OP – what about the beers/booze intake ? I think jambalaya mentioned it way up on first page. A few pints a week and I pop up a couple of pounds without changing what I eat.

Definitely a quality, over quantity man these days, nothing really on a school night otherwise i struggle to get up at 5am (and during night to test daughters bloods), but friday night and sometimes saturday night, i’ll probably have two bottles of old mans brown beer or one or two glasses of red.

There’s no mention of your age which is a factor too.

chakaping – Member
Sorry if I missed this, but did you say how tall are you?

And do you have visible wobbly bits, or are you a granite-sculpted man mountain?

I’m a 41, 5’10” Taurus, GSOH, and own teeth, call me…

Build wise, i look like someone who spent from the ages of 17 to 30 in the gym training to play rugby at a decent level, big shoulders, neck, chest and thighs, unfortunately i seem to have gone squidgy in the middle…

And don’t get me started on buying road cycling clothing, according to Castelli and chums, i am sure Frankie Detori is a Xl size!!

Slight contradiction there. You appear to claim you could never stick to a diet, but you’re already sticking to a diet which includes beer, wine, crisps and cakes. The result of which appears to result in that annoying spare tyre.
But you’re sticking to your current diet, no?

well, yes it does read a bit like that, but Ive actually been cutting down on the cakes and crisps, whilst not giving them up completely of course. Ive upped the exercise too, but its not shifting! 🙁

Having been on holiday for a fortnight made me think more about my longer term strategy, but I need to be strong to see it through! 🙁

So Scud….you can see it doesn’t get any easier as at 41 I was probably below 15st 5lbs and in much better shape and Ive never let up on the fitness levels.

Rockape63 – Member
well, yes it does read a bit like that, but Ive actually been cutting down on the cakes and crisps, whilst not giving them up completely of course. Ive upped the exercise too, but its not shifting!

Having been on holiday for a fortnight made me think more about my longer term strategy, but I need to be strong to see it through!

I sympathize with your situation. As this thread and most of the others on this forum demonstrate, there’s more than one way to look at the problem.
You may have noticed I’ve taken a view along the lines of trying to understand how the body operates with respect to accumulating excess body fat. How that happens and how to tap that excellent source of energy.
YMMV.

🙂

Edit:
Forgot to mention, I don’t see any reason to totally give up small indulgences. I think frequency is more often the issue.

Sorry if I have missed it but do you weigh your food when entering it into MFP?

When I used the app, I would weigh something for the first few days and then have an idea how much of each food made up a portion. When my progress stalled and I started weighing food again, some of the portions were nearly double what they should be.

I also used to take the calories burned from exercise figure with a large pinch of salt. If it said I had earned 800 for example, I would eat no more than 400 as extra food.

…all meals are homemade by me, so as curries which would be a lot of veg and brown rice, pasta again with wholemeal pasta, stir- frys etc.

Do you work out the calories for these?

MFP has a pretty handy ‘recipe’ function where you can put in the actual weights / ingredients that you use and how many servings that gives, and it will give you a calorie / nutritional breakdown for the meal and add make it easy to add it to your daily diary. It’s a mild PITA to do, but you only need to do it once for each recipe.

I found that MFP and Strava estimated calories were very similar for a given activity – How do these figures compare to those from your HRM?

Oh, and log *everything!* 🙂

Eating your large meal of the day in the evening is counter productive. You need the fuel before the exercise not after when it will mostly be stored. So despite weighing and controlling portions its not being delivered when you need it most. Prior to exercise. Consider small salad in the evening and upping breakfast and lunch.

Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and tea like a pauper. One thing I’ve always been guilty of is eating a main meal far to late. If I miss my tea I’ll just have a snack. It took me about 8 weeks for my body to adjust to the lack of carbs. Exercising was especially hard at first. I can remember not being able to generate any body heat and feeling cold all the time. My weight loss has stabilised but my waist is still reducing slowly so I guess I’m putting on a bit of muscle from the exercising. I’ve got an old rowing machine that is like a torture machine that is great for my core and upper body. Mixing it up is the key I think.

I’d echo what pawsy and inbred say, a big evening meal is counterproductive; having read geraint Thomas’ book on cycling the hungry sleeping is a well made point.

Good luck 🙂

I am a big lad too and do lots of different sports, nothing ever really changed body wise until I started boxing. Go to a non-contact boxing training class 3 x 1hr a week. I bet you fifty quid the weight starts to come down and you don’t have to watch your diet too closely, apart from the obvious no junk… or maybe 1 night a week as I do.

well, yes it does read a bit like that, but Ive actually been cutting down on the cakes and crisps, whilst not giving them up completely of course. Ive upped the exercise too, but its not shifting!

What are the positives that these cakes and crisps give you?
It’s like listening to the reasons for not being able to give up smoking all over again. And the answer is the same, your brain is telling you that you’re addicted to sugar. Once you understand that cake and crisps are really crap, they’re easy to give up and you’ll no longer see them any more as treats as you see sticking needles in your eyes as being a treat.

Is I Dave still on here? His regime will shift the excess daddispads in short order

What are the positives that these cakes and crisps give you?

Are you kidding me? I love eating cakes and kettle crisps, it makes me happy!

Clearly I am aware that it’s not a good thing, so I try not to eat too many and exercise a lot to stay in reasonable shape. Of course if I was treating it like smoking, I would find a way to give them up, but my view is that I’m only here once and I’m going to try and enjoy it! 🙂

Might be worth lowering your heart-rate during some sessions to keep it in the fat burning zone. It’s slow going at first but your pace should increase, whilst still burning fat. That should avoid the bonking.

It also might be worth recording exactly what you eat over a day or two to see what the nutritional mix is.

Ignoring all the diet and fitness advice here for a moment, I notice you’re making a couple of fundamental mistakes in your use of MyFitnessPal, that a lot of people do and double counting your calories available.

If you calculate your base calorie value in MFP as ‘active’ or ‘highly active’ this includes the calories you will burn through exercise. So from your original post, this is giving you 2900 calories for the day and that is it. No more gained through exercise that you can eat.

Now this works fine for ‘normal’ people with an active job, say builders, but doesn’t work for people like us who do specific exercise.

The way for us to use MFP is to look at our lifestyle excluding exercise and use that to set the base calories in MFP. In my case I sit at a desk all day and do zip else. You then use whatever device appropriate to track the calorie burn of your exercise on a daily basis and add that to the base calories. So in this model you do ‘eat back your exercise’. This method works much better for athletes as your calorie burn tends to vary on different days due to different workouts. Using me as an sample, my base level was 1960 calories as a 6’3″ ‘sedentary’ person weighing 16st and wanting to shift 1lb a week (500 calorie per day deficit). During the week I’d do 6 runs, but these vary from 3 mile recovery runs, that burn about 350 calories, to 20 mile long runs that burn thousands. I added these calories to the base on those specific days.

Both ways of doing it require meticulous food tracking though and that’s the other key to success.

I dropped 16st to 14st without any fancy diets or exercise methods just by using the second method above and basic regular cardio exercise.

I don’t have the same weight issues you have, but up until the start of this year when I was still riding plenty I was trying to loose that little extra bit of weight.
I dieted, but ate pasta and the like assuming it would fuel me. I lost that little extra, but I felt weak…..and I was.

So just into 2016 I had to put riding on the back burner. I was conscious of keeping my weight down for this quiet period. But I went for the eat whatever you like full fat approach, but kept portions small. Quality not quantity.
So where I was struggling to loose a few pounds when I was racing, I’ve lost 3/4 stone and enjoyed my eating. Skipping rounds in the pubs helped as well.
So my riding is random, but when I do get out it’s as if I’ve never been off the bike. No weight loss weakness.

I’ve never used any device to check my calories, or even read a packet. At the arse end of 56 I just want to feel and look good. In many ways if you’re fit like us on here weight is just a number like your age. There is no way on Gods earth I’d let a crappy digital device dictate my life, and I must confess I don’t know what HR zones are. Me and you ain’t Wiggo and Froome we really don’t need the trickle down technology.
My suggestions.
Ride….when you want.
Shag….as often as possible.
Dance….yes dance.
Eat…
As they say we ain’t getting outta here alive.

OP has ridden 310miles in a day?!!?
**** me I did 200miles once but 300…thats like 20hrs solid.

Atkins diet will aid cycling performance (probably) and weight loss.

Quite a few friends swear by it. It sounds like you need to be very strict (i.e. no carbs) for a couple of weeks though (or at least; if you’re gonna do it, do it properly and be very strict for a couple of weeks).

Steve Demchinsky • 3 years ago
I’ve been LCHF for the past two months and it has been life changing! Great reference is Volek & Phinney – Art and Science of Low Carb Living. Just this weekend rode the Crucifix with nothing more than butter in my coffee in the morning and a magnesium tablet in my water. 3400 calories and no ‘bonking’. That was impossible for me to to before the diet change – one can only store around 2000 calories of glucose. It needs at least a few weeks of adaptation though.. and too many studies try LCHF for only a few days and say it doesn’t work.

I haven’t read the article (boring) just the comments. http://cyclingtips.com/2013/08/high-fat-low-carb-diets-good-for-you-and-your-cycling/

Plus there’s calories and calories, as we should all know by now

Explain this to me. I don’t get it.
Aside from any side effects to health, hypothetically:

If I ate say four snickers bars a day (1000 cals) for 3 months or the equivalent cals in potatoes/pulses/veg what would the difference be with regards to weight loss?

If the net result isn’t the same, what’s going on? Genuinely interested cos I’m sure I’m wrong but wanna know how.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_T87IBJ5crZTE0YmU1OTMtOGM0Yy00MTk5LTk1OGUtMjY5NzY1NDk4YWNi

IDave diet basics

Explain this to me. I don’t get it.
Aside from any side effects to health, hypothetically:

Sugar inhibits fat burning. See my quote above.

The OP hasn’t responded for ages. He never answered the question about booze intake. To be honest I think he’s lost interest

To be honest I think he’s lost interest the will to live

FTFY

Explain this to me. I don’t get it.
Aside from any side effects to health, hypothetically:
Sugar inhibits fat burning. See my quote above.

But regardless of that, presumably you’d still lose weight? Otherwise you’d be staying in equilibrium on a very low 1000 cal per day diet.
Is that possible?

If I ate say four snickers bars a day (1000 cals) for 3 months or the equivalent cals in potatoes/pulses/veg what would the difference be with regards to weight loss?

the thing is (and I’m not trying to be rude!) it’s a really stupid question, the answer doesn’t matter because no-one’s going to live on chocolate bars (at least, no one who wants to go MTBing!)

No offence taken. The snickers is just an illustration.

The question I’m asking is if you lived on 1000 cals of any description over a prolonged period (3 months in this example) would you still lose weight?

People say calories aren’t just calories and I’m trying to get my head round that.
In the short term i can see sugars can restrict weight loss by slowing fat burning, but in the long term it seems unlikely you’d remain the same weight if you had 1000 cals a day in ANY form.

The thing is, the body isn’t a simple machine like an engine that just converts energy into work. What is happening inside you would be wildly different if you ate 2500 daily calories of healthy food, 2500 calories of junk food, or only 1000 calories of anything.

I agree, it’s unlikely you wouldn’t lose weight if you only ate 1000 calories a day for 3 months, but you aren’t going to do that, are you? What state do you think you would be in if you did?