TomD77

I January 2010 I was 62 years old and weighed 305 pounds. Virtually all of my excess weight had appeared in the previous 7-8 years, must have reached some sort of tipping point.

Disgusted with myself, in February 2010 I started a severe calorie restricted diet and had lost 50 pounds by May, at which point I started biking. The diet then moderated some but was still quite restrained by my previous standards + I was doing a consistent 125+ miles a week by fall. By December I was at 200. I maintained fairly well with a moderate weight gain through a good portion of 2011 as my dietary habits crept upward. Plus I was drinking beer again, only around 1/3rd to 1/2 of my previous intake but I didn't drink at all in 2010.

I was hoping that my continued 100+ miles a week on my bike would be sufficient to maintain against my almost normalized diet and reduced beer habit. Nope... By late this spring the weight gain was becoming hard to ignore, but I managed it anyway. I was terrified to face a scale. There come a point at which reality intrudes and the inability to fit into any of my clothes forced me on a scale where, to my horror, I found I had gained 50 pounds back.

I just started back on the severe calorie restricted diet because, literally, I would prefer to die rather than to return to my previous condition. When I get back down I will desperately be searching for some point at which I can maintain weight but not be so restrictive that I can't do it indefinitely. Though it is not my solution in and of itself, biking will continue to be a part of it because it helps and I enjoy it.

PS: I've found that my body doesn't like putting in 25-30 mile rides while limited to 1200-1400 calories a day. Maybe that's a temporary thing because I know I did some at least equivalent rides, including a metric, later in 2010. But I weighed less then.

pdlamb

You're quite correct that it's very difficult to eat without restraint and maintain, or even lose, weight. (Although loaded touring for 8-12 hours a day might work, that's a bit over your peak mileage.)

I'd be careful about the "severe" part of your restricted diet. IIRC, most studies and recognized experts have concluded that a loss of 1-2 pounds leads to a sustained weight loss, while losing faster than that often leads to burnout and yo-yo dieting. You might want to increase your diet to something you can sustain for the rest of your life 9maybe 1,800 +/- 200 cal/day). That would likely also help with the longer rides you've been trying.

rumrunn6

you have to eat to perform. eat smart, drop the beer. 1800 calories of beer isn't the same as 1800 calories of tuna. try to increase other areas of muscle mass by doing some weight training for your upper body. the muscle mass burns the fat 24/7.

lhbernhardt

I have this theory that I haven't been able to corroborate, but I think it might make a nice research project for some grad student. My theory is that cycling, because of its caloric demands, can be initially effective in weight loss, but that after a certain point, the body adapts and becomes extremely efficient at cycling, and therefore does not burn as many calories for the same duration of effort. The danger here is that for a fit rider just starting out, the additional caloric expenditure required by cycling results in an increased appetite. The rider finds he can eat a lot more without getting fat, but as time progresses and his body becomes more efficient, he maintains this expectation, eventually becoming a fat rider, but still really fast and efficient! Regard, Exhibit A, all those chunky guys in recreational cycling clubs who can really motor! ("Yeah, look at that fat dude, I'll smoke him. Wait, oh crap he's dropping me on this climb!")

Perhaps cross-training might help here? And it could be bike-oriented cross training, like riding a mountain bike (or cyclo-cross to make it literally cross training) off-road instead of the road bike on pavement. Or going cross-country skiing in the winter. Anythng that shocks the body and forces it to expend additional energy doing something it's not efficient at.

And I'd also agree with the weight training; muscles continue to burn calories after the session is over. And "weight training" could be as simple as going up a long hill in too big a gear. Like riding a fixed gear, that would burn some calories!

Luis

mapeiboy

It is true you do not need to do any exercise to lose weight . All you need to do is to count the total amount of calories you need each day to lose those lbs -- ie your weight (305 lbs) * 15 = 4575 calories you need to maintain the same weight . You want to lose weight , eat less than 4575 calories /day . Its really not that hard to eat healthy these days . No junk food , beer , red meat . A lot of vegetable , fruit , fish , grains .

Mort Canard

This is my experience. I combine my cycling with the weight room. The more weight training for upper body and core strength training I do, the more fuel my body needs. Over-training with too little food can lead to the body cannibalizing muscle tissue and muscle tissue is what burns fat. The body needs fuel before significant workouts and it needs protein and carbs for efficient recovery after.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
Michael Pollan

[h=1][/h]

TomD77

What little pride I have left makes me say that 305 was my maximum, almost 3 years ago. I weigh *only* 245 right now. But I get your point.

Kurt Erlenbach

Allow me to recommend a truly superb book: The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness by Timothy Caulfield. Prof. Caulfield is a professor at a Canadian college, and the point of the book is to disabuse the reader of all the hype, misinformation, and marketing that goes along with the current thinking about diet, exercise, medicine, and health care. The bottom line on weight loss: Diet is the only thing that works, and the only way to lose weight and keep it off is by eating fewer calories. There is no other magic. Exercise is great for many reasons, but no ordinary person can exercise enough to lose weight without also restricting calorie intake. From my experience, I've found that I can't lose weight with exercise, but I will gain weight if I slack off my cycling. Diet is the only way to lose weight and keep it off.

qcpmsame 

Tom,
All I can offer advice wise is just what the others have already said. I modified my diet to eat smaller portions, get rid of most fats and take in the helpful fats in fish, for example, all alcohol, only the salt naturally in something none added or no/low salt alternatives (read the labels on everything) and increased my fruits, vegetables and water, all for the renal failure. The weight loss has been a consistent 1-3 lbs a week, steadily. I ride for the exercise and the enjoyment. I would be careful about severe restriction diets even if they let you loose weight fast, you can and will go back up without any sustained discipline in your eating habits (think about your USMC training and the self sufficiency you learned) or yo-yo weight gain and loss, which is unsafe and unhealthy.

If you want a riding partner sometimes just shoot me a P.M. and we will set something up near your place. I'm in the phone book if you want to talk, anytime.

Semper Fi,
Bill

jim p

I know a guy that rode from Florida to California and he averaged riding 80 miles a day. Total weight loss was zero.

B. Carfree

There was a long period in my life when my body fat ranged from 6% to 9%, and that was on a 185-190 pound body. Not only did I never diet, I often sought out the most calorie intensive foods I could find just so I wouldn't have to spend all my time eating. My lifestyle was work, eat, bathe and cycle/exercise, not necessarily in that order. (Fortunately, my wife shared my passion for cycling.) Five hundred mile weeks were common; twenty-five thousand mile years weren't unusual. Thus, from my personal experience, I would say that one can indeed remain trim without any willful diet restrictions, but that a mere 100-150 miles per week of flatland riding isn't enough.

Last year, someone took a look at those nurses that have been keeping journals for decades on everything they do. It turns out, their journal data supports the notion that, in order to not gain weight, a person (or at least a journal-keeping nurse), needs at least one hour of intensive exercise per day. That works out to about the mileage the OP was doing. Considering the substantial difference in body mass as well as the likelihood that the nurses were generally more careful about caloric intake than the OP, perhaps all the OP needs to do is double his mileage. If nothing else, if he rides at high intensity he won't be able to eat much before, during or shortly after his rides. That might create a five hour window of zero calories each day. Assuming he sleeps eight hours and does a few other things with his time, he may find that he can eat whatever he wants in the limited time available to eat.

Rowan

My take is that unrestrained eating and unrestrained cycling won't work in weight loss.

There is increasing evidence from other posters in various BFs forums that keeping a watch on a lower heart rate while riding is essential, matched with lower calorie intake, to achieve weight loss. It's called the fat-burn zone.

The trouble is, as weight is lost, people do, as Luis pointed out, become more efficient. They become faster, and the faster they become, the faster they want to go. But they also ride in small time intervals -- such as two hours or less. That's the period when their liver is providing their energy, not their adipose tissue, at that level of moderate to high intensity. It's also why those big guys who can smoke others on hills will stay big -- they ride at a high intensity all the time.

Lower the intensity and heart rate, and the body will take energy from the fat stores and not so much the liver. It's a technique that many older, experienced riders have used to get rid of winter weight gain in pre-season, long rides. In other circles, it's called LSD -- long steady distance.

So my advice is to get a HR monitor, work out there your fat-burn zone is, and ride according to it.

gregf83 

No need for a study there are plenty out there. Riders don't become more efficient with increasing fitness. They get faster for the same level of effort but no more efficient.

There are lots of fat cyclists because they like to eat and there isn't a very big penalty for being fat on the bike if you aren't racing or riding with fast groups. There aren't many fat Cat 3+ racers.

MinnMan

well, here's my $0.02:

1. It's a myth that being a casual cyclist means you can "eat anything" and not gain weight. If I maintain 150 miles/week or so, I definitely have to watch what I eat to maintain my weight. But if I go up to 250 miles/week, I lose weight for sure. Sure, I eat more at 250 miles/week than at 150/week, but not so much- the extra burn wins.

2. People around me think I'm thin because I cycle. That's only partly true. Like a lot of you, I lost a lot of weight when I first started, but now the key is avoiding highly caloric foods.

3. If you ride a lot and eat 3 large healthy meals (almost none of the nasty stuff- you know, fried things, rich deserts, etc.), you'll do fine so long as you avoid high caloric snacking. You can eat as much fruit as you like, avoid liquid calories (go for water, diet soda, unsweetened tea, etc.: note: fruit is good, fruit juice is bad - each glass of orange juice is maybe 6 oranges). For most of us, our downfall is eating in the evening.

bruce19

This had always been my basic program to lose weight too. Fifteen (15) calories per pound of desired weight. But in recent years (Probably since I turned 50...now 16 yrs ago) I find that 15 cals. will have me gaining weight. Don't know the science behind it but it does work that way for me. I try to stay around 2,000 cals/day and am shooting for 178 lbs. As of today I'm 185 lbs and losing slightly.

capejohn

I rode 60 miles daily for a week on tour this summer and gained two pounds.

Read your labels and limit yourself to 15 grams of sugar and 120 grams of carbs daily. Try it for a week and then judge the results.

I don't eat anything with more than 5 grams of sugar in a serving size. There are lots of sugar free and no sugar added products on the market now. Sugar and carbohydrates are converted into insulin and are stored as fat. The less sugar and carbs, the less fat.

Good luck.

Rowan

You will find insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. It is not created by the conversion of carbohydrates.

MinnMan

Reading labels is a good idea, but as already emphasized on this board, the key parameter is calories consumed versus calories burned. When the former is greater than the latter, you gain weight - period. I know many of you are hung up on counting carbs, etc. and if it works for you, fine. But counting carbs and ignoring calories consumed, say, as fat, will not lead to improved weight management.

DaveWC

I agree with much of this, but I would avoid all diet sodas or anything with fake sugar. Fruit is great too but some is very high calorie and regardless of the healthiness of fruit, it's easy to eat a lot of calories without realizing it. The risk of fruit juice isn't that you get six oranges, it's all of the added unwanted sugar.

bobthib

I got on a Low Carb High Fat diet and coupled with my cycling the lbs have melted off. Better yet, I got off of statins, BP meds, and when you are in Ketosis you don't get hungry, and as long as you are eating enough fat you don't need to fuel when you ride.

Check out LCHF diets. My wife has lost 15 lbs on it by limiting herself to 50 carbs or less a day and I've lost 15 lbs too.

I'm now on maintenance at about 100 carbs a day.

GeorgeBMac

OK: He's MY method:

One mile = 30 calories burned
One Cookie = 90 calories consumed

So, when I think about putting that cookie in my mouth, I ask myself: Do you REALLy want to add another 3 miles onto tomorrow's ride?
.. I USUALLY put the cookie down.

Phil85207

I feel your pain!! I have been on a diet since high school. You have a lot of good advice here. Good luck and I am rooting for you.

FormerFF

Earlier this year, while getting ready for my triathlon, I was running three days a week. I had no trouble maintaining my weight. Once I added cycling and swimming, weight started coming off whether I wanted it to or not. As the event got close, I improved my diet by avoiding white flour and by cutting out sweet drinks. My weight loss increased. My experience is that for exercise to get you to lose weight, five or six days a week of varied exercise is needed, and it really helps to get the liquid calories out of your diet. As Bob Harper instructs his charges on the Biggest Loser, "Don't drink your calories".

Doohickie

Yep, I can sympathize. Even worse, the group I ride with orients their rides around drinking and eating. I've started South Beach Diet and it's working, but when I ride there are times when I totally lose energy. I'm learning to moderate my pace to account for that, and if I don't push too hard I've found I can get my legs back under me. Just in case I go to far, I carry Honey Stingers with me. So far I haven't had to use them.

Bikey Mikey

Just watch the portions and eat a balanced diet. Eat your veggies and fruits and don't overdo on any food group. Of course, exercise. I don't do any special, fad, or silly diets--no Atkins, no South Beach, NO LCHF, no grapefruit, etc. I do have an advantage over some or many in that one of my diabetic meds slows gastric emptying so I feel full sooner and longer. I actually have to be sure I eat enough. Portion control, limiting snacking, balanced diet, and exercise are all you need. If you do feel hungry between meals, eat an apple--has fiber, is low in calories and helps you feel fuller than many other snacks. Chewing sugarless gum between meals is also a good way to keep from snacking.