Originally Posted by TedNugentRocks
Hi, I am new here and I am trying to lose weight by riding my bike... I am 15 years old and i weigh 235 pounds, I am 6'0 tall, and i am trying to get down into the 170-180 range.
170 sounds like a good goal for someone of your height and age, maybe you could go even a little lower.
I used to bike all the time but now I've lost all my endurance and can barely ride at all.
It's good that you are a veteran biker--this will make it easier for you. Do you have the bike, helmet and clothing that you need? Will you be riding on the road, mountain biking, BMX or a combination?
I would just like to know what would be a good diet,
Since you're a serious athlete, or about to be one, you need the best possible diet. It's not that you can never eat junk food, but at least 90 % of your food should be of high nutritional quality. As far as I know,
The World's Healthiest Foods has the best information on which foods to eat.
and how far i should bike per day, and maybe how to get my endurance back up so i can ride more than 2 miles without being out of breath, haha. It is kind of hard to bike around here because i live in pennsylvania and there are a TON of really steep hills where I live. When i sued to bike i biked around 12 miles per day or so.
I would suggest that you ride as far as you can in one day, then rest one day, then ride again as far as you can. The pattern would be ride one day, rest one day, ride one day. Every week, add about 10 % time to your ride. Don't worry about how fast or how far you are riding at this point, because you are just trying to improve your endurance or stamina. When you can ride for 90 minutes without stopping, come back here and start a new thread to ask what you should do next.
So... i just want to know what kind of diet i should be doing, how far i should be biking, and maybe some excercises to help me ride up hills easier or get leg strength or something, and maybe how long it would take me to lose these 65-75 pounds...
Eat the healthy foods that you learn about from the web site. You should try to lose one or two pounds a week. No more! If you lose more than two pounds, you're probably losing muscle instead of fat, and your riding will suffer.
Weigh yourself every week. If you lose less than one pound, eat less the next week. If you lose more than two pounds, eat more the next week. Losing the 75 pounds in one year would be a good goal. That's a long time to wait, so you'll learn about patience and motivation--good things to know when you're 15.
Weight lifting would be a very good thing to do. Get a trainer or coach to teach you about it. There are probably classes in your school or at the local Y.
For the first few months, don't worry about how fast you ride, or how many miles you ride. Just worry about how much time you ride. This is the endurance phase of your training, and it's the most important phase of all. Everything else you do in cycling depends on having good endurance. Don't think about anything else until you can ride 90 minutes without stopping. The hills are good exercise of course, and they will be a LOT easier when you lose some weight. The best climbers are always skinny little guys. But don't climb too many hills if it's stopping you from getting your 90 minutes in. The hills will still be there next year!