saint mucus

Losing the last little bit is a *****! I understand the older you get the harder it gets but last year at 43 yrs old I lost 55 lbs in 7 months by eating clean and calisthenics, 6'1" and went from 240 lbs down to 185, now I fluctuate between 185 and 195. With clothes on you wouldn't think I had any body fat at all but that layer of belly fat is there and holding on for dear life. I'm still working on it and wont give up.

AZSkeptic

As others have mentioned previously in the thread, the cost of fat loss increases the leaner you get. This infographic does a great job of explaining some of those costs so that people can properly assess whether reaching a particular bodyfat goal is worth it.

[Infographic] Here's the cost of getting lean. Is it really worth the trade-off? | Precision Nutrition

johngwheeler

Yes, I'm not obsessing about a bit of fat - just wanted to get rid of the Michelin rings around my waist...

What I'm after now is power-to-weight ratio for going faster and getting up hills without collapsing at the top :-)

In time, I'm hoping any remaining lard will be converted to muscle, and as long as I don't increase my weight too much, then I'm calling it good.

Seattle Forrest

noglider 

@Seattle Forrest, your graph is funny. I invented the A-M diet. Eat only foods whose names start with the letters A through M. Don't eat foods whose names start with N through Z. This will create a caloric deficit, as long as you don't take liberties with renaming foods.

@Carbonfiberboy, I'm very grateful for all of your posts, as they're so informative and intelligent.

Seattle Forrest

noglider 

Heh. Like vegetarians who eat fake meat? Well, not exactly the same kind of thing.

Seattle Forrest

I eat fake meat as a vegetarian because I can go into a restaurant and order a veggie burger, or I can pick up a bag of Beyond Meat Beefy Crumbles and make tacos with them. It's not about being shaped like meat, it's about being readily available and convenient.

On that note, diet desserts are probably a very smart thing to benefit from. If somebody is going to eat a pint of iced cream, they can eat 250 kCal of Halo Top and take in 30 g of protein with it, or they can eat 1,000 kCal of Ben & Jerry's with very little nutritional benefit. People diet to lose weight, and people wind up with excess weight to lose because they like hyper-palatable foods; most people adhere better in the long term with moderation than by completely eliminating foods they love. Keeping weight off means making a long-term lifestyle change, that's more likely to stick when it's easier and more pleasant.

Seattle Forrest

wphamilton

I'm in the same boat as OP, the same numbers in fact except that I'm 57 which means I have to pay more attention to some other things. I don't know about OP, but for me no question it's too much body fat. I've lost 4 pounds in a month or so by just making a decision, as I call it. Not a diet, but deciding to hold to an altered perspective on certain specific food cravings. That simple approach hits a wall at some point though.

I believe that consistent endurance training - which for me is 3-4 hour rides - can serve to increase my appetite for carbohydrates and calories in general, and can be counter-productive for weight loss. Especially if you go "too hard" on portions of those rides, which I do. I'm thinking a moderate amount of weight training, along with replacing some of the longer rides with intervals, will do the trick for the physical part.

Carbonfiberboy 

For the past several years, I've been using a cycling plan like this: One super-hard day when I really kill myself with effort - lots of zone 4 and 5 work, very little zone 3 and no zone 1. Then the rest of the week I mostly do easy/moderate rides or workouts while I recover and get ready to do it again. I gain weight from the hard day, but then lose more than I gained during the following week - that is, if I'm trying to lose weight. I just eat less, but time feedings so I don't get hungry or not very. No alcohol except for a beer on the hard day, and no desserts. For the "on" weeks, I've been doing 11-13 hours, and the "off" weeks, 6-8 hours, every 4th week "off."

Drew Eckhardt 

Ride 7-10 minute intervals as hard as possible once a week to lift your lactate threshold and VO2max more than you would riding "medium hard".

Replace the remaining "medium hard" rides with ones below your aerobic threshold (AeT, VT1) which is a conversational pace with no lactic acid buildup, about the most you could sustain with an even power split on a 5 hour ride.

More intensity means more energy coming from glycogen with disproportionate hunger people can't ignore because they wouldn't be fat if they could.

I plateaued around 180 pounds when I made the common self-coached mistake of assuming more was better, added hard days, and replaced my remaining easy days with temp rides.

Riding endurance miles I dropped to 136-137 which is an appropriate weight for a 5'9" climber, and ate more chocolate when I shrunk further because ab vascularity was too creepy for me.

aharrod

I agree with Drew. Too many Tempo or harder rides may make you hungrier overall so that you eat more. Could potentially raise your cortisol too, which could make it harder to get rid of belly fat specifically. You may want to look at on bike nutrition. Are you drinking sports drinks and munching on bars? If you are riding less than 2 hours (unless you are doing intervals I would drink water only). If you do the longer Zone 2 rides per Drew above, you really don't need to eat or drink anything besides water for anything under 3.5 hours). If it is super hot get some Nuun hydration tabs and use those to make sure your electrolytes are ok.

Some Great info on body fat loss at: bodyrecomposition.com and precisionnutrition.com.

Best of luck!

Alex