My climbing has gotten much better due to weight loss, but it's also gotten better due to increased leg strength, higher stamina, remembering that suffering is inevitable on a climb...and believing it...etc.

In the words of Chipcom: I still suck at it, but less.

Sorry...just saw this.

Mainly it is about controlling your blood sugar - keeping it as even as possible as long as possible. Some people call eating like this controlling the Glycemic Index of the food you are eating. I don't know a ton about the specific science around it (go figure), but in practice it is not horribly difficult and does work well.

It basically a lower fat, lean protein, lower glycemic index carb menu. Mostly organic when possible.

Replace most grains with spelt where possible.

I eat tons of chicken, beans, rice. Eat 5 or 6 times a day. Oatmeal for every breakfast. Snacks are cottage cheese or no sugar added yogurt, or my favorite Hammer bar. The fats that come in during cooking are mainly ones from Olive Oil.

The stuff tastes great, I don't restrict the volume - the body started doing that on it's own. You start to feel like you are feeding a machine instead of feeding a reserve. It's not less than normal, and I don't feel like I have robbed myself of anything.

I "cheat" by eating crap when I find I have to because of availability, schedule, etc. and I just don't beat myself up over it.

That said I also now make it a point to plan meals once a week and make time for shopping and cooking. That is probably the biggest difference.

This was the big one for me. Submitting to the fact that there is no comfortable way to climb a hill is most of the psychological part of the battle. The rest, of course, are all physiological attributes. It helps mightily to have a low body fat and strong legs.

Not including my bike, my commute riding weight on top of my naked weight is like 23-26 lbs. The hill to work with a 10-12% section, I can still make it up almost the the same time most of the time and sometimes a few seconds more. However with out a PT, I do not know if I am putting more watts when commuting up that hill.

Did anyone here do a liposuction at one point, lost 10 lbs and see the difference before and after.

I have put a lot of miles this year (already 3.7K) and getting faster, now rarely going down 88 RPM on the flats or 1-2% grades and not lower than 77 when climbing but I lost only 7 lbs.

I know if I do the master cleanse fast, I can loose 10-15 lbs but I am afraid muscle would go with it too. I think my problem is that I do not have enough time for those low intensity bike rides. I think you have to ride at least 3 hours for those LSD fat burning miles. As long as I can pinch the gut, not there yet.

Climbing in my opinion will only improve if your breathing improves. Weight loss helps too to a point.

Didn't you just post this exact thing 45 minutes ago as a response to another post in the same thread.

The coolest realization I had was that at some point is actually easier to climb faster than slower. There is a tipping point for me where going any slower causes my cadence to drop and it is more tiring to keep muscling the pedals over and over again than it is to just pick it up a bit and spin the pedals around. Obviously that is due to my gearing, and if I had a lower gear I could go slower more comfortably.

Yup, that gives you an idea of just how lean a climber has to be in order to compete - WAY smaller than ........ a stick!

I can get down to the 2lbs / inch number, but I have a really difficult time staying there. I just feel hungry, and get sick way too easily. I am a climbing machine at that weight though .... for about a day! :)

... Brad

You're all closet Twinkies munchers.

I don't even try to be that lean. The flats are my business, and I need some weight there.
Plus, that means I barely have to eat. No thanks!

No! I had a thread a while ago asking everyone's riding weight. Received 2 responses!

I just ate a chocholate chip cookie, like, 10 minutes ago. :eek:

I have definitely noticed a tipping point of sorts. It also has to do with how fast the hill is climbed. Sometimes it takes way more energy to grind it slowely up a hill than it does to pick up the pace, spin faster, and get it over with.

I heard (or read) one of the tour commentators say something apt. He was talking about one of the riders and saying he was "stomping" to "keep on top of the pedals". That phrase "to keep on top of the pedals" strikes a cord with me. There is a point where you are putting out a certain amount of power to spin the pedals, and if you back off slightly, your cadence droops significantly and you start grinding and you go much slower. If you just put out just that little extra increment of power to keep the pedals turning over, you will climb much more quickly; more than proportional to the increment of power you added.

I think this is a physiological effect regarding cadence. I am pretty sure this is not related to gearing because it was happening even when I was using a triple.

I had pizza last night. :eek:

My normal cycling weight is a little under 2 lb/in. I'm 6' and weighed 142 this morning.

I'm built thin and it's very difficult for me to gain muscle. I'd be faster, at least on shorter climbs, if I had an extra 5 lbs of muscle. But that is unlikely to happen.

That brings up a point- what kind of climbs do you want to be faster on? The shorter the climb, the more important muscle mass and the ability to go anaerobic is (assuming we're racing here). Being super light is more important on longer climbs.

It is most certainly a physiological effect regarding cadence, however it IS related to gearing, as a lower gear would allow you to keep spinning to "stay on top of the pedals" at a lower effort and speed. Lower gear, in effect, allows that tipping point to be at a much slower speed. It was really apparent to me when I was climbing with a new group of riders a few weekends ago (I was not in my home area). I was much stronger than all of them, and they all had triples while I have a standard double. They were happily spinning their way up a climb but I had to ride away from them just to keep a comfortable cadence. I could have just stayed with them, grinding it out, but I was trying to take it easy, so ironically I had to ride faster.

I agree with earlier posts that it doesn't matter - lighter climbs faster preserving the same power.

That said most of the racing around Hip is crit racing. Most of the "hills" are relatively small, but can blow up packs easily. Not to speak for him, but I would imagine he'd be fine with being able to motor up them and wouldn't have to look like a stick in order to do that.

There's something to this. In general I suck at climbing, but I have lost quite a bit of weight and have been practicing what I am bad at. As a result I have been climbing better. On hills I knew on a group ride I do I would just slip into my lowest gear because that is what I always did. Spun up it - no problems.

Then one day it dawned on me that I was never going to be able to hold any of the wheels by using that gear. I just upshifted a few gears and was startig to climb at a decent rate. Cadence wasn't too low, and I wasn't killing myself either. I know if I changed my cassette to remove that bailout cog I would just end up climbing everything faster.

....but that bailout is like a warm fuzzy blanket. It keeps me warm at night.

....the power of Hip!

Now listen, this is a different thread from that because this is weight loss vs/ climbing improvement specifically.

Psimet...
I haven't seen you in person since the century I did with you guys, so obviously you're less of a man than then. Congrats on taking it to the next level with eating.

I did it right after my surgery and that's what got me down to where I am now. After that I just sort of stopped making any 'smart eating effort' and I've stabilized where I am with my riding.

So it seems obvious to me.
A serious effort to cut back and get smarter on the eating again, combined with my training should equal better at the hills.

CyLowe asked me earlier in this thread, why simply eating less isn't an option. It is....it's just a difficult one for me.

Example:
Mrs. Hip made a rare batch of her famous "Basta" as her grandma from Palermo and the family calls it....
I have a plate of pasta/sauce, two Italian sausages with it and a piece of Italian bread.

Fine.

Do I stop there?
No.
I love to eat and this is a treat.

I have a second plate of pasta, a third sausage, a second and third piece of buttered Italian bread, and a cannoli for dessert later that night.

I am Hip.
And I have an eating problem. :D

meh...I don't think I have, but looking back at the pictures of your century and I am definitely sporting the tubo....that would be tub-o not turbo - as in recycled exhaust energy.

IIRC - I was most likely 195-ish to 200 during your century. I am only about 15-20 lbs lighter now, but the composition has greatly changed......and if I rememebr correctly I was still waiting for you on every hill and at every corner....:eek::o:p

FWIW - I don't really reduce the volume that I eat...just the content and frequency with which it goes in. If you maintain your blood sugar levels you will find you have less hunger, and even then you won't even want to go for seconds for special dishes....you'll just end up enjoying the "firsts" even more.

Absolutely.

In 2001 I weighed 186 pounds. Over a few years I dropped gradually down to 170 pounds. I've been as low as 160 a few times for long rides with monstrous climbs I wanted to complete. I'm sure losing weight helped me become a faster climber. So did riding more to help keep the weight off, which made me a stronger climber.

If I resist hunger, and ride a lot, I can go below 170 pounds, for a while. If I eat as much as I want - cutting out as much as possible refined sugars and processed foods - I stay at 170 pounds. I'm a little under 6', and for my age, I'm a strong climber.

To climb back on my band wagon, it's impossible for most humans to lose weight with exercise for the long rung. Yes, it's possible to lose weight with exercise for a while, but after a while the body craves the energy it expends, and the weight returns. Just ask umd, who discovered that gaining weight made him a better rider. Just look around and probably most of us reading through BF have not been able to lose as much weight as we might wish.

And while some people are naturally lean, others are more naturally heavy. For the latter group, losing weight will only come with serious effort. The real way to lose weight is to stop eating food with refined sugar, i.e, all those complex carbohydrates we like to eat. And the way to become a stronger climber is to ride more.

Wow, back from the dead. It's funny to read back through 2 year old posts :p

I'm curious. Do people just do a search, see threads, and blindly post without looking at the age?

I don't have problems climbing. I weigh 170 with an upper body of someone that should be 160 with a lower body of a 180 lb person. I'm amazed how I blow by people on climbs. The downside is I get passed on descents.

5'11, 145LBS. I climb pretty well.

The souls of other cyclists on hills.