Originally Posted by
wolfchild
Having a glass of wine with your dinner few times per week is OK , nothing wrong with that...It's the beer and hard booze that's bad. Every beer drinker I've seen has a pot belly, even if the rest of their body is skinny and their arms and legs look like twigs. Our modern beer is not the same as the beer of thousands of years ago, a lot of modern beers have HFCS's added to it, hops also makes beer estrogenic which is why it's so easy to gain weight from drinking it... Long time ago people were a lot more active then they are today so it was easy for them to stay slim and muscular... It's simple, if you want to slim down at your waist them you need to kick the beer/booze habit and get active.
Beer is bad because it's has gluten (if you are going paleo that's a no no), it is high in carbs and high in empty calories. The average beer is 120-200 calories. You go out for a night of drinking at the pub with some buddies and you can easily have 1000 empty calories that provide no nutritional value at all. For most of us that will quickly settle into a spare tire. Hard liquor is actually the least offensive alcohol you can have. Distilled spirits themselves have 0 carbs or sugar and about 90-100 calories. Most paleo drinkers swear by good tequila because it's known to have a low insulin response. Of course we are talking spirits with no mixer or a zero calorie mixer like lime juice and soda water. Most people drink mixed drinks with coke, fruit juices and other sugary things that up your calories and carbs above the average beer. Red wine is a close second in "healthiness" but some would say it's first because of added heart health (which you can get from krill or fish oil just as easily). But no matter what you drink, you're body stops burning the rest of your calories until it burns all the alcohol for energy which makes your body inefficient.
TDF riders are in another category than any of us. My friend is a ironman triathlete and on his hard training days he burns 10K calories. I'm sure TDF riders are doing the same thing on tour and training. When your calorie deficit is that high you can pretty much put anything and everything into your body and stay lean and trim.
Back to OP's questions. I would also recommend upping your riding to at least 80-100 miles per week. I also commute by bike but I have added several 20-40 mile rides during the week. I cut out alcohol first and upped my riding to 80-100+ miles a week about 5 months later and that is when weight really came off. I'm 5'11 and was 205 a year ago when I started cycling. This may I was down to about 185 and that's when I upped my cycling output and now I'm 165.
I also recommend you do some sort of strength training. That is very important to building lean muscle and boosting testosterone which in turn will help you lean out. If you have access to a gym with barbells look into a program like Starting Strength or 531 which are based on compound lifts (squats, deadlifts etc) and high weight/low reps. I'm also a fan of body weight work which you can do for free. If you have access to a park that has pull up bars that is a great asset for free but even if you don't there is plenty you can do with no equipment. This guy is a great entry point for body weight and has a lot of youtube videos:
Al Kavadlo ? We're Working Out! | We're Working Out!
I'd also be careful about cycling too much. Everything depends on goals. If you are going to race then sure you need to ride even more. But if you are looking to lose weight and be healthy it's not needed. If you follow paleo you'll see that most people in that world are against chronic cardio. Sprinting is considered optimal cardio. That is why I am fine doing a couple of 20-30 mile rides a week and sprinting and doing intervals instead of feeling like my weekend rides all have to be 50 miles+ like a lot of people I know do..