Haven’t read all of this, but posting height and weight is quite meaningless. Someone could weigh 14 stone at 6 foot and be under weight, someone else could weigh 13 stone at the same height and be fat.

Get a set of these body fat calipers , measure the same way each week in the morning after you’ve re-hydrated (2/3 glasses of water) and after urinating. Follow same routine each week – eg weigh 30 mins after glasses of water to ensure you are hydrated.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accu-Measure-Fitness-Personal-Tester/dp/B000G7YW74

Also take a photo front and back, and measure – particularly your waist and hips.

You can tell from the pics/body fat charts if you are over weight. Anything over 15% body fat is going to make biking hard.

Use something like training peaks to measure your calorie intake.

If your’e not losing weight, increase your exercise/reduce your calorie intake gradually and you will get to a point where you will start to lose weight.

Good luck.

🙂

You can tell from the pics/body fat charts if you are over weight. Anything over 15% body fat is going to make biking hard.

My scales say 23%. That’s bad then?

I think 23% is slightly above average

Fit(ish) recreation cyclists probably in the region of 15-20%

14% and below is starting into athlete turf, and the plain old skinny

🙁

Those bathroom scales are notoriously bad at getting Body Fat measurements correct – so don’t be too sad. Mine have an “Athlete” setting to compensate. I reckon I’ve moved from around 22% to around 16% this year.

For a more accurate test.

Stand in front of a mirror, lift up your shirt and do the truffle shuffle 💡

Gauge your fat levels by how many simultaneous ripples you can achieve.

Did I mention I’ve a 36″ waist?

I’m a 32″ waist and size small in everything and I still have belly fat/spare tyre and small moobs. It’s so frustrating getting rid of this last bit. The keto is working a bit, just slowly. Not sure whether to switch to the iDiet which would possibly give me more energy to ride harder/lift heavier. But then wouldn’t be in ketosis due to the amount of sugar in the fruit..

Haven’t read all of this, but posting height and weight is quite meaningless. Someone could weigh 14 stone at 6 foot and be under weight, someone else could weigh 13 stone at the same height and be fat.

Back to what I said on page 1 find a better measure. I have been the same height all my adult life but my weight has varied by about 15kg. When I was lean and scrawny climbing all the time I was about 70kg and thought I was as fit as I could be, few years down the line with lots of biking I’m up over 80 and still as fit as I could be having spent 7 months not working and riding my bike every other day.

The missus paid up for one of those online diet/motivation/exercise plans. I ended up doing it too in part. The food was limited to 1200 calories for women and 1500 for men, coupled with lots of exercise. The food was balanced nothing completely excluded. It worked. The most important part was actually measuring stuff. It’s too easy to guess what a portion is, only to find you have eaten heaps more than you needed to. The other good point was all the food was fresh and easy to make with nothing taking more than 30mins to prepare. Kicking out the normal excuse of I don’t have time.

I looked after my parents place for 2 weeks and it was full of Ice cream, biccies, cheese, wine, all the good stuff. I promptly went a bit too relaxed and ate loads of stuff that I never usually can afford or really buy, cos it WAS THERE! that, and the comfy leather sofa, blazing fire and on-demand sky telly. . Put on a few pounds of gen-eew-iine blubber, because I changed my lifestyle for a bit.

If you live my 2 week excessive type lifestyle a lot, then you’ll get very fat! That’s it. People have to be really honest with themselves about what they are sticking in their gob. I reckon I was downing 4000 Kcals+ a day and feeling quite cosy and happy about that. Far too easy to make too much palatable energy available to yourself and not realise it.

Spin your ass off 100rpm sub 150bpm 100km a week x 2 minimum and eat half what you normally do. Go to bed hungry and ride without any breakfast. If you’re serious MTFU.

I stride round looking for things, people, anything to eat.
😆

If you are a stone or more overweight, the weight comes off more quickly and easily than if you only need to lose a few pounds.
Yes, well you see, B/F is your body’s survival insurance policy, because famine could be ‘around the corner‘ so best keep something in reserve. (remember, we are stone agers living in the space age).
That reserve is body fat and the less you have, the more difficult your body makes it to lose any more.

Eating less carbs doesn’t necessarily mean eating fewer calories now does it?
Ha !, Excellent. The Troll, properly pwned.
😀

Those bathroom scales are notoriously bad at getting Body Fat measurements correct – so don’t be too sad.
Aye, I have scales that offer to measure all types of stuff. I just stick with body weight.

But then wouldn’t be in ketosis due to the amount of sugar in the fruit..
iDave diet cuts out fruit cept for your day off when a bit of fruit shouldn’t damage any attempt to reduce B/F.

Spin your ass off 100rpm sub 150bpm 100km a week x 2 minimum and eat half what you normally do. Go to bed hungry and ride without any breakfast. If you’re serious MTFU.
Ooo. Thats tough.
😉

Ah it was the standard paleo diet I got the idiet confused with. Out of interest have you tried a standard keto (or cyclical keto) diet, and if so did you find the iDiet better for losing fat?

Again it still seems that you won’t be in ketosis with the carbs from the beans, chickpeas etc but then does that matter if it provides you with the energy to work harder?

I’m having ice cream with cookies crumbled in it for breakfast. That’s why I’m fat.

Ah it was the standard paleo diet I got the idiet confused with. Out of interest have you tried a standard keto (or cyclical keto) diet, and if so did you find the iDiet better for losing fat?

I haven’t tried the Keto stuff, if you have a link to a 101 style page on it, I’d be interested to read it.
The iDave diet worked very well for me. I’m not predisposed to calorie counting, so iDave diet suited me. I wasn’t massively heavy in the first place, but just wanted to shed some lard. It worked.
I’m now on a kinda loose hybrid of a leangains / iDave diet / paleo themed style of diet. I exercise mostly on the bike and move weights occasionally. Its all worked out to be a change that I can happily keep going. Some weeks I slack off on the exercise, others I’m diligent. But all the while, I’m happy about what I’m doing and eating and I’m leaner now.

Again it still seems that you won’t be in ketosis with the carbs from the beans, chickpeas etc but then does that matter if it provides you with the energy to work harder?

That’s a loaded question. As I know very little about keto diets, I can’t speculate on whether its a good thing to be in a state of ketosis, most of the time (if that’s how that diet works). I feel some carbs in the diet is a good thing if for no other reason that it should prevent your body from seeing and using protein as an energy / carbohydrate source via gluconeogenesis.
As for working harder, are you referring to preparation to compete ?.
If so, then imo, thats a whole new ball of string. Preparing for competition, is going require a structured and focused approach to diet and exercise, imo.
🙂

Here’s a link to the basics of a keto diet – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aiHSPoto_YqsNTDvL-g60nytMnyH-CJcCbiAx1IEUYM/edit

I may just stick with it til I get back from holiday then go over to the idiet to see how that works out. I don’t think I can get rid of cheese or cream though, they’re too good!

Like you I’m not particularly heavy or big any more but I just have the last bits of fat I want to get rid of (as I mentioned in the thread earlier, I’m “skinny fat” as it seems to be known).

As for working harder I didn’t mean prep to compete or anything, just interested as to whether the extra few carbs would benefit my normal rides/runs and stronglifts 5×5 sessions and thus help burn more than just sitting in ketosis and not always feeling like I can put 100% into the exercise..

MTFUing and working harder on less food can be very counter productive. If you over do it your performance will collapse.

Tom – the iDiet bans cheese, but if you look at the only internet published study on insulin index, cheese comes in very low. So to me, that means you can eat it in moderation. Moderation, because it’s high in calories generally.

It certainly helps enormously with satiety on the iDiet in my experience.

I’ve not read all 6 pages so this may have been covered previously but to lose that last bit of fat I’ve found doing 3x weight sessions per week works really well to tone and build some muscle.

Keep it relatively light with the weights and high reps, keep the form good and aim for big compound exercises like squats, pull-ups, dead lifts and chest press. I see so many people fail by going into the gym more often than me who stand chatting with a mate and seeing who can lift the most on the bicep machine with awful technique… Might even be worth getting a personal trainer for the first few sessions to put you on the right lines, there is an excellent workout named Tentigers (look it up).

It will take time so try not to lose patience but as noted on here, once you have a good base its much easier to maintain as you are buring more calories at rest and have that feel good factor about working out.

Its often not easy to fit in these kind of work-outs into your dailly routine but if you want to make it work you can, whether that be going at 5.30am before work (I do this quite a lot) or at lunch time or the twilight shift like 10pm at night.

To echo the comments on here, reduce calories and work hard and the results will show.

Ha !, Excellent. The Troll, properly pwned.

I’ll bet that a good number of folk cut alcohol , fizzy drinks and the shit snacks out of their diets when they start to think about losing weight and whether you call that calorie counting or paleo or clean eating, that’s a reduction in intake of calories.

I’m going to try the Gwyneth Paltrow diet next…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/16/gwyneth-paltrow-laughable-diet-genius

No coffee, no alcohol, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, no shellfish, no deep water fish, no wheat, no meat, no soy, nothing processed at all. 😕

that’s a reduction in intake of calories.
Nick. For you its about the calories. Thats fine if thats how you keep in shape. No one here is going to tell you that you’re wrong, because you’ve demonstrated to yourself that it works for you.
Peace.
🙂

As for Dairy. I usually avoid any of it now. I’m currently reading “The Paleo Answer” by Prof Loren Cordain. The chapters about milk and vegetarianism would make the keyboards of some of the folk here, melt.
I don’t really miss cheese anymore and thats from someone who use to really enjoy it. As for any satiety benefits, personally, I’d rather eat a some meat or fish.

EDIT:
Tom, thanks for the link, I’ll give it a look.
🙂

No coffee, no alcohol, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, no shellfish, no deep water fish, no wheat, no meat, no soy, nothing processed at all.
😯

The list of what’s in must be very short.

Meat is pretty expensive, solo. I’ve found a breakfast of scrambled eggs is a bit so-so, but put cheese on top and it’s delicious and keeps me going all day.

Meat is pretty expensive, solo.
And not just in monetary terms.

I see that some cheddar is around £1 per 100g, I have a tin of mackerel in my desk, 95p for 90g, drained.
Each to their own 😀

Just out of interest, how would you characterize your current level of B/F ? is it where you want/need it to be or have you some work to do ?

My Asda usually has one of the beautiful relatively local small producer mature cheddars on special offer, I will pay £3/lb or so. Good value for money imo.

I’m still trying to lose kgs, of course – because I’m not consistent with what I do. Partly because of work, partly because of family and lifestyle issues, and partly down to me and my state of mind.

That Paltrow diet looks like loads of Joy How the hours must fly by at the Chris and Gywneth house of fun.

Thanks Solo, does that mean you and Molly aren’t going to dismiss my contributions with accusations of condescension and trolling because we disagree? Would be nice, huh?

I’m still trying to lose kgs, of course – because I’m not consistent with what I do. Partly because of work, partly because of family and lifestyle issues, and partly down to me and my state of mind.
A refreshing appraisal, but I’m sure you will get it sorted when you’re ready.
🙂

Would be nice, huh?
It would indeed, especially without:
Interesting that the people losing weight on this thread are doing it counting calories, and the people arguing the toss, aren’t….
So, if being labelled Troll isn’t your style, try to offer more constructive posts.
🙂

Interesting that the people losing weight on this thread are doing it counting calories, and the people arguing the toss, aren’t…

If you search the forum, you’ll find loads and loads of people who had great success with iDiet and 5:2 where they failed with calorie counting.

iDiet works better for me than calorie counting.

nickc – I’m not attempting to condescend (seriously) or accuse you of troll (unlike Solo I know what that actually means 🙂 )

Where do I get details of iDiet? I thought (apologies in advance if I’m wrong) I’d seen some negative press about it…..?

If you search the forum, you’ll find loads and loads of people who had great success with iDiet and 5:2 where they failed with calorie counting.

iDiet works better for me than calorie counting.

yep.. idave diet worked wonders for me. A few years ago i decided i wanted to have go a some road races.. I was 76kg in the december. I always did circuit training twice week, lots of mountain biking and running at lunch. I never lost any weight or fat through this!

I then did the idiet and lost 6kg in 3 months and 4 inches off my waist.

Despite not being on the diet at all now I stay at 67kg. Strangely i never put on any weight even when i go crazy on food at christmas/ birthdays. I still eat cake, ice cream, chocolate. The only thing i kept from the idiet was ditching cereals for breakfast and eating a protein rich breakfast (I eat eggs every morning and have done for 2 years now)

A couple of mates have done this diet as well and it also worked for them.

I’d seen some negative press about it…..?

Negative press about iDave (the man) but the iDiet (the man’s eating plan) has never been in doubt.

Long story.

I don’t have the doc any more, but it goes like this:

[list][*]No ‘white’ carbs ie no bread (whole meal or white), no pasta, no rice, no potatoes, no grains.[/*]

[*]No fruit (the traditional definition not the biological one – tomatoes, squash etc are allowed)[/*]

[*]No dairy[/*]

[*]Oddball banned things include sweetcorn, due to the high fructose content.. can’t think of the others.[/*]

[*]No booze apart from red wine[/*]

[*]Eat as much as you want of everything else.[/*]

[*]One day a week, go nuts, fill your face with whatever you like. The more you binge, the better your diet will work. This not a concession to weakness, it’s an integral part of the diet and is as important as the rest of it.[/*]

[/list]

You get your carbs from low GI sources like legumes and root veg.

Also take fast carbs after exercise. He does give some figures in the original doc but I’ve found them not to be enough for my high intensity workouts, and I eat carbs until I feel re-fuelled AFTER workouts. Obv the harder the workout the more carbs I might take. Following the 45 minute rule is crucial ime.

Molly, I’d argue that idiet is a calorie restriction diet. I think mentally people who are dieting tend towards smaller portions, and when it involves men specifically, the sorts of foods, names of diets and ranges of food available are just as important as they they are for all the So called fad diets that men sometimes mock women about.

Make it macho or science based and I think it intrinsically appeals more to a certain type of male mind. Minute analysis of food types to keep interest, sports and training references, all play a part.

Whatever works, go for it, keep it simple or read all the journals and do all the science bit. Choices. Counting cals works for me, and has and will work for others

Molly, I’d argue that idiet is a calorie restriction diet

Not at all. You do end up with fewer calories than if you fill your ace with pies, but that’s not the main reason for losing weight. If you ate 2,500 calories with traditional carby diet and 2,500 calories with the iDiet, you would lose way more weight with iDiet, no question.

Bear in mind that we called it iDiet because iDave came up with it. It is NOT the same as the commercial fad diet with the same name that comes up when you google it.

Diets are so last year!

Seriously get yourself on Strava and have an explore at what segments are around you and get out and go for it. You will quickly find a segment that you can get near the top on, then you will get KOM and dance up hills the next day. Then you will think right, cat 4, out of the saddle, push a bit more and surprise yourself.

Its addictive

If you are 13 stone with a bit of a gut on you then go on a diet you can end up as 12 stone with a bit of a gut on you . Perhaps you need to stop thinking about diet and try sit ups and other exercises to tone up the stomach area .
I found cutting out bread in my diet helped a lot with weight loss , and generally stopped me feeling bloated and farting all day , the wife approved of this . When mentioning this to many of my cycling friends I was surprised by how many of them have also cut out bread for the same reasons .
Also I think many people massively over use energy products , you can do a pretty long ride on just water as long as you’re not going absolutely balls out , I always carry gels and bars but don’t use them unless it’s really necessary .

Perhaps you need to stop thinking about diet and try sit ups and other exercises to tone up the stomach area .

That will not do much for the fat.

It will, cyclists all get bellies as it doesnt get a work out, try doing sit ups and you will be surprised

Fat accumulates around your belly because that’s where your body likes to put it. Your stomach muscles may be a little slack, but that’s not the same as belly flab.

The only think that gets my belly to stick out less is losing weight. I’ve done sit-ups for years, they made no difference. Except to my strength and ability to do situps 🙂

Perhaps you need to stop thinking about diet and try sit ups and other exercises to tone up the stomach area .

[quote]cyclists all get bellies as it doesnt get a work out, try doing sit ups and you will be surprised[/quote]Do people seriously still believe this is how it works?

unlike Solo I know what that actually means
Grips. I’d tell you you were wrong, I’d remind you that you’re not telepathetic. But we know you’re never wrong and that you know what everyone is thinking.
*Reckons Grips is still sore from the overtaking thread*
😉

Molly, I’d argue that idiet is a calorie restriction diet.
Nick, for you its about the calories. Its not so simple for others though. We understand you, can we move on please.

Kryton.
Mail me if you want a copy of the iDave diet.
(you asked, I’m just offering the info as I have a copy to hand)