Diet soda, yo.

Tastes great. Has a kick. Breakfast of champions.

I must admit that I understood your post and your point immediately. Maybe DJ is just underfed after a ride and needs a snack? ;)

Perhaps I thought it was a wee bit long winded and unnecessarily obtuse. Perhaps I had been coding all day and looking at that huge paragraph my mind went "la la la la la la".

CUT OUT THE FULL CALORIE COLA!! SWITCH TO DIET COLA or lay off sugary drinks completely and only drink water!


You are very right about that! I currently weigh in at 296. Fat I know. But I once weighed 350 and lost 50 of it by doing nothing more than switching to diet soda. Now, I'm trying to eat a bit healthier and ride the hell out of myself this summer. Down to 260 by Oct. that's my goal.

I hope you mean programming and not... CODING

http://medicalimages.allrefer.com/la...kg-tracing.jpg

:eek:

Nah. We call it coding. :p
Shorter.

The sudden increase in activity and decrease in calories has probably sent your body the wrong message and now it thinks it's starving.

Change up those bad carbs for good carbs and don't get too worried about your diet save for making sure you avoid foods that are high is sugar and fat and replace those with healthier choices.

You will be building muscle mass so things may not look much different on the scale for a while and make sure you get proper rest and stay hydrated... 8 glasses of H20 a day will do wonders.

It's all about small steps and I am sure that in a short period of time you will look in the mirror and be going, "damn".

Few people seem to realize just how much exercise is needed to lose weight - if that's what your goal is. Judging from how you describe it, you may be doing enough to help maintain or develop cardiovascular fitness in general, but that's not the same thing as losing weight.

It takes a lot of hours to burn signification calories. If you ride for half an hour, you can easily negate that just by drinking a couple of soft drinks, eating an extra cookie or two. It really takes a lot of exercise to beat the calories, and not much eating to undo it all. It's almost mandatory to absolutely eliminate all in-between meal snacks, and even at regular meals, to eat normal amounts without any extra, unneeded calories. And when I say "normal amounts", that's probably much smaller a serving than most people are used to nowadays.

There's a practical limit in the amount of time a person can spend exercising, due to other activities, work, etc., plus the need for some recovery time, time outs due to illness and that sort of thing. So for most, it will end up having to be combined with reduced calorie intake. The problem though, is that when you exercise, you need to eat. It can be tough to balance that with dieting. You do need protein for one thing, because if you don't eat enough of it, your body will consume what it needs from its own muscle mass. You would lose weight, but not from where you want to lose it. I know of no other way but to judge how you're doing by whether you are losing or gaining, and adjusting your exercising and dieting from there.

The bottom line is that exercises like cycling are great for cardiovascular and respiratory fitness, but on their own, they don't do that much for weight loss unless you spend a lot of hours doing them consistently almost every day. Even then, I'm sure many of us know a few long distance riders who wouldn't exactly be mistaken for Twiggy.

Oh, that's right. There's a difference between programming and coding; coders are the ones whose jobs can be sent to India.

We call it programming. :p

When I worked out at NYSC, there was a little sign on the eliptical machines that had stuff like a picture of a cupcake, with the calorie count and something like, "1.5 hours on this machine".

I hated that ****ing gym. :)

If you're eating as you say, it's unlikely you're gaining much muscle. Gaining muscle takes protein consumption and plenty of calories. If you're cut your calories down TOO much, your body will freak out and go into starvation mode. You need to count your calories, first and foremost.

Figure you need 10 calories per pound of bodyweight to maintain your currrent weight at rest. Therefore, a 180 pound person needs 1800 calories per day to maintain. When people are active that affects the basal metabolic rage, so amount of calories needed to maintain is higher.

I suspect you are eating more calories than you suspect, and you aren't expending as many calories as you think you are. A heart rate monitor that counts calories burned during activity would be a wise investment.

Bottom line: a commute that short has to be ridden really hard in order to get into a zone where you're really burning calories and will continue to do so after the ride is over. I don't like to arrive at work in that condition, so I chill on the way there... mostly. There are points on the ride that are too much fun and I can't help but bomb my way through them, but I try to look unbothered when I arrive.

I freakin kill it on the way home. At least sometimes, you need to get nearly deliriously burnt on the bike to get real work in. Bikes are efficient; they make miles really easy. You want quick work? Try jogging. I can't, breaks my feet and knees, and I hate it besides.

Six weeks is a short time, but I do think you'd be seeing more of a difference if you were absolutely murdering your workout a few times a week.

Commuting to work is one thing, fat-burning is another. HTFU and start kicking some arse. :)

My job title is technically a programmer and I perform the etl design work for coders to code in india but I still code. I don't think that made much sense but whatever.

I was just kidding. They can and will send all of our jobs to India, and eventually India will be too expensive and they'll send them to Mars or something.

Actually, I'm a director, so I guess I mean, "We can and will..."

They pay me to tell them not to, but then they do it anyway. Corporate America is a yet-unwritten Beckett play. It's a damn shame I'm too tired, lazy and drunk to write it.

I know. :)
Director? Hmm.... must resist the urge to network. lol

Yeah, I have had people say to me, "Why aren't you skinny? You ride a bike to work." Well, I used to weigh 250, and now I weigh 185 (and I am 5'7"). But, I can also jump on my bike any day of the week and ride 50 miles, if I want to.

I go on bike tours in the summer, and ride the 65 mile loop. I get passed by 60-year old guys, with big guts, that are doing the 100-mile loop (BTW, I am 45). You get different muscles in biking, and most cyclists that I know don't look like models, unless they are 20. What's the farthest you have ever ridden? 10 miles? 20? When you continue to ride, you get [cyclist] tone. Even if you don't look like a model, you can ride farther and farther.

I work with thin guys at work, who are in their 40's. They are thin, but they are in terrible tone, and couldn't last over a few miles on a bike. Measure your success by your endurance, not your waist size.

My wife used to be a size 8, and now she is a size 0-1. Does she ride? No. Never. She watches her carbs, and never exercises. She is thin, but has no tone, and probably couldn't do a couple of miles on a bike. If you want to get thin, don't count your calories, count your carbs. If you only eat 50g-60g of carbs per meal, you will live and you will lose weight, dramatically.

Not exactly true. IF someone adds more muscle they can still burn fat even if they're eating calories above maintenance level. The muscle increases the metabolism. But yeah, caloric deficit works.

Okay. How? Cite.

Two words: corner case.

Four more words: show me the math.

In other words, someone who gets off the couch and starts to exercise doesn't undergo a sudden, radical change in metabolism that causes them to need to eat more to lose weight.

long

Short and mean.

There you go.
Apparently, your sense of humor is either incompatible with mine or on the fritz. Just playin'. Jeeze....

I am not a big fan of eat less to lose more. Unless you plan to train like Michael Phelps, I suggest eating in moderation.

Simple rules:
Calories taken in exceeds calories burned -- gain weight.
Colories taken in falls short of calories burned -- lose weight.

Big Potato, Don't get discouraged. Even if you see no results right now and don't for another six weeks you are still on the path to healthiness. Let me describe what will happen if you keep going. You will feel stronger. Your legs won't feel wobbly when you go up the stairs anymore after commuting. You will start to look for longer routes to work and start taking them. On saturdays you will take a look at you bike and think hmm wouldn't it be fun to take a ride. Foods that you used to eat routinely will become treats that you occassionally indulge. You will be more attracted to fruits and vegetables. Oh and when you stand on the scale you will notice that the numbers on it are lower than they used to be. If you look at this as just a weight loss jag you will probably be disappointed but if you see it as a lifestyle change you will be very happy.

Hey, you started this off by snarking at me for no good reason that I could see. If I was supposed to see that as "humor", I guess that either our senses of humor are incompatible, or yours is on the fritz. It's yours, so own it.

Easily, the best response in this thread. Hey, OP, read this response, then read it again. The bolded sentence is especially relevant. Good luck. :thumb:

Good lord.

Bite me.

Yeah, 20 minutes of biking each way isnt a lot of calorie burning. However, its a great start. I think you need to focus on diet change. Its really difficult and I suggest cutting out the nasty foods a little bit at a time. You need to find what works for you:)

I weighed in at 243 before I started to try and lose weight. A few years later and I weigh around 180. I have gained a lot of muscle mass as well so ive lost a lot of fat. I still have to count calories but thats okay. The way I see it is that now know alot of about healthy diets and Ive helped a lot of other people with my knowledge.. I am also a personal trainer too.

Anyone can do it, but you have to keep yourself motivated and dont kill yourself for slipups. If you need any advice on your diet etc, feel free to throw me an email and ill help ya out (marklegear@gmail.com)

G luck!

When looking at the benefits of commuting regularly, in my experience, my body gets used to an increased distance quite easily. The result is that I get a bit of benefit (lung, leg and weight) as a result of the initial rides, but that is plateaus quite quickly. I have found that to continue to see improvement, I must continue to challenge myself. The commute is no longer adequate, and I have to add in other exercise and rides to keep seeing improvements. That's not a negative though, it just means that I'm fitter, so I require more work to challenge my body, and that I have good reason to ride more.

So, my advice is to RIDE MORE! Yaay!

Oh, and for weight loss, the only thing virtually any regular person needs to know is "calories in < calories out = weight loss". There's little point in complicating it more than that unless you're an elite athlete or working off those last 4 lbs. Just know how many calories you're taking in. A soda is often about a third refined sugar. A third. Think about pouring a third of a cup of sugar into your glass to make a cup of a drink. A serving of meat is the size of a pack of cards, not a 12oz. sirloin. Modern, western "servings" are ********. Restaurants regularly add insane amounts of butter and other fats to things where you wouldn't bother to at home.

Day two of calorie counting. Was running low on my "budget," so I went out for an 800 calorie ride, got about 1100 left for the day. Now, since it's Friday and I am on vacation for the next week, do I eat that slice of pizza, or drink those martini's**********?

1100 calories of martinis might not be a bad way to begin vacation.

The two things one has to do is not drink soda and not eat potato chips. Those suckers are just deadly for people who have regular metabolisms.

It's weird how easy it is to eat badly; it seems like there should be warnings more immanent than "my body gets fat." It's also weird how badly one can eat, if one snacks a lot or drinks sugared soda.

Weight loss & body transformation, in general requires patience & research. If you are a soda drinker you probably have some other dietary habits worth changing. Most people don't enough enough protein & eat too much carb related foods. Keep up your research & get you head around a lifestyle change rather than a quick fix diet mentality. Week by week, month by month, year by year you will improve.