alcanoe

There have been several articles in the media recently indicating that short intense periods during aerobics like intervals/wind sprints at high heart rates are the key to eliminating visceral fat. One author was Dr Ratey, the author of Spark. Just riding long distances misses the point of specifically targeting visceral fat.

Al

europa

Or you could take the cynical view and suggest that intervals haven't been trendy before and now it's their turn. Give them a couple of years and a score of books, and something else will become the new wonder regime.

Cycling's not going to lose you weight unless you do a looooooootttttttt of it, no matter how you do it.
Diet's not going to lose you weight unless you significantly drop your intake and significantly modify what you eat.
In both cases, you'll get it all back plus interest if you can't maintain the new lifestyle.

The human animal evolved in an environment that demanded a huge physical effort to survive on a diet that was low in fat and probably pretty marginal in quantity. Since then, it hasn't evolved to suit a sedentary lifestyle with too many fats and carbs and chocolates and buns and donuts and ... makes you want to cry doesn't it.

It's not really hard to see why we're overweight
Excuse me while I duck off to go for a ride.

Richard

howsteepisit

I wonder about why we need a lot of cycling to loose weight. IS it beacuse we need it to burn off enough calories, or because when we ride a lot we dont have as much time to eat/snack?

europa

I think it's a case of cycling being too efficient ... and that's before you consider how well modern equiptment works. I can do a 20km ride on my geared sportster and I won't work as hard as if I did it on my fixed gear bike, hence the fascination for intervals and training guides and stuff like that - it's too easy to just sit back and enjoy the cruise. Which isn't to suggest there's anything wrong with enjoying the cruise, there are benefits in that too, but if all you're considering is burning off fat, it's not as good at it. Trouble is, if you bought an inefficient bike and rode that around because it's harder work, you'd soon get jack of it ... which is why so many gym memberships are bought and so few are used fully.

The best way to get exercise is for it to be part of your life. This is why commuting by bike is good, you're forced to get out and do that exercise every day whereas it's harder to get up early or come home after work and THEN go for a ride 'because you need the exercise'.

There are subtle differences in HOW we exercise when it's part of your life as opposed to artificial exercise such as gym work or training rides. Life throws variations at us and this tends to exercise our whole body. Using the commuting example again - there's no way I'd do my commute 'for fun' because of the traffic, the rubbish roads, the stop start nature of a lot of it, yet that traffic has me varying my speed, the poor roads makes riding harder and the stopping and starting again increases the work load, and that's before you consider the extra weight from text books and locks I have to carry.

Similarly with what you eat. If you're used to eating a healthy diet and not too much of it, you tend not to notice it until someone offers you something unhealthy. Eating naturally (ie, you don't have to think about what you're eating) will lead to a more balanced and more varied diet than someone who's forced to follow an eating regime.

I'm also a believer in your body knowing what it needs, this is why you get a sudden craving for a bit of bread or find yourself munching on carrots or mushrooms - you're body has noted a lack and is getting it. The problem with that is when your mind equates those signals with eating the wrong stuff, so instead of reaching for a slice or two of whole meal toast you pig into half a loaf of crusty white bread slathered with butter.

The other factor is that major life changes are stressful and if you try to tackle weight loss (and fitness) when you're in no position to handle the extra stress, you're setting yourself up for failure and when you do fail, you're more likely to fall back to really bad habits (like the half loaf of bread mentioned above).

And while all of this is very nice, unless you exercise a lot, eat healthy and don't eat too much, all over a long period, you're not going to lose weight and unless you keep it up, the weight will come back on again. The forumula is simple, it's the effort that's the problem.

Richard

alcanoe

It's more science than trendy. Also, if one has followed the literature on training for road racing, Intervals have already been "trendy" for probably more than a decade. Cynicism is generally not too productive.

Also, I've lost a most of my visceral fat when I gave up long road rides and went to mountain biking with the more often required spurts of high heart rate efforts. It just snuck up on me when I noticed it all of a sudden.

Al

Allegheny Jet

+1

I am 40 lbs lighter than 2 years ago and I rode less miles this year, but did many more intervals and hill repeat workouts in order to race. I am at the same weight that I was when I ran track in college. I don't think I've changed anything else to effect the weight loss.

Machka 

1 lb = 3500 calories.

If you want to lose 1 lb, you need to consume a deficit of 500 calories a day.

So if you can burn 2000 calories a day and consume 1500 calories a day ... and keep that up for a week, you'll lose 1 lb. Unfortunately it rarely works quite that smoothly, and you've got to keep it up for several months for it to all average out.

I recommend using FitDay to calculate how much you're truly eating ... it's quite eye-opening.

About cycling: cycling burns somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-600 calories per hour. Not really a whole lot ... it's too efficient. But if you have been sitting on the sofa and maintaining your weight, and then you got up and started riding for an hour a day, you'd very likely lose weight.

If you've been cycling, I recommend increasing your time/distance. "They" recommend 90 minutes of exercise a day!! That's a good place to start.

BA Commuter

There's a lot of good stuff here!

This year, I reduced my calorie intake and have increased my riding cadence and intensity. I lost about 30lbs. and hills no longer suck the wind out of me! and... it's much cheaper than buying new carbon fiber parts that only save a gram or 2!

I just need to say no over the holidays!

Cheers!

dcvelo

My personal experience would lead me to believe that intensity is useful to weight loss. This past year I have ridden fewer miles, but have been doing interval sessions two or three times a week (on my lunch hour..that's one tine I can get some riding in). After three months of doing that I'd lost 6 pounds (at 5' 10" and 156 I wasn't particularly heavy to begin with..). There was no significant change in my eating habits, so it seem the change in exercise intensity was behind tthe weight loss.

Cycling is efficient, but if you push yourself it's still a significant workout.

Lonewolf48

My son gained about 70 #s and then lost it after he finished law school. He said, "Dad, it is really a simple math problem!". As Machka points out in her post above, it is easy to under-calculate how many calories we consume each day. As a physician and physiologist, I have come to believe:
l. Diets don't work, lifestyle changes do.
2. A diet of whole grains, lean protein, fruits and vegetables helps maintain steady blood glucose
and insulin levels. After making changes in my diet, I found I actually enjoyed it more than
the typical American high fat, high sugar prepared foods. If the label has more than three
things in it, it probably is not good for you.
3. You can eat more calories in a day than you can burn working out, so weight loss almost
always requires caloric restriction.
4. Abdominal/visceral fat deposits are associated with metabolic syndrome, manifested
as type II diabetes mellitus, hypertension and atheroschlerotic cardio-vascular disease.
5. There are many studies that support a mixture of aerobic training for a minimum of 40-45
minutes at least 4X a week with resistance training 2-3X per week. Interval training does
improve mVO2 and peak performance. Intensity increases the calories expended per unit
time. Genetics plays a HUGE role in obesity/abdominal fat deposits, if you have this genetic
profile it may require 2-3 hours of vigorous exercize each day to stay lean. A personal
example: I have an identical twin brother who walks daily but
eats a typical diet. We are 5'8". He weights 250 and I weight 155. I work out 2-3 hours/day
and eat the diet noted above. It is difficult, but it can be done.
6. Lastly, I have met so many people who have said to me, "If only I had my health, if I had
taken better care of myself when I was younger". Ten years ago I weighed 216#s and had
triple bypass surgery. I changed my lifestyle. I am 60, I eat lightly and work out 2-3Xs each
day with the first work out done before dawn. I have never felt better in my life.

Keep biking brothers and sisters.

DnvrFox

Great post.

I try and follow a similar regimen.

Generally, I also feel great, have lots of energy and am pretty darn healthy at 69.

Your statements are full of common sense and not the "I know something that will fix your problem," or "read this book, it has all the answers."

Thanks

alcanoe

As a physician, you are remarkably well informed. I would quibble with the genetics part as it's now believed that lifestyle can negate genetic tendencies to a large degree. In other words, yes we do tend to store fat as part of our evolution and therefore it's genetics in a broad sense. But, decades ago people were not fat and didn't pile on the Visceral fat. We didn't get a sudden shot of bad genes. An interesting book Younger Next Year deals with our genetic programming to decay rapidly with age with the Western lifestyle.

I recommend that you read Physical Activity and Health, edited by Bouchard, Blair & Haskell. It's published in 2007 and contains an amazing amount of science that supports you comments. For you it will be an easy read. For me it's tough going, but well worth the effort. It's a shame that there is so much self imposed ignorance which leads to the remorse of which you write.

I got motivated to study lifestyle issues as a hobby when I developed border line hypertension at age 26 some 43 years ago. The doctor wanted to put me on medication. I refused and decided to jog. Cured it in three months. This was years before Dr Kenneth Cooper's books. That was a critical lesson that had a major impact on my life.

Al

Lonewolf48

yes lifestyle can negate the effect genetics has on one's life-to a degree. for people with elevated cholesterol/lipids, for example, dietary changes and exercise can moderate the gene's effects but for many people not enough for them to avoid needing statins. in my family, my father was tall and thin and my mother short and fat. they had five boys, three short and fat like mother and two tall and slender like dad. I ALWAYS worked out more than the skinny boys and never ate the high fat/high sugar foods they ate, still for me to get truly fit I had to make major life-style modifications. I am not complaining- it's just the way my life has been. the data on the truncal obesity genes are relatively new but I think intuitively obvious. Just ask any of your friends that calorie restrict and exercise but still struggle with their weight.
For me, I begin anew every morning before dawn. What kind of day will it be? Will I be able to get my workouts in and still work and be available for my family and friends? Will I be able to control my impulse to shovel food I don't need into my mouth and wait to eat until I am hungry? Can I accept my world the way it is without complaint? Can I be grateful for the gifts I have been given and not waste time wanting gifts I don't possess? The big one: will I get on my bike and ride even when it is below zero, icy and the wind is blowing 25-30 MPH (today)?

dclaryjr

I would say the same thing about Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories." Definitely not an easy read but very enlightening.

Yen

I began losing weight much faster (well, I went from losing an average of 1 lb./month to 2-3 lbs./month) after I started riding early last year. I can't say I ride a looooooooootttttttttttt by most cyclists' standards, but it's enough to have lost 25 pounds since May 2007, and keep it off, along with healthier eating. Caloric restriction alone may drop pounds temporarily, but regular physical activity (aka "exercise") is the key to keeping it off. Maybe I'm a genetic freak, but I had no trouble losing (and now maintaining) weight from cycling or walking most days of the week and eating a healthy diet.

alcanoe

On Statins ---- They are a fraud for primary intervention. I've studied statins and the LDL issue ad nausium and recently stopped taking them. Even the mother of all statin studies (Framingham) showed that the most physically active one third of the 5000 member cohort had 40 % less cardio issues than the bottom one third. They didn't publish that information until a doctor dug it out recently. You have to give stains to 100 people to save one cardio event. Not nearly as effective as exercise. Again, that's for primary (a healthy individual with no signs of cardio issues except cholesterol levels above some threshold established by a panel of 14 experts, 5 of whom had ties with the statin companies). You see, there's no money to be made by prescribing exercise.

Also, for folks over 50, there's a large body of credible trials/studies that show that mortality from all causes other than coronary heart disease increases with reduced LDL. You have to be careful here that the cohort selected for the data does not include too many smokers or the mortality really increases with lower LDL.

My doctor and I have both concluded that the medical journals have no integrity. The articles are tilted towards selling the latest and most expensive drugs. He says that the articles he's reading now are an embarrassment to the medical and scientific professions. There have been many articles in the general media lately on this issue.

On Shoveling food ---- A real problem. However, it seems to be a byproduct of the western lifestyle. First, eat mostly plants/whole grain. Minimize animal products/dairy. Eat more fish. Go for the oily lower-contamination species. I guarantee you won't do much shoveling as these foods are nutrition dense, but have low calorie density.

Additionally, consistently burning more calories reduces hunger until you reach the point where your body really needs more, then your hunger will increase. By then you'll be lean. I've experienced both this and the "more plant" thing over the last three or four decades as I evolved my lifestyle through study and trial and error. Also, eat frequently. Keeps the energy up and the hunger down.

A key point here is that we evolved to be endurance athletes and to burn huge amounts of calories, some at very high heart rates. We likely ate many times a day just due to the hunter/gatherer practicalities. In Physical activity and Health, I found that it was the calories burned that affected the cholesterol/LDL and not the intensity. But it was the intensity or level of fitness at high oxygen intake that affected over all mortality : a highly fit individual has one fifth the mortality of the couch potato and that's age independent.

Accepting the world --- Yes and no. It's been known for decades that high exercise levels makes one an optimist (I became a flaming optimist) and diminishes afflictions like depression far better than drugs or counseling. The first hint of this for me was a US News article about 30 years ago. For the latest science, see Spark. So an optimist will accept what he can't change and work to change those things that he can and he'll feel really good about it all. It's very rewarding IF and only if one has sufficient level of physical activity to be a normal (not average) human. That is, you must have a lifestyle vigorous enough to be in line with your hunter/gatherer genetics. The amount of "vigor" is obviously individual dependant. I need a lot.

Well, I got to go and hunt down a breakfast.

Al

chuckb

Yes. Good web site. Thanks for the tip.

Spiduhman

Am enjoying this thread!

As a few have mentioned, there are many details between and around the extremes of "Less than LSD" and "High Intensity Intervals" when it comes to training and what is the target of that training.

Hmmm... how many aspects of fitness can we come up with? What can be targeted in training (and measured as well)?

Anaerobic threshold - the level of output just under the point where lactace would begin to accumulate; the definition of fatigue IS the accumulation of lactate. Much of our training is about raising this threshold. I s'poze you could say aerobic capacity, but some will spit a hair on it, that is, it's not exactly the same, which is o.k. too, and true.

O.K., yeees, that is the big one, the howly grail, but, there's more.

Power - they say is equal to strength * speed; both are trainable as well. It's widely held that "pure speed" is a gift; while that's mostly true, exceptional + in any area is a gift, and those that have lots of gifts are "gifted."

Flexibility - we'll all admit it's important.

Bouyancy - o.k., not important for bicycling... swimming, yes; some quite lean individuals are still very bouyant! It's a gift.

Lactate tolerance - the ability to maintain high output as lactate concentrations increase; this trait is also trainable. It's fun, for masochists! It really really helps too. If you fail at a higher level that the others, then you win, everything else being equal. Think "rip their legs off." Recovery rate from acidosis (next hill anyone?) is also important.

MaxV02 - the amount of oxygen the body can "uptake," which is, of course, related to the amount of energy it can produce. It's trainable.

Glycogen "burst" - how long the typical 6-12 seconds (average person) burst of max speed be sustained? It can be extended, by targeted training, to over 25 seconds. For cycle racing, "cycle" time becomes a big factor - that is, how much (little) recovery time is necessary before the next burst? This is fun, and relatively painless training, as long as no injury is sustained, and recovery is a breeze too. One must be "in shape" already, of course.

O.K. then, "interval" is a very general term then, yes? What is the point of the interval set? What is being trained then, eh?

Technique is important, and trainable.

Mass is an important fitness metric as well, obviously, as per this thread!

Can you all coaches and doctors mention some more aspects of fitness? Some do respond to training, some are kind of "set."

Heart stroke volume

Leverage

Tidal volume (lungs)

Aerodynamics (in swimming, it's hydrodynamics - the shape of your body)

Muscle type - it's in the fibers

Between the ears - those really driven to excel just have it (and, there's something a little bit "wrong" with them/us/sometimes, even me!).

Other factors: support of family and friends, good coaching, the right mix of people to train with, the right mix of competitions

Well, these days I train solo, oh well.