2chubby said:Hi all- i'm a newbie on this site- this is my first post.
Im 23, 108KGs, just got back on my bike after a long lay off due to injury, arrival of 1st child and various other reasons!
I used to be around 90KG- and a pretty strong rider on the flats (struggled a bit with hills). Time off the bike and a new job sitting down most of the day have contributed to me piling on an excessive amount of weight.
To be honest im surprised my bike didnt buckle when i got back on it 2 weeks ago, but i have been working on sheer willpower alone to get me through my 2-3 rides per week.
I joined a club and ill be racing at the lowest grade in New Zealand (D), but i still dont want to make an ass of myself, ill be racing probably 1-2 times per month starting in about a month.
Would LOVE some advice on the best way to get rid of the extra blubber in a hurry- and if anyone else has had a similar experience in the past how they dealt with it, in the two weeks i have been riding i havent dropped even a gram after some pretty intense hill work.
My diet is pretty good, i eat 5-6 small meals a day, lots of fruit, wholegrains and protein with the occasional dessert and big meal on a weekend if i have been on a big ride.
ANY advice, diet, training, anything, would be appreciated and you can save the comments about being a fat bas**rd, i know all that. ITs time to help me- not kick me when im down!!!
Everyone is different so you will get lots of different replies. I'll tell you what works for me, and I'm very very good at controlling my weight.
First, get a scale and use it. Weigh yourself when you get up and when you go to bed. This will give you constant feedback on what's working and what's not. Second, the bottom line is you have to eat a bit less. The hard part is pulling that off because you will get hungry and here is where you have to find what works for you. You basically want to find a set of eating habits that works so that you're not very hungry and you're still losing weight. Here are some things that help me:
1. Get enough sleep. I can't stress this enough. When I'm overtired I get hungry and overeat.
2. Reduce the stress in your life. Stress makes you eat too much (scientifically proven recently).
3. Don't overtrain. Similarly to when I'm stressed, if I do a really hard ride that I'm not fit enough for, I spend the next few days eating a ton because I'm so hungry.
4. Think of food as fuel, not entertainment. If your idea of fun is eating ice cream, it will be hard to avoid being fat. If your idea of fun is a show or movie or bike ride, then you'll be thin.
5. Get into regular eating habits. It's hard to know how many calories you're eating on any given day. However, if you eat a similar sized breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day, and you are losing weight, you know you have it right and can stick with that. Traveling and irregular eating habits will make it very hard to follow a diet.
5. Don't drink sugar drinks -- drink water. It has recently been shown that eating calories in the form of sugary drinks does not satisfy your hunger, and as a result you will simply eat more calories.
6. Don't crash diet. Do something that is manageable for a long time. Crash diets are mentally taxing and you will simply rebound when you run out of mental energy. Change your lifestyle to something happily liveable. I would aim to lose no more than 1 pound (0.5 kg) per week.
7. Remember that maintaining your weight is a long term goal, not a day to day thing. If you eat too much at one meal, it's no big deal and no reason to think your diet is gone to hell. Get up the next day and eat a little less to make up for it if you can, or otherwise don't worry about it. If you eat fewer calories than you burn most of the time, you will lose weight.
8. The hardest part of dieting by far is getting going. The first few days/weeks you can get very hungry. Don't worry about it even if it takes you weeks to get going. Just try a little to control your eating each day until you finally succeed. Once you get going it's much easier to maintain it.
Beyond these things, eating protein seems to make some people less hungry, so they eat less. HOWEVER, for someone doing a substantial amount of cycling the bottom line is you need carbs for fuel, so eat carbs or you will feel weak and crappy. For the most part, I don't think that how many meals or when you eat or even exactly what you eat matters much as long as you can control your overall intake.