View Single Post
Old 03-20-14, 03:27 PM
  #9  
Buzzatronic
Senior Member
 
Buzzatronic's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 297
Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 0 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
And to put my money where my mouth is so to speak, here's a little thing I learned when dropping 80lbs in ~8 months recently and THEN picking up cycling after I hit my goal weight. My diet to lose weight was 1400-1600 net calories a day (net means food-exercise=net intake). My exercise was walking 2-4 miles a day. When I started cycling I bumped up to 2300 calories net but kept losing weight (got down to 160), I changed to 2500 net calories a day and still couldn't keep weight on AND I started to bonk on some of my rides. Now I'm working with 2800 calories a day *net* and I ride 150-200mi a week (av. 15-16mph). I'm 6' tall and have been at 165 (give or take a few lbs either way) for a year now and I haven't bonked in 6 months.

You don't maintain a healthy weight by starving yourself after you hit a specific target weight, especially if you're including significant activity on a regular basis. Your body NEEDS fuel to work, stop denying it because you're scared of gaining weight. You've lost over 200lbs which is fantastic, you're not going to gain 200lbs in two weeks (or two months or even two years) if you make a bad decision on calories now.

Experiment and find what works for you but do the research to understand the basics of metabolism and calorie intake and you'll find that when you're fit and healthy, it can require MORE calories to maintain weight than it did when you weighed a lot more but sat on your butt all day.
Buzzatronic is offline