Finished the racing season last week, i had a good season with some big PRs incl 4h 34’ HIM and 10h 09’ IM. While i feel strong and healthy i have too much body fat. Don’t know how much exactly but my gut is just too big. (I was at 185lbs peak this season).
So i want to lose weight in the offseason (just body fat) and am not sure how to get started. Is it as simple as limiting calorie intake i.e. Just eat less? Or are there specific things i can do to burn extra fat (train without energy drink for sessions below 2h or so? The main goal is to lose fat without losing muscle mass.
I don’t think there is one magical thing to do that will take care of everything, rather i’d expect there are 10 small things to do consistently to gain some results.
Regarding eating habits, i eat mostly organic and pretty healthy especially at lunch (healthy cooking by my wife). Probably breakfast and dinner are more risky to make poor decisions (I love Nutella a bit much)…
People will fill this thread up with all sorts of loony ideas but ultimately yes. Reduce your caloric intake a little bit, while training, and you will get smaller. Repeat until at the desired weight.
If you find that some dietary guideline helps you achieve the discipline to reduce those calories, go for it, as long as it isn’t too crazy. (going super low carb can be problematic for training, and juice only diets would be insane)
Try using an app such as myfitnesspal to track calories. At a minimum it makes you much more aware of what you eat. You can connect it to garmin too for syncing calorie expenditure. Play around with the calorie gos until you find a point where you’re losing weight every week, but still have good energy.
People will fill this thread up with all sorts of loony ideas but ultimately yes. Reduce your caloric intake a little bit, while training, and you will get smaller. Repeat until at the desired weight.
If you find that some dietary guideline helps you achieve the discipline to reduce those calories, go for it, as long as it isn’t too crazy. (going super low carb can be problematic for training, and juice only diets would be insane)
Just eat less than your using. Exercising or not. This is why I hit the scale each evening, and it tells me what I can eat the next day. I can eat ANYTHING I want. (I DID NOT SAY AS MUCH AS I WANT!!!) This keeping the weight off is so so easy, if you are serious. Not secrets. No special food. Just moderation and stay away from junk stuff like sodas, snacks, and second helpings.
Using calorie counting apps was very eye opening for me. I had leveled off at 166 for a long time. I was able to lose 5 pounds within two months of really tracking my calories. I made better choices, and knew the caloric cost/benefit of each and every food that I was eating.
It was very eye opening.
I learned that Oatmeal and sweet potatos are the king of all foods!! Coffee is the best liquid ever.
I have since put the weight back on , but now I know that whenever I want to get ready for a big race I have the recipe to drop four or five pounds pretty quick.
Thanks for the suggestions already! I was also thinking about using a calorie tracking app. Tracking calories however seems to be simply reducing calories without looking into carbs / protein ratios. Which is nice since i want to keep things simple, but that makes me wonder if there is a trick to know if the ratio is off (like too much carbs and not enough protein).
Also, i am expecting to be absolutely starving once i reduce calories. What can i do to control cravings? Is it a matter of just sucking it up or are there things to stay full longer?
The ratio of carbohydrates to protein and fat sometimes play a role with cravings. I can’t speak for you but experimentation may be needed with this issue.
Yes, calorie tracking does help. The nice thing about My Fitness Pal is that it will also analyze your percentage of carbs/protein/fat, and tell you if you’re getting important other things like cholesterol, sodium, potassium, and so on, which can help if you’re trying to address things like cramping. You can go back and see what you were eating on a good or poor training week.
Increase your consumption of local, organic fruits and vegetables. Have at least one quart of freshly made vegetable juice every day. Eliminate all packaged processed food. Your body will reflect the type of ‘foods’ you consume.
People will fill this thread up with all sorts of loony ideas but ultimately yes. Reduce your caloric intake a little bit, while training, and you will get smaller. Repeat until at the desired weight.
If you find that some dietary guideline helps you achieve the discipline to reduce those calories, go for it, as long as it isn’t too crazy. (going super low carb can be problematic for training, and juice only diets would be insane)
loony ideas on a triathlon forum? That’s an outrageous claim …
Increase your consumption of local, organic fruits and vegetables.
There is certainly an argument for minimizing transport costs associated with our food supply but I’m not sure the benefits extend to body composition; does my metabolism react differently to a tomato grown 5 miles from my house versus 100 miles away?
Similarly, while there is an argument for reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides, is there any evidence that organic vegetables as opposed to “regular” ones will help change body composition?
This is why I hit the scale each evening, and it tells me what I can eat the next day.
Not sure I would advocate changing your diet for the following diet based on a single daily weigh-in. All of the people I know (that are watching their weight), including myself can fluctuate from one day to the next without a change in diet. I can weigh anything up to 2lbs difference in a single day.
In my opinion, you can use a daily weigh-in to track, but it would be my weekly trend that I would I use to adjust diet accordingly.
Cutting processed sugars and alcohol normally does the trick for me pretty quickly. That includes nutrition for training - I hardly ever use energy drinks or gels for example (terrible for your teeth apart from anything else). Running I can do up to 2 hours on water only if I’ve had something to eat before I go, I rarely run beyond 2 hours anyway. Cycling I’ll get my calories from food rather than liquid. Bananas, homemade flapjacks, peanut butter sandwich, etc.
Cutting down on bread, pasta and potatoes and getting my carb calories from sweet potatoes and wholemeal rice also seems to make a big difference.
Whatever you do, think long-term. No point shedding 10 pounds in a month with a diet you can’t sustain (and losing weight too quickly is likely to lose you some muscle mass as well as the fat) and then putting it all back on. You want to find an eating balance that you can stick with and gradually come down to your target weight. E.g. if you love Nutella, then cut something else, or make a deal with yourself that you’ll only have Nutella either immediately before or during training (if you are going to eat processed sugar, that’s the best time for it).
I have found that running shifts weight but cycling does not. For some reason when I do a lot of running I don’t seem to get as hungry and I’m able to stick to a sensible calorie intake and the weight seems to fall off easily. If I don’t run and only cycle I seem to get more and more hungry the more I train and I’m unable to keep to a controlled diet. Another advantage with running for me, is I can’t run on a full stomach and I don’t feel hungry for hours after a run. No idea why this is but it is the opposite to cycling which makes me ravenous after a run and I’m able to ride after eating.
I have also found that no alcohol causes me to feel less hungry, I assume it must affect blood sugars, but I think it also depletes and rots ones moral fibre. When ever I have consistently lost weight and kept it off it is when I have abstained totally from alcohol.
My other tip is cut out sugar completely and that includes juices and fruit.
I make an effort to eat more vegetables and try to get my carbs more from veg and potatoes instead of from bread and pasta.
I have a theory that the brain gets signals from running - the jarring every stride and the jiggling about of internal organs and fat and knows that the weight slows you down so regulates appetite and shifts into some sort of weight loss mode but that cycling being weight supporting tricks the brain into thinking it does not need to lose weight. It may be though just as simple that running breaks down the body more than cycling so you burn more rebuilding.
The result for me though is if I do more running my weight goes down. But more cycling I seem to gain weight.
So my tip is cut out alcohol and increase running. That is what works for me.
Another tip - these scales which claim to measure body fat. They are only any use at seeing a trend. If I put in my age as younger than I am, they say I have less body fat, because they work on some sort of calculation which includes age. Best measure is how tight your clothes are and weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you have eaten or drunk anything.
Long term it is a life style thing. Avoid crash diets and losing too much too soon, it won’t be fat you lose but water and you will get ill.
Whole fruit? Why oh why do people associate whole fruit with being bad for weightloss?
Indeed. I have a fruit smoothie every day that includes Pure orange juice, raspberries, banana, etc along with seeds. This was recommended in the book racing weight and I have found it to be very effective. As that book also suggest, it is about timing of food (not fuel);
Carbs in the morning, absolutely not a problem. Your body is geared up for absorbing them.
Carbs at lunch, okay, but keep a check on what you eat and what you are likely to be doing that afternoon/evening. If no training, keep them lower.
Carbs in evening. Vegetables a plenty are good, sugars not so. Your body is geared up for protein absorption and will be more likely to store carbs as fat.
(Please note that I have no scientific research about the accuracy of the information above. I got it from the same book as the smoothie and to me, it makes sense. More importantly, since following it, I have lost weight and still am)
Yeah, eating the fruit would be better. Pithy weight management saying:- “Don’t drink calories”.
And I know you put the caveat there re: science and stuff, but FYI, look up “de novo lipogenesis” as to exactly how much carbs actually get “stored as fat”… hint: if you’re an early morning training type of person, eat the carbs.