I'm 50, now.

At 47, I lost 55 lbs from 209 to 154...from memory that was 27-ish bodyfat to 15% more or less. That was all pretty linear. In total, I think I lost about 6 lbs of lean mass. I lost all that while doing base type "exercise" (not "training"). I started training after I reached goal weight.

Three years later, I hover around 153/12% most of the time...and drop to 148/10% at race-weight.

I found the first few pounds to be easy. Probably some water weight, some excess bowel content, etc. The next few pounds were the most "difficult"...which is where things were settling into a steady state. Once I was "on a slope", staying on target was "easy"---Just stick with the plan. I had a calorie target, and an exercise target. As long as I kept hitting those, the pounds kept coming off. The last "official" pound was no more difficult than the 30th pound. Note, I did not do "cheat days". Mentally I found it easier to maintain the plan, 7 days a week---rather than restart every sunday pretending saturday night never happened.

I find getting to "race weight" to be more challenging. But, I think that's more mental than anything. I know I race better at 148 than 153...but, I do pretty well at 153 also. So, sometimes I might blow it off...because life is short. :-)

Interesting. I always found those last 5 pounds getting to race weight the most difficult, but maybe that is because as we get close to our goal, we kind of 'let off the gas'. Like you, I go 7 days per week, and really stick to the plan, but now that I think about it, the closer I get to my goal, I allow minor bad habits to creep back in slowly.

I'm currently in a weight loss base training phase, where I started mid January at 155 and am currently at 141. Normally I stop at about this weight, but this time I'm going to keep going and see how things feel at a lower weight. So far so good, but I haven't done any intensity.

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You may as well keep it going until it doesn't feel right - especially as you haven't noticed any negative effects.

The fear I usually have, is as soon as I'm out of my good eating habits, it's hard to get back on that train. I'm going to try and stay on it this time, but just bump up some of my snacks, but keep the skeleton eating plan the same.

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I have a week of very heavy riding planned for mid-April. This is equivalent to an A race. That will be my first test-- I will not allow weight loss to affect that week. Then, the race is 5/11. I have time to carefully assess and adjust from now until those two events.

This is truly my first attempt at decent eating habits in decades. And, my new weight should be 15 lbs. below the lowest I have been in probably 20 years. I intend to keep this weight and not allow myself to blimp up again.

That's pretty awesome! It must feel like driving a different car when running/cycling. Good luck with the rest of journey - it sounds like you've figured something out and had things click into place. That's the important piece.

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Definitely running. I read somewhere that each pound is worth about 1-2 sec./mile running. I believe it. Cycling I cannot tell, because I have been almost entirely inside so far.

One of my important life lessons I have learned is that I can easily drink enough beer to gain weight will exercising 12 hours/week. So, just quitting alcohol is a massive upgrade.

The better the beer, the worse the problem.

I was a homebrewer, which is probably where the bulk of that 55 lbs came from. When you have 30 gallons of beer in the house ready to drink (and another 20 in various stages of fermentation), all in kegs, its pretty easy to consume 750 calories a night in 3 pints.

I hear ya. I had surgery 8 weeks ago, and only started riding two weeks ago, but I was able to drop most of the weight with zero exercise other than walking in those first 6 weeks. That has been a massive lesson for me. My goal with changing up my diet/eating post surgery was just not to gain weight. So, now I know it really is about the food and very little to do with cycling.

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Thanks for your advice. I would say my situation is a bit unique because my timeline was not really a choice. It was either run an incredibly hilly 50k at 172lbs, not run it at all, or run it at 152lbs and drop weight leading up to it. I am glad I dropped the weight, but I am also glad I wrote this post. Given the feedback, I am going to up my calories the next two weeks, then have a solid additional 4 weeks of maintaining weight.

Basically I am going to end the weight loss much sooner than I had planned, but also do not regret running up and down mountains 20 lbs lighter.

Much appreciated for the insights, everyone.

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"If it costs you 30 minutes at Maryland so what" -dwreal

I posed the same question last year here.
Although the ideal is to loose far away from the main training block, I decided to be in caloric deficit until 2 weeks before a 70.3 race. I managed to loose 2-3kg in a month and half, nailed my workouts and had a PR on that race.
My race weight was 66kg to my 170cm height. So I'm not fatty.
So, It's not ideal, definitely possible but kind whatever in the end, IMO.

I didn't read all the posts fully but first glance I didn't see anyone raise this point.....

Keep in mind that overall performance gain from losing weight may offset lost incremental training benefit from being calorie neutral.

I did this in Spring of last year. I dropped 25 lbs in two months. I had to severely limit my training during the eight week period for reasons discussed earlier in this thread. When I got back on the bike I was afraid that I would have gone backwards in overall performance. I was happy to find out, and it makes total sense once I looked at it in more depth, that losing 25lbs (11% of body weight) far offset the few percentage points of lost fitness. I had 11% fitness loss to play with an in the end I came out way ahead. WAY ahead. My first ride out after riding only a few hundred miles in two months I reset all the climbing Personal Bests on the loop I rode. During the rest of the season I was up front in group rides I had previously been a mid-pack or off-the-back rider. It's been the biggest transformation I've have in my 30+ yrs riding. Also keep in mind that when you lose weight even the easy workouts become easier and overall there's less stress on your body. Long rides at the same wattage are easier because the are secondary benefits not measured by your power meter. And another HUGE benefit was I shed the proverbial down jacket of fat insulation I had been "wearing" during those hot summer days. My heat management was much better and I haven't had any heat related issues since then.

As long as it's healthy fat loss (I went from 24% BF to 13%BF) then I say go for it and don't worry about the race performance.

And yet that is when the weight most easily comes off. When I have those 5,000 calorie days I can't keep up even though I try. So yes, I purposefully plan on losing weight during the build because it is going to happen unless I try to make myself sick from eating too much quality food.