Old 05-17-07, 11:09 AM
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Ginny
Down 10# and 11 inches
 
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Denver-ish
Posts: 224

Bikes: Jamis, Specialized, CoMotion

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I have a book called Sports Nutrition Guidebook by Nancy Clark.
It's not just for athletes, it's for everyone.
The one sentance in there that really got me going was(paraphrased)
Excersize alone will not help you lose weight, you have to cut calories.

It's a great book, gives you great info on how to eat for excersize and lose weight.

The best info for me was the amount of calories one needs in a day to maintain current weight
(pretty much take your current weight, add a zero to the end, so 175# would be 1750 calories)
then add a % for how active you are and that it the most you can have to maintain weight and not gain.
Then you decide how fast you NEED to lose and subtract a number of calories per week to get to that number of pounds per week.

I'll be honest with mine here.
I weigh 174 so my number of calories per day just to lay awake in bed and breathe is 1740. Then my day is pretty sedentary, so I add 20% for my day. Or 348. So, my daily intake to live and maintain is 2088.
I've started riding my bike on a trainer in the morning for 30 minutes at 80-90% MHR and it keeps me about 17-18MPH so it's considered pretty vigorous. It supposedly burns 400 calories.
I've then cut my caloric intake to 1600/day. So after a regular day that I did all the above, I get about 1200 calories each day to survive on (not enough but I'be got a family reunion coming up in July, after that I will do things right). So my deficeit per day is 888. So every 4 days I should lose 1 pound. So far, that's working and I'm down 4 pounds and 5 inches. I'd be losing more, but I'm gaining muscle in my legs and that offsets the pounds on the scale. Next week I start doing upper body weight training.
Oh, and I'm cheating a bit with an ephedra supplement. I know, not the best way, but I love the energy and focus I get with it!
I'm also taking a multi vitamin to make sure I'm getting the vitaimins I need if I'm not getting them in the food, and a fish oil supplement for my high cholesterol.

Good luck to you.
Oh and could it be that in order to lose weight you'd have to lose muscle?
My DH weighs 180 and is 5'6. His legs are like tree trunks! His arms are the same. He carries the extra 20 pounds at his waist. Gut from drinking. He loses that pretty fast if he bikes with me and stops drinking beer.

As for the HR, I think as your heart gets in better shape, it recovers faster. In just 10 days, mine has been recovering a lot faster. I have had to up my gearing each day just to stay at the 80-90% at 85 RPM cadence. 10 days ago it took less than 1 minute to get to my 60% MHR that I warm up at. Now it takes almost 5 minutes, or 2 songs on my MP3. 10 days ago it took 5 minutes to get from 80% down to resting, now it's around 2.5 minutes. I don't think there is a set time since each person's heart is in a different state of fitness. Oh and I'm a fat, 40 yo, female.

I'm not a fitness trainer, nor do i play one on TV. . .
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