[Closed] Getting fit again...

I've found that getting fit again isn't nearly as much of a problem as shifting the weight, sadly. As for getting fit again? Time on the bike, basically.

Just ride your bike, on your own. I had 5 years off due to injury, put on some weight, not a load though. 15kms on my roadbike almost killed me, getting to 30km took months, getting past fifty almost a year, just take your time and ride to enjoy it.

Time on the bike. If you can't do that, maybe take up running? 30 mins running equates to a good hour or more on the bike so it's much more time efficient.

I wouldn't take up running at 120kg, shift a bit of weight first.

I'd be looking at seriously dieting (MyFitnessPal is a reasonable starting point), and slowly building up the cycling. Once you're up to 25km with a few hills start to add in a few intervals maybe. But take it easy at first, there's no point trying to hurry things and then getting injured!

I'm immune suppressed so am shielding, back in the days of normality I used to do Spin class once a week and circuits or HIIT class once a week, on top of cycling to work most days (3 miles but as it's across the forest often 5 -10 miles). Since lockdown started I've been out for rides in the forest at dawn (usually 15 - 20 miles)every other day, a bit of running (5k average) and have been doing Joe Wicks with granddaughter (via WhatsApp) every weekday and some Rebbeca Kennedy abs classes on YouTube at weekends.

Regardless of what you do or how much, just get doing something and make it a habit, get someone else involved, our granddaughter helps hugely, daughter thinks we do it for her but she motivates us too! Make a plan, mix it up a bit, make it enjoyable, don't beat your self up if you miss a bit / can't quite complete exercises/sessions. Set your goal in concrete and your plans in sand, not the other way around.

You can do it!

btw, I'm 56yo (granddaughter is 7), suffer from Ulcerative Colitis and struggle to eat sensibly.

Portion control is the best way to lose weight and if you aren't very good at counting calories try MyFitnessPal as suggested by mogrim.

When I go on a diet I cut out all of my snacks and up my cardio and I normally lose about 1 or 2 pounds per week.

As you start to lose weight you may find that the rate of weight loss slows and if so you will have to cut out more from your daily food intake.

Increase your water intake. Fill yourself up with foods that take longer to digest and therefore you will feel fuller for longer. Get used to feeling hungry. It isn't going to kill you, but it can feel uncomfortable and if you have been used to eating whenever you feel hungry for a long time your stomach may complain.

Good luck in your weightloss journey!

Similar here. 5 years of children/work/stress induced weight gain.

Dropped 27kg since Jan but still 120kg LOL

Here is how I've done it so far.

- Figure out your BMR https://www.active.com/fitness/calculators/bmr this is what you burn in cals if you just lay around all day. Remember this reduces as you get lighter so re-assess it every month or so.

- Get myfitnesspal app and track all your food and drinks. Try not to drink calories.

- Make sure whatever you eat for a day is less than (BMR + any activity)

- Be aware that strava etc and any heart rate based activity calculated calories tend to overstate calories (and.or include the ones you'd burn lying around). If in doubt get a power meter which is a much more accurate view of kj / cals.

- Accepted wisdom seems to be that 3,500 cals = 1lb or in metric 7700 cals = 1KG

- Try to aim for steady weight loss at a sustainable rate -2lb or a KG a week. Should be achievable at your weight with some discipline.

- Be aware if you up the exercise you will get hungry so eat if you do long rides to prevent munching loads afterwards and negating the benefit of the exercise.

- Hills are exponentially harder when you are chubby, I tended to stick to fairly flat routes when starting back up on the bike.

- Remember that you are aiming for -7000 cals over a week to lose that weight, doesn't have to be equal, some days you will be hungrier than others.

- Eat lots of protein. tuna, lean beef, salmon, chicken etc. Try to cut down on carbs but use myfitnesspal app to maintain a sensible macro balance. Protein fills you up longer and also helps to repair muscle if you are exercising more.

- Join the chub club (search the forum) or share your goals with friends and check in regularly - it's a motivator to stick to the plan.

- Have a day off once every few weeks. Don't go daft but have a curry and beers or something.

Hope some of this helps. Won't work for everyone but sticking to these has helped me so far!

Run. Couch to 5k, take it very slowly and gently. Loads more exertion for the time used. It’ll be hard and at times unpleasant but the weight will come off.
But make sure your diet is good too, low carb, high protein.
If you want to do weights then use the big muscle groups, so squats are good, biceps less good.

If you really must run, then Couch to 5k is pretty good at building up slowly and reducing the risk of injuries.

Riding wise, just start riding. A little bit, gentle pace, most days. Just build up gently as and when you can, but half an hour pootling most days will start to get your body back into it.

Strength type training wise, when lockdown started I began doing a simple circuit of squats, press ups, crunches and planks. Started 10 seconds work, 30 seconds rest, just a couple of circuits on alternate days. Before I got knocked off my bike last week I was up to 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest, for 4 circuits. Doesn't take long, costs nothing (using a free timer app on my phone), but had started to feel and get stronger, and shift a bit of weight alongside cycling more.

Don't expect loads of cycling to help you lose weight, you'll have a good chunk drop off at first then you'll probably plateau, cycling is actually quite an efficient sport, plus the minute you get off bike you tend to stop burning increased calories.

Best is to keep the metabolism firing, start some weight training, start with the big compound exercises, lean muscle raises your base metabolic rate and after a good sessions, metabolism will remain raised for a while after, burning more calories, plus increased power and strength helps you ride faster especially if you're a big lad (like me).

Also do some good HIIT sessions on bike, again you're getting the old metabolism fired up.

My week is 5-6 sessions.

Two weight sessions
Two turbo sessions, often one is a 70 minute Sweetspot session, and the second is 2 minutes on 2 minutes off at 100rpm cadence, for increasing number of sessions.

1 or 2 long rides outside, but remaining in Zone 2, cut out the grey miles.Even better if you can do one of them "fasted" on just black coffee.

Worked well for me, down from 108kg to 96kg so far.

Diet wise, try to have quality protein make up about 40% of calories, slow release carbs and good fats.

Turbo trainer and zwift has been a life saver for me during lockdown.

I've lost 5kgs in the 10 weeks we've been shut in without really trying, got stronger and fitter too. On the plus side if you get knackered you can just stop, you don't end up stuck somewhere.

I've dropped from 115kg to 85kg over the past 24months or so.

Time on the bike (lots of it), eliminate any sort of junk food and go vegetarian.

And by "lots of it" I mean LOTS OF IT! Ride to work, fake your commute during lockdown, ride to the shops, ride with your faster mates anyway as soon as you can make it round with them without dying. Ignore stuff like "only add 10% to your riding each week", just limit the amount of riding that's training, riding to work, shops etc can be at pootling pace, in fact it's better at pootling pace.

Crisps/chocolate/biscuits/cake just maintaining 120kg of eight takes a fair amount of calories. I know because to weigh 115kg I basically had to inhale hobnobs at my desk and kid myself that Harribo and a 2nd breakfast was necessary for commuting. It's a lot easier to just go cold turkey than to buy a bar of chocolate with the weekly shop believing that it will be your weekly shop, then eating it on evening one, and picking up crisps on your top-up shop the next day, and some doughnuts the next.

Go vegetarian. No need to become a yogurt weaving evangelist and go full on plant based (unless you want to). But it will at least force you to eat some different foods. And while not all veggie food is healthy, there's only so much deep fried battered avocado you can stomach (probably none, it sounds rank).

I swapped breakfast for meal replacement shake, it's cheap, tastes nice (TBH you'd struggle to tell it from McDonalds milkshake), filling (it's got lots of soluble fiber) and makes a decent start to the day mentally.

Lunch is soup.

Dinner is normal, just cut out the carbs. So something + salad, or something + roast veg, or chili without rice etc.

I tend to take snacks on rides (never have them before a ride or you'll talk yourself out of the ride after eating a packet of biscuits) and have something afterwards (another meal shake, or soup). Just enough to keep energy levels up.

zwift has been a bit of a revelation for me, despite not really stopping riding. I did have a year with an ebike and lost some fitness and gained some weight, partly ebike, partly too much work.

The structured training in zwift has been super interesting. Spinning the legs constantly for around an hour even at easier power was a new experience compared to riding in the real world, doing it at higher powers is tough. In just 6 weeks with zwift, my strava climbing times on the mountain bike are coming down despite being about 15lbs heavier than when I set previous PB's. Have lost a few lbs despite not eating the best too. Need to work on that.

Cheers all.

I'm trying to limit the food I'm inhaling sorry eating and am already now eating way less than I was 4 months ago.

I cant run, shin splints have put paid to that. Weight isn't helping I know so if I can shift some lard I may try in the future. Going to stick to bike for now as its less impact on the shins.

Circuits in the garden sounds like a plan too.

107kg->90kg over 6 months I used weigh****chers, I feel that paying for something (as opposed to a free app like myfitnesspal) made me take it more seriously.

I've kept at 90kg for a year now, I could go a bit lighter, but beer and but jaffa cakes. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'd also look stupid much skinnier than I am.

I do move a lot, bike to work and faux commute now, plus running and circuits through lockdown. But the change in my eating habits made the biggest difference, I now drink a lot less and eat better, I still snack too much, but I can deal with it better as I'm fitter.

+1 for couch to 5k as being a good way to get fit, I've not run properly for 14yrs because of injuries after trying too hard too quickly, currently just started wk 7, no injuries and lost 5kg.

Yeah when I said start running, I didn't mean go straight to running for 5k non stop. C25K starts you off very slowly and you shouldn't get any injuries so long as you take it easy.

You have to ride for a hell of a lot longer to get the same effort compared to just running/walking for 25 minutes.

Went out for my first proper ride in 18 months on Tuesday night with a few friends and ended up having to abandon them as I was just so done in. had only done 4 miles by this point but a bit of climbing. I was so ashamed.

Not many people can ride above their comfortable pace for very long. It just happens yours is currently lower than your riding mates', so you were working too hard from the off because you didn't want to hold them up. I think I'd be done for after a few miles if I tried to push it to keep up with the younger, fitter, faster guys who ride around here. Do some longer rides at lower intensity, on your own. Keep up the diet, and set yourself realistic targets based on your current performance. Go out more often, and don't be disheartened or ashamed, because that's bollocks, basically.

You have to ride for a hell of a lot longer to get the same effort compared to just running/walking for 25 minutes.

That swings both ways though.

I can go out for a ride to Swinley and cover 40 miles and come back knackered having burnt ~2500calories over 4h30m of riding.

I can go out and do some C25K stuff and be knackered in half an hour having burnt 200 calories.

Its fine if you stick to it and build upto running 10k every day (1h, ~600 calories). But if you only ever do C25K then unless you do something else it wont make a massive dent in the calories out Vs in equilibrium.

Sometimes the hardest thing is instilling routine...
Getting into a habit of regular exercise, pushing the envelope, but not to the point of physical exhaustion due to "overtraining."
Getting into a habit of not always reaching out for your food vices.

Over the last four years I've been on my own rollercoaster of weight and fitness gains and losses, after realising I had become very overweight and very unfit after my Xmas 2013 RTA, but even before then I had very much lost my way after injuring my lower back muscles rather badly in summer 2008. I was ~95Kg in June 2016 and got as low as ~73Kg in August 2017, but since then I've been as heavy as ~84Kg in August 2019 and as low as ~76Kg in Feb 2020.

As I've aged from 43 to 46, it's got harder to continually push my my body to its limits and I'm awful at having restraint around my vices (peanut butter, jam, nuts, raisins, chocolate raisins, cold cross buns etc.). Also feels like it's getting harder to "train" after postie delivery shifts (albeit it has been like Xmas workloads since lockdown started so that's kind of understandable) and on my first day off after consecutive shifts, like today. Ditching the frequent z4+ efforts from March until the last few weeks, due to probable COVID, hasn't helped either.

It's easier said than done, but diets are about making permanent changes to food habits, not just going close to "cold turkey" to reach a target weight. Even though I want to start losing weight again and drop from my current ~79.5Kg, I've already had two peanut butter and jam sandwiches, while doing nothing more than think about either popping out for a ride or setting my road bike up on the turbo do do my first bit of Zwifting in over two weeks (this last month's subscription has been such a waste of money).

It's mostly about your diet, start something like my fitness pal, and be honest.

There's lots of valid points about carbs and protein above, I'd forget that for now and cut out the shite, and watch your portion size.

I lost 25kgs over about a year, started eating healthier, and chucked the beer. Nearly 2 years later, it's stayed off and I'm still tee total, can't see me ever drinking again...

Moral of that is that's what worked for me, you need to change in acc8rdamce with what works for you. Faddy diets never appealed to me, there's no easy way to do it, IMO it's a sustainable lifestyle change that works best.

Once you get all that in place, the weight will come off, you wont be as ducked on your bike, fitness will come.

Best of luck.

Yep you can't outtrain a bad diet.

Myfitness-pal and getting your head around changing eating habits but not killing yourself so you lose motivation.

Running is a bugger for injuries if overweight and not used to it.

When the pools reopen, learn front crawl and do as many lengths as you can and often as you can.

In the meantime, get up early and get walking or riding before breakfast.

I lead C25K groups and unless you're like 7 foot tall I'd be wary of starting that if you're 120kg. HOWEVER powerwalking uphill is a sensible alternative so you could find a local hill and instead of running the intervals in C25K, walk uphill for them.
Will mix up nicely with the cycling.

Shame is another word for not wanting people to know you're vulnerable. How many of us did nothing worse than literally put too much on our plates when (metaphorically) we had too much on our plates? Overeating is unhealthy sure but it kills you a LOT slower than smoking, drinking too much, or undereating so don't beat yourselves up if you're carrying too much, rather focus on a healthier future.

Another vote for myfitnesspal. No need to do it religiously but stick with it for a whiLe just to educate yourself on how easy it is to eat loads of calories and how much exercise you need to do burn them off.

You'll be surprised at how low some "quite" nice things are and how high others are. As said above, it's not just about the calories but it's the best place to start

Lots of decent advise up above Op. I think Chrisdb's is the most realistic and comprehensive.

A few simple tips that work for me (probably repeated a couple of times above)

I'm terrible with sweet stuff and alcohol but if there's none in the house then I can't eat or drink them and I'm probably too lazy to go to the shops and buy them.

Your family needs to do it with you, it's a lifestyle change not a diet.

It'll take you a while to lose the weight but it also goes both ways, it took you a while to put it on. So it'll take you about 25 weeks to lose 25kg if you do it sensibly and do it sustainably.

Buy your shopping online or if you do have to go into the shop don't do it on an empty stomach.

Don't see exercise as something you have to do. Do it because it makes you feel good, do it because it'll make you faster and stronger which will enjoy increase your enjoyment of cycling

Don't snack between meals.

Cut down on bread (and I love bread!)

Cut down on alcohol (and I love beer!)

Don't weigh yourself too often and when you do weigh yourself do it first thing in the morning before eating breakfast.

Eat 3 meals a day at regular times, don't miss breakfast! It doesn't have to be loads for breakfast either but ideally you want carbs and protein so muesli or porridge with a spoon of yoghurt is ideal.

Don't beat yourself up if you have a bad day either by skipping a meal, eating too much or skipping a session on the bike. A short break every now and then is good for you but don't take more than a single day off.

Remember that you shouldn't overtrain, having a loose weekly exercise programme is really good. The British cycling ones are free and really good plus they include easier days and even days off!

Set a good role model for your family, my pal tapes a photo of his kids to his toptube for motivation.

Use MyFitnessPal and do not lie to it!

If you're feeling like you're not having a good day then come onto here for a chinwag or grumble. I'd love to know how you're getting on.

And most importantly. You can do it!

I started Keto mid Feb and I’ve lost 21KG since then, with another 10 or so to get to my completely arbitrary target weight that will see me hit a BMI of 25.
It’s not for everyone and you need to be disciplined because you can’t have cheat days, but there’s something about a diet that lets you have sausage, bacon and egg for breakfast! It’s the first diet I’ve properly stuck to and it’s borne results.

I am still watching calories though, even though the Keto disciples say you don’t need to.

I recently completed C25K but I wasn’t as heavy as you are when I started. When I was 120ish KG I couldn’t get past week three before my knees cried enough and my heart tried to escape from my chest.

I also took advantage of my reduced working hours during lockdown to get out on my bike and do 20+ miles 3-4 times a week. Funnily enough, I’ve done less exercise since the restrictions were lifted, but the weight is still coming off.

I'm a carbaholic and I always will be. It's robbed me of half my teeth, given me a belly that I will probably never lose and will shorten my life by a good few years but I could give up alcohol and even sex before giving up carbs!!!

Tunnocks teacakes

Jamaican ginger bread

Fudge iced doughnuts

Warm french baguette

Chips

Hobnobs

Crumpets

I just moderate myself these days, where's in the past I'd have happily eaten a whole packet of hobnobs in one sitting now I have 3 😭

Everything in moderation