Pasty

I started riding on October 5th and have been riding almost everyday since. I’ve been pushing myself hard and the improvement is visible almost daily. I weigh 250 pounds (114 kg) and am about 5’11” (180 cm). I haven’t lost any weight and I know this is because I’m gaining muscle at the same time I am burning fat. However, I’m curious as to how long it might take before the muscle gain slows and I actually start losing weight. I understand it’s different for everyone so maybe you guys/gals could just share about how long it took for you to see weight loss so I can maybe get some perspective. Thank you all in advance. If anyone wants to see my progress, my name on Strava is Ryan Storey. I live in Texas, USA.

Machka 

Sorry to disappoint you, but you're not gaining muscle ... or at least not enough to matter when it comes to weight.

If you want to lose weight, you need to track your calorie intake and ensure that it is less than what you are burning. I recommend using a tracking program like My Fitness Pal, or similar.

FBinNY 

Everybody is different, and various things are happening, so you won't lose weight early on, and especially can't expect miracles in 2 weeks,

Exercise is part of a healthy weight loss regimen, but not a replacement for diet management.

Also, it's hard to gain strength and build muscle, while your body is denied the necessary fuel.

So, you can get fitter or stronger, or you can knock off the pounds, but cannot do both at the same time, except very gradually over the long haul.


Keep it up, watch your diet, eating only enough to keep going, and plan on losing 5-10 pounds a month, no more, and hopefully not less.

If you need encouragement, find it in feeling better, and your pants becoming looser.

BTW, once you achieve a certain level of fitness, you'll be riding faster and longer, which means you can burn more calories. It won't male you lose weight faster, but does mean you can relax a big on the diet, which makes staying the course easier.

General Geoff

Losing weight is as simple as limiting caloric intake. I lost 80lbs in ~6 months by simply skipping eating for a day or two at a time.
Fasting doesn't work for everyone (correction, it does work for everyone but not everyone can tolerate potential hunger pains and associated side effects), but it worked great for me.

I didn't start really trying to improve my strength and endurance until I lost the weight I wanted.

adamhenry

Machka is right on. The way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. I used the site listed below to calculate my calorie requirements for maintenance and then reduced that by 10%. That gave me a starting point and then I fine tuned my calories until I was losing around a pound a week.
Calculating your Needs

Maelochs

Good luck. You will find that there are a lot of people on this site trying hard to lose weight ....

I will say this: You Might be gaining muscle to offset fat loss. Muscle is much denser than fat and a little muscle gain can offset a little visible fat loss. It depends on what you eat. You might be simply eating to replace the calories you are burning, so gaining fitness but not losing fat, or you maybe replacing fat with muscle .... no one here knows, no matter how much we pretend.

If you really want to lose weight and gain strength, you will need to totally revamp your diet, and eat very little or nothing before working out (to maximize fat metabolism (which gives you less performance but more fat-burn)) and then eat lean protein after a workout to fuel muscle growth. And the rest of the day eat super lo-cal, with a huge amount of water.

Less extreme versions of this work, they just take longer.

if you are Really serious, you might want to track how far and how fast you ride, how much you weigh mid-day or mid-morning and before bed (depends on when you work out---after a workout you will probably be light due to water loss.) Notice if your performance is really improving---are you going faster? Are you going farther?

Don't even look at the computer while riding---you can hurt yourself trying to ride to numbers when you are starting. Look later on. If you really are burning more and more calories with each passing week, you will eventually see it. It could be equally that you are tiring yourself out by riding too much and feel like you are making more effort while actually you are doing the same work or less because you body just can't provide the power.

It could also be that for the first couple weeks you really didn't work "hard," except compared to not working at all, and really didn't even get your metabolism shifted into high gear, so that while it Felt like you were going hard, you just didn't realize what your body was capable of doing---you really didn't know what "hard" was, for you.

Or ... maybe none of the above. When I said no one here knows, that includes me.

My suggestion? Be really careful about what you eat and when. Find a balance between riding hard and riding long and enjoying .... don't burn out. If you want this to work you are going to be at it for probably the rest of your life.

People tell me it takes about 45 minutes of aerobic exercise to kick your body into high fat-burning gear for about six hours, and at least 15 or 20 to do any good at all. Also, some folks find that they cannot risde 45 minutes a day hard right away .... which means that a lto of the time they are breaking down their bodies, not building them up.

I like to ride daily---that's how I do the best weight control. But I can't do it. Three to five days as a rule ... sometimes six, sometimes two ... but then I need a day to rest.

No matter how hard I work, weight loss comes down to diet. I can burn 1200 calories ... and eat two big sandwiches and a can of Mountain Dew and I am at zero, no weight loss.

One more thing ... don't let the numbers determine your actions. if your weight doesn't go down as far or as fast as you'd like, or if it comes back up now and then .... or if your mileage or speed plateaus ... whatever ... it doesn't matter. Persistence in the key. If you keep exercising and keep eating fewer calories than you burn ... you will lose weight. You can't help it.

Bmach

It is not as simple as burning more calories than you eat. You also have to understand the type of calories you are consuming.

General Geoff

Nope, doesn't matter. You could eat pure lard, but if you only eat 500 calories of lard per day, you will lose weight just sitting on the couch.

HerrKaLeun

some things to consider:
- a pound of fat is about 3,500 calories. So in one week of 500 calories deficit every day you lose 1 pound (this isn't really true, but you get the general idea)
- salt (sodium) makes your body retain more water. Water is heavy and just eating less salted food will make you lighter, but keep same amount of fat. On the other hand, eating more salt will make you heavier.
- muscles are heavy (but not unhealthy like fat). On the upside, muscles also burn calories when in "rest". With lot of muscles you burn more even when doing nothing.
- all processed foods more or less destroy or minimize actual nutrients (vitamins, fiber, potassium). The less processed you eat, the better. Eat fruits and raw vegetables, plain yogurt (I know this is slightly processed, but nothing compared to McDonalds), some milk, cheese, fish. 1,000 calories in apples are much different than 1,000 calories in soda. Turn that apple into juice (no fiber) and it will be almost as bad as soda from a point of fattening you.
- Samsung phones have a Health app that can track your food and the nutrients in them (there sure are other apps). enter the food as you eat it (not after you already ate it, because you are more likely not to eat that donut when you see how many empty calories it has)

Bmach

General, so are you saying that 600 calories from sugary foods/soda is the same as 600 calories fruits/vegetables? If it is then I’m dropping the veg/fruits and drinking a couple mt dews instead.

General Geoff

From a pure weight loss perspective, that is correct.

Now, nutritionally, your body will eventually develop deficiencies in certain vitamins and minerals if you eat nothing but soda and candy bars. That's a whole different issue.

Machka 

+1


Calories are simply a unit of measurement.

Simply looking at calories ... 600 calories of broccoli is the same as 600 calories of chocolate. But it is like the old joke:

Which is heavier? A ton of feathers or a ton of lead?

600 calories of broccoli will be about 19 cups of broccoli ... 600 calories of chocolate could be a couple small bars. Which is going to be more filling? More satisfying? Which is going to contain more nutrients?

https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2356/2

caloso

Great job! Keep riding and start taking a hard look at your diet.

Pasty

I suppose I should have included some information about my diet in the original post. Due to an incident which made me rethink everything about myself, I changed my diet overnight. Since a week before I started cycling, I've eaten maybe twice a day. I went from eating fast food almost once a day (along with other fatty foods) to eating just a piece of chicken breast that I lightly season and cook on a pan twice a day. After each ride, I usually eat a protein bar. Some days I'll just eat half a piece of chicken and then the protein bar after the ride. Liquid-wise, I went from drinking several sodas each day to water. Occasionally I'll add one of those Crystal Light packets in the bottle just to add some flavor (each packet is like 10 calories). Other than that, I admire yours and everyone else's responses and will try and make some changes to what I have been doing in order to improve myself and my performance.

General Geoff

Also absolutely true. Fruits and vegetables tend to be high in volume and fiber, and will provide much more substance than candy bars or soda per equivalent caloric intake.

Personally, I drink nothing but water as a liquid. Then I prepare a vegetable medley and a few different fruits for my baseline, so I can "spend" all my remaining calories on food that I love like pizza and chili, rounded off by a scoop of ice cream for dessert.

You can eat whatever you like and still lose weight, as long as you moderate your intake. I found that I really enjoy eating a large meal and feeling full afterward, so I've settled into eating one big meal per day. No other intake during the day except water. it's been working great for the past 5 months or so, and my weight has remained stable. I don't find myself lacking at all in energy during the day, even after a 40 mile bike ride that I start 16 hours after my last meal.

adamhenry

You have to maintain minimums for weight loss to work. If you don't get enough nutrients your body will go into starvation mode and will burn very little fat. The link I provided above explains how to set the proper amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrates for your diet. You should also think about increasing your meals. 5 small meals will be better than 2 large meals.

General Geoff

Completely untrue. Fasting works just fine. "Starvation mode" can't violate the laws of thermodynamics.

adamhenry

Completely false. Optimum weight loss is achieved if your body doesn't think it is starving and has to maintain fat reserves for survival. Intermittent fasting is a good method for weight loss if you understand it and maintain minimums. A 10-20% calorie deficit is considered to be a good target for weight loss. A starvation diet can't be maintained forever and all losses will be reversed when a normal diet is resumed. Yo-yo dieting accomplishes nothing.

General Geoff

I'm living proof that your assertion is incorrect. All I did to lose 80lbs was stop eating completely for days at a time. I resumed eating once a day and have maintained my target weight for half a year so far.


I absolutely, positively guarantee that fasting nets faster weight loss than any kind of "low calorie intake" diet. You can't get something for nothing, the human body is not a perpetual motion machine. Fat in the body is there specifically to be burned when there is no food being eaten. This whole "starvation mode" thing is utter nonsense. Starvation mode is just that: the body starts burning fat deposits when it runs out of nutrients in the digestive tract to consume.

Machka 

There is no such thing as "starvation mode" ... at least not in the way you're thinking. If there were, people who were genuinely starving would maintain their body weight, but of course, they don't.

Also the number of meals (and meal timing) doesn't matter one bit when it comes to weight loss. I like to graze throughout the day ... that works for me and I lost 50 lbs doing that. But others prefer 1 or 2 or 3 or more meals a day. Some prefer to fast a couple days each week. It doesn't matter ... it's just each person's preference, and it all comes down to calories.

mcours2006

Agreed, at least from what I've read. For people who are actually starving, i.e. for people who are habitually malnourished, it does happen. The body very reluctantly gives up its fat reserves, and eventually begins to metabolizing muscle tissue. But for most of us, a day or two isn't going to make your body think you're in starvation mode.

pvillemasher

Step 1 - Don't go to internet forums to get advice on nutrition and how to lose weight. You'll just get confusing and contradicting opinions, and quite frankly some crazy suggestions.
Step 2 - Do some research on reputable sites, and find some good books to read on the subject.

When I was out of shape and just beginning I reminded myself "You didn't get in this bad shape overnight, you're not gonna get in good shape overnight either."

Flip Flop Rider

look up "Vinnie Tortorich" and read some of his recommendations on diet (he appears frequently on the Adam Carolla podcast)

he doesn't recommend exercise at all for weight loss, but it is all based on diet and what you eat

you could continue riding and eat differently and I'm guessing you would lose weight

indyfabz

Sorry, but I fail to believe that is all you are eating in a day and that at that consumption rate you would even be able to increase muscle mass.

bruce19

I really wonder if there is a reduction in metabolism with age. I ask because when I was younger (50 yrs. ago...now 71) I read that to determine your daily caloric intake you should multiply your target weight (current target for me is 180 lbs) by 15. FWIW, this is exactly what is suggested on a site posted here. This includes a factor for (in my case) moderate activity. I used moderate activity because it sort of fits and I ride about 30 mi./day 3 days/wk. So, for me 2700 cals a day. At this moment I weigh approx 187 lbs. I count calories and can guarantee that if I eat 2700 cal/day I will gain weight.