Wogster

Tom, your before pic isn't coming through, not sure what the issue is, I assume it did at some point.

Well guys, hmmm, I started a few years ago at 245, went from driving a desk to a job that was running around all day, that has me down to 210lbs, started biking again this spring, had a crash, and was off the bike for a while, it's an MTB and really is the wrong kind of bike, but can't get another one, so narrower tires, and a few enhancements this winter, plan on doing some long hauls next year. Bought a book, Cycling for fitness, plan on following the schedule in it, next summer. It's some 2800 miles, and hopefully will get me down to the 170lbs I want to be.

Tom Stormcrowe

Just for grins and giggles, try reloading the screen ir failing that, here it is!


Direct link: https://xs106.xs.to/xs106/06375/Before.jpg

Hambone

Mike, I'm not a preacher and I am not judging, this is more of a challenge to your justification... take from it what you will.

A can of Mountain Dew (one can) is 110 calories. So if you consume only one can per day that is about a pound a month of excess body fat. (110kcal x 30 = 3,300kcal. One pound of body fat is roughly 3,500 kcal.) That means 12 pounds of body fat per year.

No responsible health care practitioner would suggest that an extra 12 pounds per year of body fat is a healthier/better alternative than the trace amounts of artificial sweeteners in the diet soda. And this does not factor in the negative impact on metabolism that that "jolt" of sugar does to your insulin/blood sugar levels.

As I said at the beginning, please, don't take this personally. Just looking at it from a different point of view.

Wogster

Hooooooooooooooly Crap, well done kimosabe

Okay so that's cafeine free, suger free, alcohol free root beer!

Michigander

On the subject of soda pop, especially mountain dew, I used to be hopelessly hooked on the stuff. I managed to ween myself off of it by switching to cappacino in the morning, and juice for the rest of the day, and then eventually I switched to coffee in the morning. Mountain Dew was an enormous part of my problem.

DIGITAL39

I went about a year drinking soda maybe once every couple weeks and what helped me was these packets you can buy. Crystal light makes their own version, but of course they are more expensive and do not taste any better. I was buying mine from Walmart, they are about 1.69 for a box of 10 packets, each making 16 oz so for 1.69 you get 1.25 gallons of a tasty drink. Each package has 0 calories, so obviously no sugar either. Being a convenient size made them perfect for the gym and on the road.

Pedal_Pusher

Holy Cow! Kudos to you for a job well done. You give me hope and inspiration. Hubby (VolnTitan) and I are just beginning to cycle, and we hope to become "addicted". Admittedly, our eating habits are quite horrible. I love Coke and Pepsi (the real thing, not diet) and hubby loves Diet Code Red Mountain Dew mixed with Diet Orange. There are days when I don't drink any water and I've got to change that! Between Coke/Pepsi, sweet iced tea (I am a southern girl, you know) and milk, I tend to ignore good old pure water. We over-eat and our food choices are very poor. We both tend to have addictive personalities in that once we start something, we are pretty regimented about it. Fortunately we don't live near Vegas!

Thanks so much for the suggestions and the inspirational stories we have found on this site! I'm ready to bike!

karmalaundry

Was that with or without surgery?

Air

Psst - first page

Tom Stormcrowe

Michigander, one thing...everybody's story is "cool and incredible"! I was lucky, basically. I had to fight for all I've done (Insurance issues, gotta love BC!)

uxrider

No before pic but here is a current one. I have been cycling seriously for two years now and despite racking up over 2400k. last summer and 2570k already this year and at least 75,000 cal burnt each year, I have not lost a pound. I have not changed my eating habits (I know I should!) but genetics is a huge part of this whole deal. I have included a pic of me and my buddy dirty dave (guess which one he is!) Dave is 80lbs lighter than my 200 and it was quite entertaining to ride the Hastings Hilly Hundred together today. I would blow by dave on every descent without even pedalling, then he would spin past me on the uphill sections (of which there were many). My point is to have fun with it, losing weight is great but the benefits of riding are many even if the pounds don't fall off.

Tom Stormcrowe

Very good point! Even if you don't lose an ounce, the heart gets and stays strongeras well as the lungs! Ev3ery minute on the bike is two minutes longer you'll live as a result of the exercise!

SimonEd

There are many advantages to any exercise that increases your heart rate. I have been out of the personal training game for a while, but IIRC here are some of the goodies to look forward to feeling the benefit of.

1: Increased ejection fraction. Each time your heart beats there is an amount of blood squirted out, this is called the ejection fraction, the more you work the heart the more it squirts each time so the more blood gets around per beat.

2: Lower residual volume. When you breathe in and out there is alway some air left in there, no matter how hard you try to expel it. The more you train, the more you get in and out each time. This is mostly a result of the muscles used to breath becoming stronger. So for each breath you take in you are getting more air and you can get rid of the old stuff and take in more O2 than an untrained individual. If you need to feed buring muscles O2 and get rid of exhaust fumes, the faster you can deliver new air and take out the fumes the easier its going to be.

3: lower resistance in Blood pathways. Bascially your body is full of little tubes that carry blood. If you are a lazy slob these are closed up as your body hates to pay for up-keep on something that isnt being used. The weird thing about the opening of these is that it usually happens all at once, its not gradual. This is why you will start off training and struggle and feel like you are only making a little progress and then WHAM! you feel like you can just keep going and going. All of a sudden oxygenated blood and waste products are being delivered and taken away faster than before making cellular respiration a lot easier and preventing a serious oxygen debt.

4: Lower systolic pressure. When your hear squirts out some blood it goes into the arteries and then the other blood ways, the faster it can drain out of the arteries, the less pressure on the left ventrical of the heart. Severely obese people or uber sedentary people have heart problems because the blood keeps backing up until it puts pressure on the heart valves. If you have lots of open blood ways it drains away so fast that your heart really has a nice time, instead of feeling like a part baloon on the end of a faucet.

5: Blood. Active individuals have more blood than sedentary individuals, so you have more of the the delivery system that delivers O2 and takes away the waste products.

This is going to sound a little caustic, its not meant to be, but its a way of illustrating a point.

We have well documented proof (POW's and Concentration camps) that show it has nothing to do with genetics. If you want to drop the weight you are going to have to eat the foods that allow for muscle growth (a higher % of lean body mass will burn more calories 24/7) without taking in fuels that dont contrbute to your goals.

Think lots of water (if you are not peeing every 90 mins you are not getting enough water)
Lean meats or fish
Complex carbs (Oatmeal is superb and there are lots of ways to eat it, even like cookies so it feels like a treat, but its actually good for you.
Fruit to feed your brain with glucose
Check wether you are insulin resistant, just get some Chromium polynicotinate and AKG supplements and see if cravings for fats and sweets lessen.
Lots of Vit C for connective tissue repair (you can take as much as 5g of Vit C a day)
For a snack have a Myoplex protein drink from EAS, 42g of protein in each one and they are quite sweet, so if you have a sweet tooth, this will kill the urge.

Tom Stormcrowe

I have to disagree about it not being potentially genetic as a component....not the whole issue, but a component. You do give good advice though diet wise. Citing POW's and COncentration Camp weight loss is a rather extreme example though, due to the aspects of forced labor and sub-subsistance level diet. The general reference to genetics currently understood is that there is a definite marker gene that shows up in obese individuals. Under conditions of deep famine as a subsistamce farmer or Hunter/Gatherer this marker gene is likely a survival mechanism, but under current conditions in this modern world, it's a disaster. To properly cite POW's and Concentration Camp survivors in the aspect you did, you need to have a data curve showing rates of weight loss over a period of time indicating a correlation that we all lose weight at the same rate under identical caloric intake/output. This can't be shown even in a medically supervised diet and exercise plan. We are all "one off's", with unique genes and we all process caloric burn at a slightly different rate depending on the efficiency of our bodies. I know you weren't trying to be harsh, but unfortunately, you have taken a bit of a simplistic view of how we gain and lose weight is all.

Quick Edit: Maybe we should start a thread for this aspect of the dialogue? Hopefully it won't turn into one of those threads that sounds like the tone in P&R!

Wogster

Tom:

Gotta question for you, at your heaviest, were you diabetic, and if you were, are you still?

If you don't want to discuss it on the group, but don't mind answering the question, then PM me.

As for the photos, I know a few folks who could tape the before and after (the cycling one), on the refridgerator, heck it would work better then locking that sucker up with a Kryptonite U lock and a hunk of cruise ship anchor chain, and throwing away the key.

One thing though about diet, and this is something you probably know, but some others here might not, so I will post it anyway, is if you don't buy it, you can't eat it. Going on a diet with a 20lb bag of potato chips and a case of beer in the house will not work. Toss all that stuff in the trash, clean out the cupboards of everything you should not eat, then start again, with a new trip to the grocery store, and only buy what you should be eating.

Oh well, enough said here, my bike is calling to me to go for a ride

newsace

Yeah, I know that's just what it is: a justification. My problem is that I have just not chosen to exercise (pun intended) the willpower to do what I know I need to do. Thanks for the encouragement, and the spirit in which you delivered it.

Tom Stormcrowe

At my peak, I was insulin dependent. I am still technically diabetic, but completely regulated now. Sugars run between 73 and 103 on avg now with 73 @ fasting. 103 is peak. I actually have to be careful about low blood sugar now. My intake is strictly regulated by my activity level. For example, on a long ride, I may take in 6000 calories in a day, but I'm still operating at a deficit that is quite significant with an output of up to three times that on for example my 160 miler in one day over Labor Day Weekend.

Air

I made a thread here: https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php...06#post3108506

Tom Stormcrowe

Cool!

Wogster

160 miles in one day, is a heck of a nice distance, if you ever decide to visit us in Toronto, they have a ride called the Hair Shirt, 200 miles in one day, takes place in June. I am planning on riding it, probably not next year, need a drop bar road bike for that and I don't have one, and about 3,000 more training miles. It was tough getting back on a bike after 20 years, and after a serious MTB crash in April, it was even tougher, tough enough that this clyde (175cm tall, and 95kg), decided that mountain biking was not my cup of Earl Grey, and that road riding would suit me better. Since I can't afford another bike right now, I am planning on doing some conversion work on the one I have, slick tires, fenders, a rear rack, then I can use it for commuting, and that should help the mileage quite a bit. Then maybe pick up a road bike next year .

As to weight, I would like to end up around 75 - 80kg (alas no longer a clyde).

devin

Yep. Mountain Dew has been my hardest thing to overcome as well. I'm 5-8 and 270 lbs. I'm in the same boat as you. A few years ago it was nothing for me to drink a 2 liter bottle of dew a day. I've gone off it cold turkey only to come back. Then I tried to limit myself to one glass a day. That works for a while, but then I start drinking 2 a day and it goes up from there. I have kept myself below 2 liters a day for a few years now. But I have not kicked the habit.

I have not found anything that really helps me keep off dew. But I did find that Code Red upsets my tummy. So if I only have that in the house, I can only have one a day without getting sick. I go back and forth between going without and then only buying code red. The fight continues.

This link inspired my latest effort to give up dew.

https://www.alternet.org/story/33380/

So for now I'm back on leaf-water (tea) and off dew.

Devin

Mike_Morrow

February of 2004 I was 400 pounds, 17 months later I got down to 160 lbs (6'0"). The weight loss totally changed my life. I was lucky in that I was able to lose the weight without having any readily apparent long term complications. (No lasting HBP or Diabetes, I do have some loose skin)

I would never have believed it 4 years ago but eating less and moving more really can work wonders.

cyclezealot

Mike that is awesome. Congratulations. What is you program. Solely cycling?

garysol1 

Holy Cow Mike!!!!!! Awesome Awesome Awesome.....I had to bring the computer down to show the wife.
Great job

SimonEd

Holy Smoke! Good job!