I do maybe 70 miles a week at 17 -18 mph , my meals are about 4 - 6 hundred cal. ,on my feet 80 % of the day , . I would like to drop 15 - 20 LB. It seems I have to eat more by some math I’ve done/ BMI charts / height -weight , I never liked charts, I think they are off for taller Men / frames
Others say ,your suppose to hold your weight in cycling ? About ready to get on the super model laxative diet.
Oh, no. Another diet thread!
Others will differ, but I know very few people who lose weight cycling. Start running five miles a day. Get a heart rate monitor. Keep it at about 65-70% of max heart rate. This will burn fat. If you go faster, your body will have to use other ready sources of energy, and when that runs out, you will bonk, never having gotten into your fat stores. Your body will have to learn how to burn fat. Don’t eat after 8:00 PM. Anything you haven’t used up by the time you go to bed will turn to fat. If you can run in the morning before breakfast, it is better because your body is in a “fasted” state, and so it will turn to your fat for energy. If you can run twice a day–maybe 5K in the morning and 5K at night, you will really get after it.
Figure out what you caloric intake should be if you were your right weight. That’s how many calories you should have. Don’t cut back, or your body will learn to live on it, and you will be stuck eating like an Olsen Twin. Create the deficit you need to lose fat with the exercise. Eat a balance of fat/protein/low impact carbs. Everyone will argue about what that balance is, but 15% of your calories come from fat, 40% from protein and 45% from carbs, you will have a pretty decent balance. Each meal should be balanced that way. Eat about six times a day. If you eat that way you will never be hungry. Drink a lot of water. Figure to lose a pound a week, or at the most two. You didn’t put it on in a week did you?
This is a lifestyle change. Few people can do it all at once. Discipline is something you can get better at everyday. you can surprise yourself. But you can get better at it everyday. Eventually, it will have nothing to do with losing weight, it will be about being healthy and improving at the swim/bike/run or whatever it is you like.
People will now come on and nitpick this, but I lost 70 pounds and am down to muscle and bone. I can also say I overdid it with the cardio–I ran five miles a day, everyday, and added 25 miles on the bike everyother day, and did that for 150 days without a rest day. Then I went to just biking 35 miles everyday for two weeks, and lost no weight, and went back to running, cut out the bike (because there was no bang for the buck), and the weight started to come off again. I also did some weights every other day–but just two sets of 20 reps, of some chest, biceps, triceps stuff. Nothing heavy. For a while I was running five miles in the morning too, but that was overdoing (its who I am).
But note, trying to train and diet is very tricky. You need the carbs to train, and you need to go faster to train, and both of these go against the above principles, so I will pass on something on that a very respected triathlete, whose name you would know, said to me–“Right now, your weight is your competition.” It sounds simple, but it gave me a boost at the right time, and I cranked it up a level.
Don’t worry about the scale or weight charts. Use your eyes. Also, if you start running, you will be replacing fat with muscle, so the scale won’t tell the story. And with running a lot, your weight will fluctuate from hydration issues, so you won’t know hwere you are at anyway.
Once you get the weight off, you can call other people “fat assh.les” if you disagree with them and they are overweight…AND you can start to train. I replaced the obsession of losing weight with the obsession of triathlon. I hated running until I got better at it and I saw what it did for me. I hated cycling hard until I learned to love the pain. I still hate swimming.
I truly regret I didn’t figure this out sooner.
DFL thanks for the great info, My weight is very stable 5- 7 lb. for years mostly fluid, I was 25 LB lighter 8 years ago but felt TOO light / frail, mostly a starvation diet. I am not big on running, but I have a lake near by 3.5 miles of paved trail around one side I could run there… In the AM I have a balance protein drink, I have an hour in at work ,before the sun is up, Home by 3 PM and feel pretty trashed from work, I could start a short run and work up.
70 mi a week? you should do that in a day (i.e. long rides that long… or longer). Also, throw in more intensity, 17-18 is pretty slow. You push yourself harder and youll lose weight. Ive always told people biking is a great way to lose, but there is also a tendancy to half-ass it. When you run, you have to expend a lot of calories to keep the running form. When swimming, if you dog it, you drown. But biking, you can go slow and not really get your HR up, and not really spend many calories, and still average what many consider to respectible miles and pace. So, step it up.
I’d suggest using something like fitday.com to track exactly what’s coming in and how it’s getting burned.
If you’re serious about dropping some lbs, you need to increase the duration of your training. It also doesn’t hurt to, in a sense, micromanage your diet and closely monitor what you are fueling the tank with. Keeping a food diary is very helpful as well. From my past experiences, I’ve been most successful at dropping weight when eating frequent, smaller meals of raw/whole foods and limiting bars/gels/replacement drinks to long training sessions only.
re: finding your ideal weight/basal metabolic rate, you write that you’ve used BMI charts and don’t like them.
Have you tried the Harris-Benedict formula? Much more accurate, and not hard to figure out. Here’s a link:
I have to agree with the you don’t lose weight by cycling comment. You will lose it by running. If you are running 30 plus miles per week and eating quality food, your body should stabalize at a reasonable weight. Once around that lake every day would be a big step.
Apolack1 Time constraints reduce my cycling mileage, I could ride to work 7 miles one way (but road is full of cell phone users & 90 LB blondes in ford club cab F 350 ). I am a crack of dawn guy I guess I could ride at 4 am to add miles. I don’t want to ride 70 miles on Sunday to hobble around on sore legs Monday. As far as intensity I bike about 155 - 160 BPM out of a 177 max.
I’m right there with ya! This year I’ve been riding only, no running or swimming, since about May. I am 147 pounds this summer and I want to be 140. I have not been willing to deal with constant hunger and my weight has been hovering at that same 147 number, regardless of cycling mileage, which right now is about 250miles/week.
I figure I can either starve, and suffer performance problems on the bike (and at work as hunger makes me nasty), or start running again. So just last night I started running again. I know it’ll work, and inside of two weeks I’ll be losing a pound or two a week. I was hoping not to have to run until the fall.
“Get a heart rate monitor. Keep it at about 65-70% of max heart rate. This will burn fat. If you go faster, your body will have to use other ready sources of energy, and when that runs out, you will bonk, never having gotten into your fat stores.”
Not true. At higher heart rates you burn a lower percentage of fat, but you still burn fat.
Example 1: HR @ 65%, 100 total calories used: if 70% of calories from fat then **70 **fat calories burned.
Example 2: HR @ 85%, 200 total calories used: if 50% of calories from fat then **100 **fat calories burned.
Please note that these are not exact examples, but the general idea is correct - higher heart rate, more total calories burned, more fat calories burned.
“Get a heart rate monitor. Keep it at about 65-70% of max heart rate. This will burn fat. If you go faster, your body will have to use other ready sources of energy, and when that runs out, you will bonk, never having gotten into your fat stores.”
Not true. At higher heart rates you burn a lower percentage of fat, but you still burn fat.
Read the whole thing–if you have bonked (because you are not fueling for training intensity), you are done, so you won’t be getting into fat stores, will you? I also noted that there would be some who would nit pick, and I guess you are one. I guess you think you should run at anaerobic levels to lose weight. Go ahead and try that.
“I also noted that there would be some who would nit pick, and I guess you are one.”
Not nit picking, just trying to get the correct info out.
I don’t understand your “you won’t be getting into your fat stores” statement. You’ll start burning fat from your first step. It’s not like you’ll get into your fat stores at some point into the run. However, it is true that you will not burn fat once you’ve bonked. At that point, you’re burning protein.
And, no, I’m not suggesting that you must run at anaerobic levels to lose weight. Never said that.
“Drop the carbs at dinner time and eat veggies/fruit instead.”
Veggies/fruit are carbs.
Burning 500 calories biking is the same as burning 500 calories running. Burn more than you consume and you lose weight.
I have to agree with the you don’t lose weight by cycling comment. You will lose it by running. If you are running 30 plus miles per week and eating quality food, your body should stabalize at a reasonable weight. Once around that lake every day would be a big step.
I hope you don’t mind if I totally disagree.
I don’t ever run, I ride to the shops, work etc.
However I do agree that instead of monitoring your weight you should be monitoring your body fat. I’ve put on lots of muscle, lost heaps of fat (3’ around the waist since Xmas) and I’m still the same weight I’ve been for the last 8years.
Cycling will help you lose fat, it might not help you lose weight.
“But much lower than the traditional “pasta/rice/potato” staple that seemed to be the norm a few years ago.”
Calories come from 3 sources, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Fruits, veggies, rice, pasta, and potatoes all contain calories from all 3 sources - but mostly from carbohydrates. In that way, all of these foods are the same.
However, the fruits/veggies contain mostly simple sugars, while the starches contain mostly complex carbs. The pasta/rice/potato are complex carbs only in their whole food state (unrefined).
Pasta (which is usually highly refined), white rice (without the shell and bran), and potatos without the skin will act more like a simple sugar and cause the body to have an insulin response. This is the basis of the Atkins Diet - trying to keep the body from having an insulin response.
With weight loss, dinner becomes a very critical meal. Drop the carbs at dinner time and eat veggies/fruit instead. Try to eat heavier earlier in the day. During peak Ironman training I would still only have spinach salad with tuna and hard-boiled egg for dinner. Last night I had an evening Masters class, then a 14 mile bike commute home. Dinner was a banana and handful of peanuts.
LC
Larry, I don’t know how you can do this and stand upright. If I ate like that I’d be dizzy, nervous, shaky and mean and nasty almost all of the time. I simply cannot limit my calories like that and feel OK for life. Wish I could, I just can’t function that way. I envy you.
That certainly seems logical. For me at least it is not that simple. There is just nothing like running to get my weight off. I don’t think my body cares how much it weighs when I ride a bike. It cares a lot about what I weigh when I run. My body adapts accordingly.
Maybe it is just that when I run it doesn’t boost my appetite as much as riding. Your calorie argument is good only if all other things are equal. For some combination of reasons, I don’t think they are.
A calorie of glycogen screams bloody murder to be replaced, a calorie of fat is quickly forgotten.
The weight-loss tradeoff seems to be less efficient workouts (less KCal/hr) with no roaring appetite
or more efficient workout with roaring appetite. I used a HR monitor to stay in the fat-burning zone and
took the easy way out. It took longer but less willpower. I ended up with a good aerobic base in the bargain.