That’s basically my point, isn’t it?

Yeah but then you’ll understand why that might be a question of willpower. My wife cannot bear the sight of an unopened chocolate bar. I don’t think that is genetic. All this is just a variant on the well known argument about how much of what we do is generally genetically determined and how much is free will.

If I had the answers I wouldn’t be fat, would I?

So “Eat Less move more” is actually the very best weight loss approach you are aware of.

If I had the answers I wouldn’t be fat, would I?

You do have the answer, search your feelings….

OK Mol, so what are you going to do? Seriously. You understand you need to eat less, and that gives you issues. Seeing as you’ve been at this (weight loss) for as long as I can remember with little to no long term success , it seems to me you have two choices

1. “put the cake down, fatty”

Perhaps you actually do need to man up a bit? Might not sound nice, but you asked up there about self denial? Well if you’re fat, and you want not to be a level of self denial is pretty much rule #1

2. Accept that you are the weight you are, and just get on with it

Life’s too short, and you’ve said yourself, you can do amazing things with your body already.

I find my jeans help.

Put them on. If they are tight eat less move more.

If they are loose I enjoy my Friday night beer that bit more.

So perhaps jeans are to blame.

So “Eat Less move more” is actually the very best weight loss approach you are aware of.

It’s good general advice yes. My issues are quite specific though – how to train effectively whilst also losing weight. This is acknowledged by many people to be rather difficult. So I need to find the right type of riding, and the time to do it, and the right diet to fuel it. Being hungry, but not so hungry that I can’t do the riding effectively. And eating enough to recover from the rides I do.

You understand you need to eat less, and that gives you issues.

Eat less OR move more, according to the formula? But people are also saying I can’t out-ride a bad diet. But the formula suggests I should be able to….

Yeah but then you’ll understand why that might be a question of willpower.

Hmm.. I have the willpower (usually) but it’s a question of evaluating the results. Eating so little that I can’t ride or concentrate on work and not really losing much weight isn’t such a great idea, is it? When in the past I’ve lost more weight by say following the iDiet and eating far more.

Did I tell you about the time I was iDieting and hit a plateau, then I started eating more sugar and started losing more weight?

I find my jeans help.

Put them on. If they are tight eat less move more.

If they are loose I enjoy my Friday night beer that bit more.

So perhaps jeans are to blame.

Have you heard of ‘jean expansion’?

It’s where your jeans will stretch over your gut to make you think you are the same size as you were when you bought them.

Eating so little that I can’t ride or concentrate on work and not really losing much weight isn’t such a great idea, is it?

for me the trick is to do it gradually.  Don’t aim to lose a huge amount.  250 cal deficit a day is about 250g loss a week.  That’s about 25mins of moderate exercise a day, or one less croissant, or 5 cups of coffee with milk (roughly).  No it won’t make a huge difference each month but over time it will and it shouldn’t make any difference to your ability to exercise.  You will feel slightly more hungry though but after a few weeks that goes

in my experience anyway.

and then there is Leffe 🙁

What this thread needs is a picture of Molly in his boxers again.

…yo-yoing makes it worse as it strengthens the feedback…

i would suggest that yo-yoing destroys willpower, but clearly you are a glass half full guy

Sounds to me molgrips that you are wanting to achieve the impossible – the reverse of what you are attempting is for a body builder to bulk up, without simultaneously increasing body fat, its almost impossible which is where bulk/cut comes in, so, have you tried something like the reverse of that? a cycle of starving on minimal exercise for a bit then eating & training

ive given it a quick thought and its complicated and may be even harder to balance such a rigid thorough routine with work/life

IANADietician

so, have you tried something like the reverse of that? a cycle of starving on minimal exercise

Considered it.

The thing is, weight loss has worked really well for me three times:

1) When I rode a lot of base miles when I first started being coached, and I just generally restricted calories. But I drank energy drink about 75% strength, for the duration of rides. Weight loss stopped when I started doing speed work as I got hungrier. This was the first time I’d ever done proper base training, it was a big change from previous hammer everywhere riding.

2) When I started iDieting. I ate a ton of food in general, and still took 50-75% carbs whilst riding which was mostly about 6 hours a week Z3/4 riding to work. But, I was also doing KB stuff and some running interval work.

3) When I snorkelled off Mull for a week, freezing myself halfway to hypothermia each time.

Those aren’t necessarily the times when my riding’s been the best though. I’ve found riding whilst fasted has hugely helped my riding endurance, but it seems to cause depleted carb stores which then has a knock on effect on hunger, tiredness and ability to stay off the high GI carbs. The last few years I’ve also tried to restrict carbs whilst riding, which I got used to, but again had knock on effects. Prior to summer 2018 I was had tired legs basically all the time, due to inadequate recovery.

Current plan is to increase the miles (30 hours last month) and iDiet whilst taking more carbs during riding. I have the opportunity, but the weather is currently putting a spanner in the works, I’m not commuting to and through Bristol in the dark in shitty weather.

is this thread still going…?

Molgrips – are you still eating / drinking maltodextrin by the kilo? Are you still using coke as a recovery drink – 35 g of sugar per can?
Its effect on your insulin response will make you hungry.

good luck – looking at your plan, the difficult bit will be the carbs while riding… gotta get that down to the absolute minimum you can get away with…. while not being a miserable unit

Molgrips – are you still eating / drinking maltodextrin by the kilo? Are you still using coke as a recovery drink – 35 g of sugar per can?
Its effect on your insulin response will make you hungry.

TJ, are you still entirely ignorant of the differences between at-rest physiology and exercise physiology despite repeatedly being told? Ah yes, I see you are 🙂

Soobalias – thanks! It’s working so far this year but slowly. Lost the kg or so I gained at Christmas. But not the 2kg I put on when I started going back to the gym to do weights. And I don’t think it was muscle gain either – doing weights made me very hungry and I gained a couple of kg in a few weeks, then levelled off as I continued. I’m giving up the gym cos I hate going there and it doesn’t help with fat loss.

I find it interesting that a natural sprinter like yourself Molly doesn’t enjoy smashing out weights in the gym.

I quite liked the actual lifting of weights (better than any of the other activities on offer in the gym), but the whole environment and the act of going there is utterly depressing and I started to hate it.

If I had space I’d probably get my own weight rack and do it at home.

Ahh well, you can use all that time travelling too and from the gym plus the time spent there to start creating a calorie deficit. Happy days.

(I still maintain you can out train a bad diet)

(I still maintain you can out train a bad diet)

Clearly some folk can.

I used to run to the gym, it is only about 1km away though!

Stop trying to lose weight. Sign up to the Joe Wicks 90 day plan, rewire your attitude to food/weight loss and marvel at how buff you look at the end of it. Once you’ve stopped being weight and food obsessed, go back to riding your bicycle and just eating a balanced diet at regular meal times.

maybe using weight as a metric for you is the problem….

Power to weight ratio is the key metric.

For what Molly? What are you training for? What races are you doing?

You’ve said for years that about w/kg and how when you restrict calories your performance drops… but performance in what?

Do you ever think that if you’d gone through the pain of losing weight 5 or so years ago, suffering through those sessions and becoming less dependent on sugar you’d now be more successful in your athletic endeavors?

Training is hard. Adapting your body to the demands of athletic success is hard. Losing weight is hard. They all take sacrifices, commitment and a long term view. There are few quick fixes. It takes suffering on the bike and in the gym. And it takes discipline in the kitchen.

Tough love over. Have a hug x

Do you ever think that if you’d gone through the pain of losing weight 5 or so years ago, suffering through those sessions and becoming less dependent on sugar you’d now be more successful in your athletic endeavors?

Yeah, maybe.

But I should point out I’m not dependent on sugar any more, haven’t been since I started training and stopped eating so much sugar (10 years ago). I don’t finish the carbs I do take with me unless I force myself. And I force myself because I know what’ll happen if I don’t.

Losing weight is hard.

Wow, really? Is that not just exactly what I’ve been saying this whole thread?

My riding is vastly better than it was in pretty much all respects. Only thing is I weigh the same.

From what you post here molgrips I’m not surprised your struggling.

As many others have pointed out your doing two polar opposite things.

Light reading for your hotel evenings. Racing weight.

Few others on here have read it. It explains in laymans terms how to achieve what your trying to do.-ill give you a clue….it’s not trying to do both at same time

It also refers you to deeper reading on it in the form of scientific papers.

I don’t believe it to be perfect but it’s better than the buckshot shotgun approach your currently failing with

I don’t believe it to be perfect but it’s better than the buckshot shotgun approach your currently failing with

Well I’m currently succeeding, as I said, with 1.5kg down in Feb. The issue will be what happens when I get sent away for work somewhere and can’t ride much. The problem I’ve had in the last few years is not eating enough carbs. So we’ll see what happens with the current approach.

The issue will be what happens when I get sent away for work somewhere and can’t ride much

The radical option we all take….

We eat less.

FFS.

You are taking this from the starting point that I’m an imbecile. I’m not. Yet again this has turned personal, with condescension from people who think they all have it cracked, and that I’m some idiot secretly stuff his face with cake whilst living in denial the whole time.

So I’m out. I’m off to the garage to hit the rollers.

Or you’re over complicating it for the 100th time in the last week.

We get that you want to be the statistical outlier, the medical miracle, whatever.

Very few people have said losing weight is easy, it requires dedication, willpower & a lot of bloody hard work. You even agree yourself to the fundamentals of eating less to lose weight, yet it doesn’t sink in.

You want to train effectively as well – train for what? You’re not going to be world champion, so forget about the mega training plan for 3 months, focus on the diet & just ride for fun & see what happens.

I’m some idiot secretly stuff his face with cake whilst living in denial the whole time

Given that 1 in 3 in the UK supposedly vastly underestimate the calories they consume, (and whilst not exactly the words I would have picked, I would have been polite) there is a good chance that’s actually the case, based on the fact you are eating, and not actually losing weight.

8 pages of groundhog day.

First rule for me when losing weight is to concentrate on getting aerobically fit – cv fit and less hunger seem to go hand-in-hand. Hitting just weights is not going to curb my hunger.

Then I have to watch when I eat the calories – I think studies show that eating the same amount of calories but in a shorter time frame is better (my mate has got seariously lean doing this with his training) but I think that relates to not eating big at the end of the day – where’s those calories going to go ?? Sumo wrestlers eat after 8pm to put on weight…

Weighing myself everyday helps as it keeps up the momentum. When I was young my weight was quite consistent but now it fluctuates around a bit more, but using one of the apps that collates readings from my scales works well.

It also allows me to see what effect ceratin foods/snacks have – for example a ritter marzipan bar is 1 pound heavier the next day, like clockwork. Baked potatos, even with loads of butter, are good for weight loss.

It’s not that hard, you just have to monitor yourself. Cravings for sweet stuff can actually often be replaced with savoury stuff that is a lot more satisfying – brazil nuts for example, or cashew nuts, or popcorn. One rule is that if I am not slightly hungry when the next mealtime comes around, then I have eaten too much at the previous meal.

If I fancy a large meal, say a pie and sweet-potato chips, then I will have it at midday and not have much at all in the evening, no point just eating out of habit.

Banging out miles on the wahoo kickr whilst watching netflix is also an easy way to burn off some calories – and I use the Wahoo app to make sure I am sitting in the best fat burning zone whilst I watch an episode of, say Narcos, or a movie.