molten

You know a 'bib' is 'tight clothing.' (sic but true) Tighter than padded shorts.

klmmicro

And yet my bibs are more comfortable than any of the shorts I have worn over the years. Go figure.

Greybeard712

I agree. Mine is a Falconi 4X (Asian) bib I bought online over a year ago for less than $40. I like the fact it doesn't cut me in the middle. I have trouble finding 3X US sizes in shirts n' shorts that aren't way overpriced ($80 and up). I'm 5'9" 220lbs. Asian sizes (ebay) only go up to 4X (2X US). I guess they don't know BIG guys ride bikes.

enigmaT120

What trail race? I love trail runs. The McDonald Forest 15K just north of Corvallis is about the only race to do any more. It's 20 miles from my house, and I wish to ride my bike to it (and home afterwards!) and run it.

Machka 

Down 17 kg.

Almost back to randonneuring weight.



If you're interested, you can read about the process here:
https://www.bikeforums.net/training-n...s-club-83.html

Roody

I don't know if it's my meds or what, but weight loss is going very slowly for me right now. I've been keeping track of intake on myfitnesspal.com and average well under 1500 calories per day. (For a guy my size, that's not a whole lot.) I'm also walking one to two hours a day. But I'm only losing a pound or two a month. But at least I'm not going the opposite direction!

Machka 

I have lost 42 lb (19 kg) in the past 6 months. I am getting closer to my Randonneuring weight!!

Roody

Congratulations, Machka!

I too have lost more than 40 pounds since March 1.

More important, my A1C (diabetes control test) has gone from 7.9% to 6.4%, and is probably even lower now since I have been walking one to two hours every day. A nutritionist told me that the body starts to burn off blood glucose after about 30 minutes of moderate exercise, so it's good to aim for at least 40 minutes a day if you want to lower your sugar. That fits in well with a carfree/carlight lifestyle.

wolfchild

A lot of people have had success with lower carb diets and also by eliminating most of the sugar from their diets.. Have you tried decreasing your carbs/sugar intake and increasing your protein and healthy fats while keeping your daily calories the same ??

wolfchild

How is your strength and energy levels after dropping so much weight ??

Machka 

Much better!!

Roody

Yes, being a diabetic, I am very aware of carbs and sugars. It doesn't seem to make much difference to weight loss in my case. I lose about the same on either a low carb or low fat diet. I try to stay around 150 grams of carbs a day, but am usually a few grams higher than that. My only added refined sugar is one tbsp of brown sugar on my oatmeal most mornings. And a piece of cake on family holidays.

Roody

One thing I like about this thread is that it shows how health fits right in with a carfree/carlight lifestyle--as does simplicity, frugality, social responsibility, and above all, FUN!

These are all things that contribute to a good life, IMO. Carfree/carlight living has made my life so much better on many levels, and I'm thankful to have discovered it early in life.

Walter S

I cook a handful of dried cherries in my oatmeal. And then eat it with a banana. That's naturally sweet enough for my taste. Real sugar on that would be over kill for me at least.

Roody

Mmmm!!! Yes, that's what I did before I became a diabetic. But now I have to consider that these fruits have way more carbs and sugar (fructose) than my spoonful of brown sugar. (Yes, way more nutrients and flavor also, but adding them to a breakfast that's already high in carbs from the oatmeal would not be a good idea for some diabetics.)

I do add a spoon of peanut butter to my oatmeal quite often. And put on 1 cup of skim milk. According to myfitnesspal.com, that all adds up to 370 calories, 55 grams of total carbs, and 26 grams of sugar. Nutritionally, a couple eggs would be a good addition, but that's a bit much for me early in the morning.

timtak

I recommend bucket fulls of vegetables. Our ancestors ate vegetables. Our bodies are attuned to eating vegetables. If you eat loads of vegetable you feel full and have less desire to eat carbs or protein. Fruit is good too. Carbs and protein taste nice because they were scarce in our past but now that we can choose what to eat we need to ignore our desires. Veg. Fruit. Veg. yeah.

Roody

I agree. I used to eat my salads in a teacup and I ate my cereal in a mixing bowl. Now it's the other way around. I'm now down a little more than 50 pounds since March 1.

BTW, per 100 calories, Romaine lettuce has more protein than steak! (Of course, it's pretty difficult to eat enough lettuce to get that protein!)

timtak

> 50 pounds since March 1.

That is 7lbs a month! I need to eat more lettuce.

100 calories of romaine lettuce would be about 10 cups. I used to love romaine lettuce as a kid but they don't have it much in Japan.
Photos of 100-Calorie Servings of Vegetables | POPSUGAR Fitness
I'd have to eat a whole round lettuce instead
One whole lettuce | 20 Ways to Eat or Ditch 100 Calories | POPSUGAR Fitness Australia

Machka 

I'm down 43 lbs now, since mid-Feb ... with very little lettuce involved. I've had some salads, usually when I go out for dinner, but they aren't a main part of my diet.

Other veggies, however, are. I eat a lot of steamed veggies. Here in Australia we can get "steamfresh" veggies ... bags of frozen veggies separated into individual packets which you can pop into the microwave for a couple minutes. Add that to brown rice, with maybe a bit of chicken, and that's lunch. Yummy!!

And then more veggies for dinner.

timtak

That sounds like a good idea. I will suggest it to my wife who does the grocery shopping. I am not sure how much frozen vegetables are here (in Japan).

My vegetable intake has become quite a grind for my wife so often I have taken to making them. And since I don't buy the groceries I have been inclined to rely on four: onion, carrots, cabbage and giant raddish (daikon, a common Japanese root vegetable).

Vegetables are the Answer by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr

But it takes time and produces bad onion farts unless I cook the onions for a LONG time. So, frozen sounds like a good idea.

I am also thinking of getting one of these to cut down on cutting time.
https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DFP-...isinart+14+cup

Machka 

This is my favourite brand of these veggies: https://www.heinz.com.au/en/Our-Products/Vegetables

And my favourite one:

https://www.heinz.com.au/en/Our-Produ...Sugarsnap-Peas




Bird's Eye does them too: SteamFresh

I get the value pack when it is on sale:
Carrot, Broccoli & Corn Mix 750g

Roody

Very interesting website, thanks for sharing.

With a really large salad, I enjoy it, but sometimes I just get so bored or tired of eating somewhere in the middle of that mixing bowl!

Roody

I use frozen vegetables occasionally, but I wouldn't give up on the fresh ones. They taste so muchh better, especially if you buy them in a good produce store/department with high turnover, or at the farmers market.

My favorite go-to vegetable dish, year in and year out, is something I call Cabbage Hash. It looks a lot like that photo before cooking.

I finely chop and saute in olive oil:

• 2 cups of cabbage,
• 1 carrot,
• 1 small onion,
• 1/2 bell pepper, and
• 1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced

I often season with:
1 tsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. sriracha sauce

Alternatively, I replace those seasonings with 1 small tomato, chopped and 1. jalapeno, finely chopped. Or for a French twist, I replace with 1 Tbsp. low salt chicken broth, 1 extra clove garlic, and a sprig of thyme.

According to myfitnesspal.com, this recipe has 197 calories per serving, 27 grams carbs, 7 grams fiber, and only 116 mg sodium. Sometime I'm going to try it with the daikon.

timtak

Thank you both. That cabbage hash does sound similar and I will get some frozen for when I don't have time to chop.

For my sins I also often have a slice and a half of brown bread. We have taken to cutting our loaves down the centre and treating each half slice as a slice. I think I used to have three slices in the morning in the past. Now three half slices works.

I eat so much veg in the morning that I don't really need to eat lunch.

Ledikwe's research on small portions (of carbs) and lots of low energy density foods is persuasive
https://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar...IVw6CUCh2-IgSk

The coprolite (fossilized faeces) evidence
https://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar...0%2C5&as_vis=1
from e.g.
Callen E. O., Cameron T. W. M. (1960) Prehistoric Diet Revealed in Coprolites

"It seems fairly clear that the diet of these early American inhabitants consisted mainly of beans, cucurbits (gourds), peppers, various roots, mussels and other sea organisms. Fish apparently did not form the large part of the diet that one might conclude from Budd's remarks on fishing. Clams, snails, sea urchins, and crabs, as well as sundry fruits in season, seem to have been more in the nature of delicacies than staple foods. Traces of meat have been found in only a few coprolites - probably also a delicacy."

Bryant (1976) Prehistoric Diet in South-West Texas: The Coprolite Evidence


"Coprolites have even been used as a means for determining the ancient human diet; for example Gallen (1968) showed that the diet of the inhabitants of Tamaulipas, Mexico, from 7000BC to AD 1700 was largely a vegetable one but also included mice, snakes, lizards, grasshoppers and perhaps other insects. and that (1965, in Hantshcel et al., 1968, p. 30) the deit of ancient inhabitants of Peru (2500 to 1200 BC) was entirely vegetarian. " (William Antony, and S. Sargeant, 1975)

Reinhard, K. J., Johnson, K. L., LeRoy-Toren, S., Wieseman, K., Teixeira-Santos, I., & Vieira, M. (2012). Understanding the Pathoecological Relationship between Ancient Diet and Modern Diabetes through Coprolite Analysis. Current Anthropology, 53(4), 506-512.
Cave coprolite (fossilized ****) analysis highlights the nutritional nature of ancient foods. The analysis demonstrates the following points. First, prehistoric foods consistently had low Glycemic Index (the extent to which it will increase blood sugar level, where 100 = pure Glucose and white rice bread and bagels are in the 90's) Second, prehistoric diet was remarkably high in fiber. Third, there was a high reliance on hypoglycemic-effect foods. Fourth, insulin-rich foods (e.g. Green tea, blueberries, nuts, whole grains, legumes) were a consistent part of diet. This fourth aspect of prehistoric diet has already been established in the literature (Leach, Gibson, and Van Loo 2010; Leach and Sobilik 2010).

[Reinhard said that he could not eat the fibre required to match antient diets since it would require he eat low calorie high fibre foods all day. But it is possible that our ancestors used to eat all day. ]

This research suggests our ancestors eating any fruit and vegetables that they can get their hands on including cacti and flowers, eating small meat very rarely, and supplementing with shellfish, probably the only animals they could catch, other than by scavenging faster predator kills.

Non human primates also eat loads of low calorie content vegetable matter and that is what we should do is also the message from primate researchers
https://nature.berkeley.edu/miltonlab...backbasics.pdf

So while I like burgers (meat and bread) as a sort of happy drug, for sustenance veg it is. There is one problem for me. It is difficult to get down long and low on my bike after ingesting a large bowl of cooked vegetables. I try to cycle before breakfast, after one cup of tea or coffee. This makes me hungry and the vegetables that I eat at breakfast all the more delicious.

Ekdog

Great news! How did you manage to do it, and how did you become so portly in the first place? Your reliance on motorized transport? Your penchant for fast food? I've found that a car-free and fast food-free lifestyle keep me slim and trim.