And yes, I eat way too many carbs and sugar too, probably the best place to start..

I have read that your body gets "used" to a certain weight and will get back to that weight rather quickly with diet / exercise. Also when you are lower than the programmed weight, your body holds on to everything to try and maintain that.

My N=1 test has proven this... I used to walk around at 220, in college that was very low body fat, after graduation it grew... a lot. I was able to realize it quickly, and my body dropped right back to 220 with a little exercising, but never lower (body fat %age went up though). Then I found triathlon and was able to break through and get down to 200 or just under. I have been stuck at 197 for years and this year I'm focusing on dropping that to about 185 to race at. We shall see, but I always seem to normalize right at 197 lately.

If you don't have abs showing you need to maintain less weight

I have read that your body gets "used" to a certain weight and will get back to that weight rather quickly with diet / exercise. Also when you are lower than the programmed weight, your body holds on to everything to try and maintain that. //

Yes I have read that once your body sits at a certain weight for a period of time(a year +) it fights to stay at that weight regardless if it is too much or not. I can say with a high confidence level this is quite true and it you give that extra weigh even more time, it fights even harder. SO time to take off the kid gloves, get rid of old notions of what used to be, and declare a new war on fat....

Edited to make my original post a lot simpler...

You gained 25 pounds in 5 months. That's a 4100 calorie per week surplus on average.
You mentioned that all you did recently was increase your training, and now you're maintaining, but not losing weight.

So could it be possible that since you made no mention of changing your diet, that the increase in your training load is simply burning off 4100 calories more per week than you were during that 5 month weight gain period?

Coming off an IM, my guess is that you maintained eating habits that are only sustainable with an IM training load, and assuming you were not losing weight the last month or so heading into your IM, you had eating habits that only allowed you to MAINTAIN weight with an IM training load.

So...simple solution. Eat less than you are now. A lot less.

Yep... getting older can affect your metabolism. I'd be in the same boat if not for myfitnesspal and monitoring the junk I eat over the holidays. MUCH harder to just "melt off the pounds" once father time steps in. I try to maintain a sustainable lifestyle of food and fitness during the offseason and keep a lid on gaining max 10 pounds over "race weight". Good luck!

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Ryan
http://www.SetThePaceTriathlon.com
http://www.TriathlonTrainingDaddy.com
I got plans - https://www.trainingpeaks.com/...dotcom#trainingplans

I'm also in the over 40's too-much-weight club. Raced at 76kg in 2010 (which I think is about 128 cubic furlongs or something) but now over 90kg after two years of injury induced relative inactivity. But I would agree in my case it's diet rather than exercise which is the major factor.

Back into it now, as I'm going to thrutch my way around a 70.3 in early March, some (kind) folk have remarked that I look slimmer, but the reality is that I am still over 90kg so not much change there.

I would also recommend the cutting sugar thing, I don't drink fruit juice any more (lots of fructose and no fibre) and I did cut sugar out a while ago as an experiment and lost a heap of weight (but it wasn't easy as I like cake). And the no alcohol thing also helps.
It does get a bit boring though....

Yes I can admit that during that Time I was eating lots of junk and very sedentary as I dont work in the winter.

I have adopted your idea and am eating much less.

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Yellowfin Endurance Coaching and Bike Fits
USAT Level 1, USAC Level 3