What is the purpose of joining a forum if not to discuss issues? Doesn’t have to be nutritional advise.
Interesting enough, the RED-S model was proposed in 2014, and there is a study in 2024 that questions it. It is impossible to lose weight without creating a deficit, the art is to identify what is a sustainable deficit to lose weight without getting injured or sick. Trying to perform in triathlon with 20-40 lbs of extra fat is not great for your body, all the extra fat weights down on joints and also acts like insulation in the summer requiring your heart to pump more blood to keep your core temperatures down.
If you just cut out soft drinks you’d probably get to your goal weight. They’re nothing but empty calories. If you don’t like plain water, start using nuun or gu tabs.
What app did you use? That’s like 1.7 pounds per week, definitely on the high side, but obviously doable for some people.
To the OP, the Fast Talk Labs podcast did a recent episode specifically on losing weight in season. I thought it was pretty good, and with an RD named Andrea Schwartz whose athletic background includes track and field/triathlon. I don’t have any personal comments on fasting, but the podcast generally discouraged it. Instead, the advice was generally to create small calorie deficits (up to 500kcal/day on the high side, but athlete and context dependent) through managing daily/weekly intake and periodizing food throughout the day and week to make sure key sessions were fueled. There was also a focus in-season on focusing on overall lean body mass and trying to avoid muscle loss through strength training and adequate protein intake, along with the usual caveat of working with a sports focused RD.
You’re pretty far out from your Oct., so this is probably a good time to choose a protocol and try it for 4-8 weeks.
I’m using Fitatu, which I believe has been locally developed in my country (Poland), a plus being that the database of products has got literally everything that’s distributed here (but many barcodes I scan abroad are also recognised). The pace of weight loss is now down significantly to about a pound a week (still happy with it).
I’ll listen to the episode, thanks! but 500 seems impossibly little for a week? A male triathlete training 10 hours a week will burn like 25,000 kcal a week easily. A 500 kcal deficit is 2% of that. You’d have to be pretty anal in the calorie counting to even have a measurement error lower than 2%.
Oh thanks, good catch, typo on my part - *500kcal per day of deficit…so right around what you had been doing. And that was for what they were describing as “in season” weight loss. The pod was focusing on cycling, but a triathlete who may only race one or twice a year may have a different concept of in-vs. out of season training. 24 weeks out from an Ironman likely has some leeway that 8-12 weeks out may not.
I’ll look up the app. Have tried one here in the states but didn’t love it. I’d be interested in the AI analysis of plates too.
Ya, and this pretty much goes back to portion control, which is why I’m where I am in the first place! And there are particular foods that do it for me. I was having this discussion earlier today with one of my co-workers, mac and cheese is one of those foods that I will continue to eat long after I’m uncomfortably full. Granted, the only reason I was even making mac and cheese is because we had a pot luck at work today and that’s one of the few things I’ll make big enough to feed multiple people. Probably the first time I’ve had mac and cheese in six months. But there are other foods, too, I just can’t help myself.
Your last sentence is my weakness. I don’t generally eat necessarily bad foods, but I could certainly eat some better foods, in better portions, on a more regular basis. I know there’s a lot to be desired. Some of it is simply time, some of it (most?) is just willpower.
Oh, I know. Soda is my poison. Almost exclusively Dr. Pepper. That stuff is like crack to me. I need to give it up. I won’t go diet because that always tastes like crap, but I need to cut the soda out entirely. No redeeming quality.
As annoying and time consuming as it is, logging the food you eat and the calories consumed against what you burn in a day is really the best way to see the tangible results of just how much you may be consuming.
I occasionally go through periods where I’m being more conscious of what I’m eating and I’ll log things. It’s amazing what a quick trip to the shop during your lunch break can do to your diet when you look at the numbers.
I remember clearly when my wife and I were younger, McDonalds had just started putting all of their nutrition values on their menus. My wife took one look at the meal she was eating, was absolutely shocked, and has probably only eaten there a handful of times in the last 20 years.
I totally understand the food addiction angle. After the IMAZ race last year I quickly gained ~15 lbs over the holidays because I just stopped training 15 hrs a week, and now cutting that back down is WORK.
For soda I would say try the different flavors of Dr pepper zero, see if there is one that you can replace it with, that would be huge. Also, my very first boss out of school gave me a good tip. He was a Army major now in the reserves, and the advice he always gave his guys that couldnt make PT regs was to diet every other day at first, dont try and do anything cold turkey. So maybe you designate 2-3 days a week you only have 0-1 sodas, but dont care the rest of the week. Same goes for food. Be ‘good’ 3-4 days a week but eat like normal the rest of the time.
It sounds like you have been stuck at your weight for a long time now? I have at least 10 friends who have taken the shot(and now pill) and had great success and very quickly. It eliminates the food noise from your brain and you can drop weight in 1/10 the time of going with will power. Two of them are world class swimmers, one just went the fastest time in the world for a couple events after losing about 40 lbs. IT really is a miracle drug for many, I just didn’t know how it would go with full time training athletes, now I know..
Thanks for the recommendation again. It was an interesting perspective. Probably on the conservative side. I’d assume dr. Andrea typically deals with a certain type of athlete: very driven and not that overweight.
She also mentions what she says is the biggest obstacle to weight loss: willpower. (I’m paraphrasing.) Sounds like the experience of @VegasJen is not that unique! My uninformed non-scientific take is that nothing quite helps you with the willpower to maintain a regime the way that a quick win does. When I realised I’d lost 2 pounds in a week, I was hooked. Is this too quick? It wasn’t for me at the time. It was what I needed in order to want to continue. If I tried to lose 2 pounds in a week right now (18 pounds down from starting weight), I’d probably get in trouble.
Thanks guys. Since we’re still five months out from IMCA, I might try just two or three times a month on my off days to see how I do. But I don’t have any intention of more frequent fasting before finishing IMCA.
I just need to find the willpower. I know I can do it if I set my mind to it. The problem is I know where I’m weak, and that is resisting when it’s close by. Easy enough at home. I just won’t buy/keep bad foods at home. Work is a different animal though. Patients always bringing in donuts or cookies or whatever. I appreciate they think of us but it makes it so hard to maintain discipline.
I’ve actually considered changing my job in no small part to better accommodate training and diet. Of course, there are other factors but that is actually a consideration.
What I try to do is stay away from where the food is. My wife is endlessly buying (discount) bakery items, nominally for the kids, but she knows I’m the one who can’t resist it. Then she asks what my problem is. So I prefer to stay away from the kitchen unless it’s specifically to eat. Another thing is distinguishing if you’re eating for your tongue or for your stomach. I’m usually eating because I like the flavor, and that’s why I overeat. So I started taking small bites and then letting the flavor languish, which makes it last much longer. When I was the Eating Man’s Diet (from the 1970s) (<=900 cals one day, alternating with 90-100% of maintenance cals), I found I could make a chocolate last for 20 minutes by shaving it and letting it sit on my tongue. Maybe there’s a way to make the soda keep its fizz, so you can get away with having only a half at a time.
I’m currently going through something like what you are, and (ideally) have 35 lbs to lose, although it’s easier for me because I’m retired. But it’s pretty hard because my wife is a really good cook, and my son has on online friend staying with us who’s a professional chef. (My training can be pretty slow since I’m in the 70-74 category, so I can focus on purely aerobic activity for a lot of it.)
My current way of dealing with it is starting what I call project Svelte Hippo to break up the weight loss into manageable chunks, with this being the first 5 lbs.
Like what MadMike said above, I normally avoid it by not having it around. When patients bring in to our office, it just sits there. Doesn’t help that the nursing station doubles as our break room. Not like I have to go looking for it. I literally just have to turn around in my chair and there it is!