BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I love this. I have had people who weren't skinny, but were smaller than me, tell me that they're "too fat to ride a bike."

don't think so.

i know i've definately lost some weight from riding, but as i down own a scale, so not sure how much.

also have had some muscle growth too.

but i figure im finally in good enough shape to start doing p90x.

I would recommend some of Cosmo Catalano's writings about Ernest, too, via his blog http://cylocosm.com.

One thing I took from Cosmo's writing is the absolute importance of good, supportive friends to Ernest and what he's achieved. I'm not trying to take anything away from Ernest, but that a handful of serious, good cyclists really committed to being a friend to a guy that most people wouldn't want to associate with is completely awesome.

@OBeaver... Skinny enough to start P90X? Right now is the best time to start P90X.

*I am not suggesting any one program*

As for the OP, great on that guy to get outta the house and go. The biggest thing is needing a plan to follow and a plan for after that on how your life will now vary from what put you in the shape you did not want to be in.

I have a friend who is down from 340 and another who just bought a bike to get down from about the same.

For a minute there, I was under the impression that he went from 0 cycling, straight into racing cyclocross.

@onions did not mean skinny enough, i meant in good enough endurance & muscle strength to start the program.

Biking 2200 miles this year gave my system the jumpstart it needed to do the aerobic and strength training of that other system.

Pbeaver - try Insanity before P90X. You don't need any weights or equipment and the workouts are more intense. It helped me gain an amazing amount of indurance and shred some stubborn body fat. Either program is solid, just make sure you follow the meal plan. That is an important part many fail to follow and it ruins your potential.

Diet is 80% of everything. All of the riding I did last year didn't do shit, tweaking and watching my diet this year, all things equal, has me down 60#. Just adding exercise over the years, no matter how I have done it, has never done anything good. Tracking what I ate when I was younger allowed me to be 5'6" and 190 and huge, now it's allowing me to drop to a normal weight.

The reason P90X and other programs work is because they are complete programs. The idea of just adding exercise is good for a few pounds and that's it.

^Hah, that's not at all consistent with my experience with weight loss. I think it's really more complex / dependent on the individual than most people claim.

Calorie restriction = useless unless I eat so little that I'm essentially in starvation mode (and then when that inevitably becomes unsustainable I gain it right back plus more). Maintaining a healthy-ish diet without significant calorie restriction = good for other reasons, useless for weight loss. Running and most other exercise = useless. Cycling = keep losing weight to the point where it's getting really expensive to deal with buying new clothes. At least 25 pounds over the past 12-14 months, which is a lot for someone my height who wasn't starting off particularly huge anyway and who considers cheese to be a food group. Metabolisms are complicated.

i'm probably not going to focus too much on diet considering i still smoke 2 packs a day & drink like a fish.

But I have cut down on portion sizes and have been trying to eat more grains. (1/3 of a box of cheerios for dinner totally counts right?)

@pearmask Cheese is a food group, so is bacon.

Calorie restriction has no choice but to work, save for medical issues. One can miscalculate what they eat but there is no way to defy the energy equation in terms of in and out.

Starvation mode takes 48-72 hours to get there.

One of the two cyclists killed on Penn Avenue, I forget which, had brought his weight down a lot via cycling, and had also gotten off of diabetes meds.

Mr. James Price.

Good story.

I was "watching my caloric intake" for a while. 3 months. Lost a little weight. But really all that happened was that I thought about food constantly, instead of just half the time. Was not in any way sustainable.

Orionz, that's assuming your metabolic rate actually remains perfectly constant, and there seems to be plenty of evidence suggesting that's not the case, both because your metabolic rate may fluctuate depending on conditions including what and how much you eat, and because people may (consciously or subconsciously) modify their activity levels depending on food intake. (Edit: When I am at a real computer, I will try to pull up some data supporting that claim. In reality, weight loss research is still a big inconclusive mess, and there's data out there to support your idea too, but it is worth noting that the data is really inconsistent. Something more complicated is happening.)

I was exaggerating when I said "starvation mode," but the only time I ever lost any weight just by reducing food intake, I was literally fainting randomly from being so hungry. Was not awesome or healthy or sustainable. Also terrible for any sort of physical activity. Seems to work fine for some people, though.

I will readily admit that I like food and would much rather keep food constant and increase exercise than spend any time at all counting calories. It feels like torture to me, always thinking about food.

I am with pearmask. I used to starve myself.. And I was a lot younger.. And was able to stay really skinny if I ran 3 miles a day. What I did eat was carbs. Now I eat too many carbs and too much cheese, but consistently doing 100-200 miles/ week plus being on my feet all day makes me constantly hungry. I eat a lot (by comparison to my younger years) but I have managed to lose 15lbs since February.

Just my 2-cents – and I hope I don’t come off as a perv, but…

I think the women cyclists in Pittsburgh are awesome! On numerous occasions I have been pleasantly distracted by following their lead.

@Pear, were you weighing the food?

The metabolic rate will vary but it still remains energy in-energy out, plain and simple. That cannot be disputed, the elements of energy out may be, as you allude to, but putting more effort to reducing the "in" and you should be fine. The biggest issue is knowing what "in" really is. This requires measuring quantities accurately.

That said, there is more than one way to skin a cat. For most it is easier to knock out 500 calories a day than it is to burn 500.

ETA: And yes, there is so much garbage info out there and so much stuff that seems to come from a time when science didn't really matter. Most also seem to want to seem to mix up what causes what.

No. But seeing as I clearly have a kinda obsessive personality and a demonstrated ability to wander into disordered eating land, I honestly don't think that would be a healthy thing for me to get into, while I know that for some people it is exactly the healthy thing to do. But I'm sure it would work.

I guess I do have weird preferences in relation to said cat skinning methods. Being short and female, meaning the number of calories I can eat isn't that large to begin with, and being prone to fixating on things, cutting out 500 calories does one of two things: (a) makes me feel like I'm barely eating anything, meaning I start obsessing about food, which results in me ultimately swinging back the other direction and eating ALL of the things and ruining any progress I have made, or (b) makes me start obsessing about calories to the point where I think eating JUST 500 calories a day is a good idea. On the other hand, riding a bike long enough to burn 500 calories is just playing outside and is something I want to do all day, every day. But you are totally right. I'm just a weirdo.

And yeah, it's really hard to wade through the mess of methodological and statistical disasters. Unbelievable some of the horrible experimental designs that get funded (not that that's specific to weight loss research)

+100000 to more ladies on bikes

Nuff said.

@Pear, I just chose 500 as a random number. It is one of the few things across all camps that seems to be agreed upon. When your BMR is closer to 1000 kcal a deficit of 500 becomes foolish.

My point being though with the weighing, without me doing so it is incredibly easy to go well above my planned deficit. It is akin to judging speed by how the breeze feels. I would guess that that could be one of the sources of failure but you mention others that are also troublesome, especially as you deal with smaller and smaller people.

That is to say I agree with you.

Yeah, I know. If you told me I had to eat 5 calories less per day, I'd probably be able to mess that up too. I'm just reallll bad at calorie restriction.

And yeah, weighing is the right way to do that if you're going to do it. I honestly don't know how many calories a day I eat, nor do I have any other quantitative information about my intake, and it works, but it probably shouldn't. If I were advising other people, especially non-hobbit-sized and non-crazy people, I would definitely tell them to do it your way, not my way, haha.

The other end of it is that most people would be fine in their life if they just ate better foods, skipped snacks, and added some time between a meal and a snack. It does not help that breakfast is the worst meal out there as people are programmed to want to eat the most massive meal of the day full of sugars and liquid calories.

/rant

"Most people" don't have the high degree of control over their lives that you seem to have there, orionz.

I left the house at 7:30 this morning and will be running from one thing to another and won't be home until probably 10: pm. Can't practically carry a picnic basket with me, so in the interim I will need to choose from among the least deadly food options available.

Guys, you can reduce calory intake for a long period of time if you take too many (or even TOO many) of them. Way above what you need to support your body. If you about your norm then activity increase will do more.

@orizon breakfast is very important meal of the day. It should provide enough protein and fats so traditional american breakfast eggs with beacon is much better then a lot of easy carbs. The problem with easy carbs is that if you have breakfast by 7:00 am then by 10:00 am you sugar in blood will go low and it will make you either to look for a snack or feel so hungry that by 11:30 am your are going to overeat (because after 1.5-2 hours of being really hungry most people fell like they could reward themselves). Sadly enough I see it happens everyday at work.

edmonds59, you are so right. It is extremely hard to maintain a healthy diet when you are running all day or have back to back meetings and an active lifestyle with kids.

What I did during the Insanity program was to make sure i made time for my meals. 5 a day, all around 400-500 calories. That was for 2 months. It is hard to do, but I was NEVER hungry. I maintained a healthy body weight and lost fat...I am 170lbs.

When I finished Insanity, I reduced the 5 meals to 4 meals a day and reduced the calories on one of those meals to about 100. That is basically a piece of fruit. I maintain 5 servings of fruit/vegtables a day and i have never felt better.

Yes I eat garbage from time to time, and i enjoy beer....the goal is to not totally restrict yourself from anything you enjoy, it will not be sustainable....no chance this Italian is passing on pasta....so i made sure I ate the serving size.

You want a shock? Next time you eat something, anything, read the recommended serving size. If you ate that serving size of doritos, chips, cookies, popcorn, chocolate, ice cream, cake, whatever you could have it more often and not feel guilty. The shock is the actual size you should eat vs, what most of us normally eat.

Weight loss is a journey, much like riding a bike in Pittsburgh, it is always up and down.

Hmmm, what's that healthy diet called where you don't use any animal products...

"vegan, diets were associated with lower body mass index (BMI) and lower levels of obesity than diets that included meat"

"Meat eaters had the highest prevalence of hypertension (HTN) and vegans the lowest"

http://www.nel.gov/evidence.cfm?evidence_summary_id=250379

Now don't let this raise anybody's blood pressure, you know, because most of you are meat eaters

Actually, based on the summary info in that study, vegetarianism appears a better bet than veganism...same BMI, obesity, and hypertension effects as vegans, and less chance of fractures.

I'd venture to guess that the "best" diet is going to vary significantly, based both on genetic and on environmental factors of the individual...off the cuff, I'd want a very different diet if I was engaging in hard manual labor for 12 hours a day than if I was (to pick an example out of thin air) sitting on my arse in front of a computer all day.

I really should take a few months and go primarily vegetarian, see what happens...I suspect that is probably a better baseline model for those of us who are mostly sedentary over the course of the day.

Pierce anxiously takes his supplements.

Of course, the other nice thing about a choosing a vegetarian or vegan diet for reasons of health, rather than philosophy, is that you can still treat yourself to bacon once in a while. And THAT'S important.

And although not as great as morally backed self-righteousness, you could still be self-righteousness about the healthy choices you're making over all

And although not as great as morally backed self-righteousness, you could still be self-righteousness about the healthy choices you're making over all

Always a bonus!

I couldn't consider any lifestyle that didn't include cheese. I could go without a lot of things, meat (easy), booze, coffee, sex ( duh, I'm married, right). But cheese would be a deal breaker, life without cheese, I'd take the bridge. Man I love cheese.

Now I'm craving some smoked Gouda. Thanks.

who knew this thread would end up filed under "things not to read at ten to noon"...

I once drove 10 hours to Montreal to ride their Bike Fest (which is awesome! Every June) It's a wonderful city, the rides were great. But my fondest memory is still the artisinal cheeses at one rest stop. mmmm. fromage. I think I have a problem.

Most of you know me here. I started riding my bike because I was so out of shape I passed out from laughing to hard.

Riding has made a huge change in my life. I have lost some weight over the years I have been riding, Im no thin person, still well over 300. I lose some weight, I gain some weight, I watch what I eat sometimes and other times not so much.

The biggest difference that cycling has made in me is that while I'm not that much thinner I have become fitter. before when just going up a flight of steps meant I needed an inhaler I can now go out and ride my bike or just hang out with my friend without feeling tired.

I can go out and ride my bike with friends and enjoy the ride instead of simply endure the ride. I also noticed that the depression that I have fought with since I was a teenager is much more manageable.

(starts thinking this would make a good blog post)

fatguyorangebike.blogspot.com

@Mikhail; breakfast is not as important as we are advertised into believing. Plenty of studies support this. Your overall food intake for the day is what matters, not meal frequency.

This of course is for normal people, athletes have far more demanding needs and should consider that.

re: veganism, one important thing to consider about vegans is they are pretty much obsessive label-readers. just accommodating a vegan girlfriend for the past few years has made a huge difference in the way i approach food. way more whole foods, way fewer ingredients in anything i buy. this has nothing to do with animal products, but does tend to lead to better health.

it's important to keep in mind that what you eat means just as much as how much you eat.

What if 99% of your food has no labels?

edmonds59 - that is a great post....I hope you explore the wonderful world of wine as well, it makes for a nice pairing with cheese....just sayin'.

@dbacklover

I noticed at the last Flock that you looked healthier.

Coupla thoughts on losing weight - most people that lose weight lose way too fast - even those that think of themselves as losing moderately.

As far as I can ascertain the ideal weight loss (for a person not suffering an immediate weight-related health issue like diabetes) is about 1/16 to 1/12 of your body weight over a year.

Most folks I know that diet sneer at that kind of weight loss. Then each time they diet, they end up heavier a few years later.

Losing weight, while not considered easy, is a total breeze compared with keeping weight off.

The best thing for weight control is to have some activity you love that iherently gives weight feedback. That is a big reason biking is so successful - even a few lbs makes a difference on long hill.

If you are, say 100 lbs overweight, then losing 10 or 15 lbs won't make you look all that different in the mirror. It won't change how people relate to you. Makes a huge difference on 18th street, though.

I've lost 15 lbs in the last 18 months - I expect to lose 5 more pounds before next July. This is nowhere near the 1/16 to 1/12 per year I recommended - but I lost and rebounded about 2 year ago, so slower is the way for me to go.

What if 99% of your food has no labels?

even better, and part of my point.

I am at 60# lost this year. Semi-planned to lose a pound a week but really just started eating the way I should and not the way I was. That difference created a larger loss than expected and the change to my lifestyle is much improved. Now if it stays permanent... Who knows, but I would need to go back to eating like absolute trash.

I also, of that 60#, only lost 5# of muscle per a fancy body scanner pod.

Mick, your approach puts me right on track for where I'm at, so that makes me less fatalistic. I just have to watch the winter rebound. Once the real winter stuff hits, my favorite activity is to wrap up in the silent dark in blankets and vegetate until the next time I absolutely have to go somewhere. Kind of like a caterpillar, without the butterfly part.

@ edmongs59

Vegetate?

Or eat cheese?

I try not to eat the cheese right IN my cocoon, things get very nasty.

The whole story was a bit moving for me because I have lost an immediate relative to a gastric bypass gone wrong 11 years ago. I also lost 72lbs my first year cycling but, I don't think my metabolism is quite where it was 5 years ago or so when I started riding. A century or even quadruple century weekend doesn't hurt my legs for days after like it used to and I find myself gaining weight after riding now, probably because I am better at keeping hydrated.

That plateau can be discouraging when it happens so I hope he stays motivated and keeps going.

The whole story was a bit moving for me because I have lost an immediate relative to a gastric bypass gone wrong 11 years ago. I also lost 72lbs my first year cycling but, I don't think my metabolism is quite where it was 5 years ago or so when I started riding. A century or even quadruple century weekend doesn't hurt my legs for days after like it used to and I find myself gaining weight after riding now, probably because I am better at keeping hydrated.

That plateau can be discouraging when it happens so I hope he stays motivated and keeps going.

I only wear dress pants at work in the colder months (I wear dresses and skirts in the warmer months) and the pants I am wearing today haven't been worn since probably march. They are 1-2 sizes too big now. This is a good thing. They are super comfy but don't quite look like hammer pants. Thank you, randoneurring!

@Orizon Breakfast is important. This a first food intake after long period of time. It has to provide enough calories all the way to the next food intake.