eightlab

How many times have you heard that before?

Folks, I'm fed up to the back teeth of being fat. I hate it! Fair enough, there's not many out the that enjoy it, but I actually hate it, I hate myself!

Wow! Did I type that? Looks I did... I'll leave it in then. I must've meant it.

Right... Now to do something about it.

I guess buying a bike would be a good start! I know it's gonna be a long road, but I need to get my ass in gear. I'm 36 next birthday and I know for sure that I'm weighing I over 400lbs right now. Im a lump!

I'm not gonna ask for bike recommendations, I'll search through the posts myself and see what you've all said countless times before. (If you wanna make recommendations, that's cool though!)

However, if you have any hints/tips/magic remedies I'd be happy to hear them. Frick! Even a wee bit of encouragement wouldn't go amiss.

My name is Paul, and this is my public declaration to get my act together, get out on the road and leave a few lbs out there each time!!!

Thank you for listening!

chefisaac

Hey Paul! Nice to meet you and glad you are here. For me, this is a great forum. Helped me out a lot. I started riding in July of 2011 at 365 pounds. First long ride was two miles and it felt like 20. I was discouraged but kept plugging away. By the end of December I logged 1600 miles with the longest ride being 67 miles. But from july to the first of december, I barely lost anything. Here are some tips I keep in the back of my mind that might help you.

1) do not reward yourself with food after riding. I would ride 20 miles and think I could have 2 plus slices of pizza. Defeated the purpose of riding.
2- Start to dial into the reasons why you grab food just to eat. I have two great book recommendations. If you would like the titles, please email me or pm me at clydesdalecyclist at gmail.com If money is tight, perhaps I can send them to you.
3- What works for me and many others was to join Weight Watchers. It changed my life. Made me look at food differently and made me really understand portion control. I went from 365 to 294 so far. I still have 80 pounds to lose but I am on my way. Please consider Weight Watchers. It has been amazing.
4- Spend a lot of time understanding what made you heavy and do a deep dive into the whys, whats and hows. This is really facing the REAL problem. For me, I really found out why I did what I did.
5- Understand that, if eating is an issue, it will be a daily fight. I am in the fight all the time. That is ok.
6- see food as what it is... energy. Put crap in your body and you will feel crap times 2. Look at food as energy.
7- Start cooking. It is amazing.
8- When you start riding, dont "write checks that your body cannot cash". AKA: start slow.
9- When you build up the miles, perhaps you can commute to work. I started in December and love it. Two daily trips.... no gym time required.
10- remember, the road to weigh loss can be a tough one. Its about sticking with it.
11- You will get there. It takes time, dedication and hard work.

Finally..... PLEASE understand that it is true. When they say it is 80% what you eat and 20% exercise, it is true. I wish I would have understood that earlier.

If you need anything at all, please feel free to email me. Would love to help you out during your journey!

eightlab

ChefIssac... Thank you for the quick response! And what a response! Such wisdom...

I started looking at most of these things last year. I actually joined here a while back with the same intention, but I hadn't fully looked at what was going on in my head, thusly I failed.

I was diagnosed with a few depression related "illnesses", and have been working on those to help get myself ready for the battle. I'm starting a programme called Slimming World. It's a similar programme to Weight Watchers, something I tried before (back before I sorted my head out) but seem to have a mental block on now. So, I've been recommended to try it as it generates the same results (portion control, good habits, etc.)

I'm ready for the battle, this time more than ever before. I want to look at myself and be happy. I know this won't be easy; that I'll fail more than succeed at he start, but I also know that I need to do this. I don't want to die early. I don't want to hate myself... I want to live and love living!

So thank you for your support. Expect an email soon. It's coming!!!

chefisaac

Feel free to reach out any time Paul.

I do not know anything about Slimming World. But I do know (for me) what did not work was to go on a diet and eat diet food and crap like that. What is working is portion control, looking at food for what it is and how it effects my body and what do I GET OUT OF THAT FOOD. For example, pizza from a pizza shop. Delicious? He11 yes. Energy wise: loaded with simple sugars, simple carbs, processed meats, etc. Not good for my body. Does it mean I cannot have it? No. But learning what will work for me is key.

I rode with a friend I have not ridden with in a while yesterday. We got to talking about a lot of stuff and he was on a ride with a few of the clydesdales last year and we stopped for pizza and then went riding more afterwards. I remembered ow sick I felt when riding post pizza. I told Chris yesterday I will never do that again. The feeling was nasty. But again, that works just for me.

This was a big change.... one of the biggest in my life. Do I screw up still? Yes, sometimes. But then I really ask myself what caused this. Usually it is something as easy as missing my snacks or going too long between meals or getting to comfortable with sugary stuff. All you do is reel in some line and get back on track.

What I love about Weight Watchers (and you might have this with the Slimming World, is the meetings. They really do work for me and I have learned so much.

lenny866

Paul,

I'm glad to see you have chosen a life change. As you see, there is a lot of inspiration in these forums. You need to find what works for you.

Start slow....getting hurt can be a huge set back.

Some of the things that work for me....
I like to use mapmyride to keep track of all my exercise.
24hours of eating what I want. I eat healthy all week. Then from Sat lunch thru Sun Breakfast, I eat whatever I want. It keeps me from feeling deprived. If I want Pizza and Wings on Sat night, no problem.... bacon and eggs on Sun, no sweat, I don't feel guilty. 80% of the time, it eat healty during that time and when I don't...I eat less than I used too. Again, this works for me.
Planning and making my meals in advance, lots of chicken!!
Rest days, Your body needs it. I sometimes have to force myself.


Start today! Good luck and to quote you "live and love living"

micksgirl

Hey Paul,
Try not to beat yourself up. I too struggle with obesity (hate that word) as many of us do. Some are ok with it and you like myself are obviously not. What helps me is to just live day by day. If I happen to eat crap that's not good for me I dont beat myself up mentally, I just go out and kick butt to work it off the next day. That has actually helped me to eat better. I was craving a cookie something fierce yesterday and I could have had it or maybe half and stepped up my game today, but the thought of what it would take to work it off was a huge deterrent. This site has helped me improve my riding making it much more enjoyable, and I've learned (the hard way) what and what not to put in my body before and after riding.
You can do this, we all can...

eightlab

Cheers guys... Time to get the bike sorted and get out there!!!

lenny866

Good Luck!

LAE

consistency is the key. Great advice there from chefissac.

keep coming back here for motivation or new ideas, problems or just a had a ****ty ride. Oh and keep track of what you eat, as chefissac said 80% vs 20%

Black wallnut 

The diet lifestyle change is to eat food that is healthy for you. Plenty of vegetables, few starches, lean meat and fish several times weekly. Low fat or non fat dairy. Avoid alcohol. Portion control and timing of meals and snacks is also important. Large scale weight loss is a long term slow process, at a pound or two a week. For riding start slow and short. Over time add duration, speed will come naturally. After somewhere between a few months to 6 months depending on progress you'll want to actually start adding intensity several days a week, but always allow your body to recover between these harder workouts. There are lots of success stories around this forum and many folks willing to give you support. I'll be looking forward to reading of your progress.

bdinger

In 2005 I weighed a hair less than 600 pounds. Today I'm 200 pounds less than that, and again (thankfully) rapidly dropping. In 2005 I could barely walk for 5 minutes on a treadmill, three years later I rode 135 miles of gravel roads that shelled many an experienced rider half my size.

My first suggestion is to accept and embrace the fact that you can and will fall off the wagon. I did! Pretty damn hard too! And it took a small miracle to get me back on and working again this year, but I'm back and it's better than not being back.

My second suggestion is to completely leave your old habits behind. I did the same as you, worked my butt off then ate (relatively) crap. It's a vicious cycle that only gets worse when your exercise stops, and then you only realize it when you are back on the wagon. Hard to explain but yes, you can get just as fat eating too much healthy food as you can with pizza and beer.

Oh and finally? WELCOME! This is a great group, and that puts it very mildly.

goldfinch

I only sort of agree with this. When I started losing weight I cut out most of the starches and all of the sweets. This was primarily because I have such a sweet tooth that I easily binge on sweets. And on bread. I also was intrigued with the idea of lower carbs helping control appetite and helping insulin resistance. But I did not eat low fat. I wanted to look forward to my meals, as small as they were. I drank whole milk. Sometimes I had half and half on my blueberries. I had four ounces of wine with supper. I at blue cheese dressing on my salad. I did not eat much red meat because I really never loved read meat, but I had bacon and eggs several times a week. I ate a lot of dark meat chicken and the rest of my meat generally was seafood. Anyway, it didn't seem to adversely effect my lipid levels and having the richer foods were more satisfying to me and helped me avoid binges. I am prone to binge. Now that I am at goal weight I've backed off the higher fat diet a bit as I increased my sugar intake (mostly in the form of fruits, I eat lots of fruit), so now I rarely eat bacon and my milk is now 2%. I drink diet pop. Many people drop sodas when they diet. I did not and didn't see a good enough reason to do so as I am not a saint and couldn't give up everything I loved. Though a year and a half of experimenting I think that I have found a diet that I can live with long term and will control my weight and will provide good nutrition. But it changed during my weight loss efforts. My diet at day one is not like my diet today.

Given all the dispute and unsettled science about what is the right kind of diet, I think that it is ok to experiment with yourself and see what helps you be satisfied with your eating. I would pay attention to lipid levels though as you lose weight.

As far as how fast to lose weight generally the one to two pounds a week is good advice, to help avoid muscle loss and slow your metabolism. But early in a diet if you are 400 pounds I don't see an issue with greater losses. Plus, when you are very heavy you will lose muscle as well as fat as your lean body mass is higher than it would be at your normal body weight. It does take muscle to haul around fat.

Good advice.

For sure. I am at goal weight and I fell off the wagon last week, when I hooked up with my spouse and was traveling, eating out a lot. I am nipping it in the bud by keeping close track of my weight and calorie intake. I believe that for the indefinite future I will have to be a religious scale watcher and calorie counter, even counting when the calories are too high. And weighing myself when I know it is going to be up.

Good going Paul! This forum is great for support, both for biking and weight loss.

TrojanHorse

I've done plenty of diets in my day and the one thing that always, always, always happens - when you stop dieting you rebound right back to where you were. Or worse.

Think of it as a lifestyle change.

Measure everything that you eat, obsessively for a while. That will absolutely help you figure out what's got enough volume to satisfy you without breaking the calorie bank.

Don't kick yourself if you fall "off the wagon" for a weekend or something. Obviously, staying the course is better but if you want a piece of pizza,have a piece of pizza! Just account for it. This ties into the line above... having a piece of pizza is one thing, having two large pepperoni pizzas is entirely something else.

There are plenty of people on this very forum who have done exactly what you intend to do; you'll have plenty of support.

bdinger

First off, huge congrats at hitting your goal weight! Ain't nothing easy about that, and damn it must feel good. I finally feel like mine is possible, it's not in sight, but it's possible.

Now that said, I added emphasis to your point as it's one of the smartest pieces of advice, ever. Many simply stop counting when they knew they went over and that's just a horrible, terrible thing to add to the heartache of going over. If you go over, and count it, you at least have a way of measuring how wrong you went.

In other words say one night you have a piece of pizza that turns into 6 (or 12, I mean we are clydes..) - don't just give up, track it. At the end of the week if you gain 2 pounds, you can see exactly the negative impact it gave you. I wish I would have done this more, but it's really good information to have.

Why? In the future if you go totally off the wagon, you will be able to know what you need to get back on. Calories are calories, and if you can determine what your body burns (basal) plus what your activity burns - you can determine what you need to burn it off. So if you have 6,000 calories of pizza and beer one night, you might know that will require 10 hours of cycling to burn off.

Anyway, long story short - both this poster and Trojanhorse hit it on the head - it's a lifestyle change. You have to commit yourself to tracking forever, and ever, and ever.

jethro56 

Lots of good advice here and chefisaac and I are on the same page. I was as heavy as you and I'm literally half the man I used to be. My journey began roughly 3 years ago and that's my first point. Start thinking in terms of years. I hear a voice of desperation in your post and desperation is an enemy. I say that because the "I gotta do something now" feeling wears off all two soon. In reality weightloss is a passive activity. It's much more about not doing things. Riding a bike is fun and it'll get you fitter but you can't ride off 200 lbs. You may be able to ride off 20 or 30 lbs but your body will soon adapt.

I'll assume that this isn't the first time you've set off on a weightloss campaign. So why didn't the other times work? You quit. Why did you quit? For me it was expecting too much too soon and expecting weightloss to solve a whole host of other problems. So before you change a thing I'd suggest a real inventory of each significant attempt to lose weight. Examine the point where you got sidetracked and come up with a plan to deal with these triggers.

I chose a start date two months in the future to give myself a chance to understand myself better before I began "the journey" I avoided all the past mistakes. This time I actually didn't try the same approach while expecting a different outcome.

Many of us were right where you are. Sharing your insights will help us as well.

Oh... Welcome.

chefisaac

Jethro many great points. One being that you also need to do a deep dive to why you were not successful (if you were not) before. What happened?

Thats how I actually found Weight Watchers. I was 365 pounds, a Chef working in kitchens all my life. Its like a crack addict living in a crack house. I found a web site from another chef who was successful at losing weight and he did it with Weight Watchers. I found his web site at 2 am in the morning when I could not sleep do to acid reflex from eating crappy food that night. I knew I needed a change. Legs hurt, knees hurt, ankles hurt, slow on the bike, etc etc etc. And when I went into a meeting at work, people would stare at my belly and I knew what they were thinking. You always do. Eyes tell the real story. Anyway, I looked into Weight Watchers, talked with many many people and poof, I was there.