Not Much Improvement?

[jimboalee]

Using cycling as a fat loss exercise is a precarious balance between eating enough to satisfy the cycling, forcing the body to synthesize adipose and building muscle mass to get more powerful.
I have previously said I eat a proportion of 'theory' dependent upon the duration of the ride. This is Carbs. The remaining calories, and my BMR is protein, with the fat that comes with it.
Our physiology and metabolism has a 'hierarchy' of where it gets its nutrition. Simple High GI carbs in the blood stream first, other lower GI carbs and then adipose tissue. Only swallowing the bare minimum amount of carbs exhausts the blood and liver to a point where metabolism of adipose occurs. It is easier to draw immediately on adipose than wait for all that protein to be digested. ( Dr Atkins, I presume ).

The human being is basically a carnivore. Protein and lots of it. Some carbs from leaf veg', nuts, fruit and berries, but mostly meat and fish. ( Fred Flintstone, I presume ).

Grass was never on the Homo Sapien menu. So all wheat products, barley, corn and maize is a very modern gut filler for an expanding population, and obesity developed alongside the agricultural revolution.

I don't eat bread. I eat my meat wrapped in lettuce leaves, the Chinese way. Next time you go to the Chinese takeaway, notice how slender the girls are. The slimmest San Franciscans are in Chinatown. I learned a good lesson there – No bread.


I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

Take your point but...

I have quite a chronic lower back problem which means that cycling is all I can do, and I'm damn lucky to be able to do that at all, never mind for hours at a time. So gym work / weights / running etc. are all out.

I just need to persevere with the cycling and reassess my eating habits which have slipped back a little (and christmas approaches!)

bc

and there's the rub !!

If I can maintain what I've done this year over Christmas, I'll be a happy bunny. Then next year I will concentrate on going further, faster and hopefully see some further gains.

 

[Stig-OT-Dump]

I'm with JC - 10% is actually quite a big amount, even though I am unclear about how you calculated it. Thinking of it in running terms, say you did a half marathon in 1hr 50 (a respectable time) and took 10% off that (11 minutes) you'd be down to 1hr 39. However the real "zero point" isn't going to be zero, but would be an elite time of around an hour, and let's face it, you'd have to do intense training, have some genetic gifts and be a few years younger to get even close to that. So your real improvement in this example would be closer to 20% and that's pretty immense. Maybe you've done better than you've realised.

Plus, if you are wanting to achieve specific goals, you'd need to get a little bit scientific about your training for those goals. If you want an improvement on your "turbo time trials" you need to get base miles in at a low heart rate and then do interval training to get more speed for a given level of exertion.

This summer I was covering 75 miles with a tag-along in a day, but it was at a work rate that was much less tiring than my 2 hour sessions for race preparation and was very enjoyable plodding with the stiglets.

Maybe you just need to change your yardstick to get a better idea of your real improvement. I reckon that for a year you've done a pretty good job

 

[Fab Foodie]

Using cycling as a fat loss exercise is a precarious balance between eating enough to satisfy the cycling, forcing the body to synthesize adipose and building muscle mass to get more powerful.
I have previously said I eat a proportion of 'theory' dependent upon the duration of the ride. This is Carbs. The remaining calories, and my BMR is protein, with the fat that comes with it.
Our physiology and metabolism has a 'hierarchy' of where it gets its nutrition. Simple High GI carbs in the blood stream first, other lower GI carbs and then adipose tissue. Only swallowing the bare minimum amount of carbs exhausts the blood and liver to a point where metabolism of adipose occurs. It is easier to draw immediately on adipose than wait for all that protein to be digested. ( Dr Atkins, I presume ).

The human being is basically a carnivore. Protein and lots of it. Some carbs from leaf veg', nuts, fruit and berries, but mostly meat and fish. ( Fred Flintstone, I presume ).

Grass was never on the Homo Sapien menu. So all wheat products, barley, corn and maize is a very modern gut filler for an expanding population, and obesity developed alongside the agricultural revolution.

I don't eat bread. I eat my meat wrapped in lettuce leaves, the Chinese way. Next time you go to the Chinese takeaway, notice how slender the girls are. The slimmest San Franciscans are in Chinatown. I learned a good lesson there – No bread.


I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

I'm sorry Jimbo, but I have to question you again where you get your 'expertise' from? I mean this in the nicest way, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I am very careful in what I say on the subject of nutrition for similar reasons, and I have a pretty good background in the subject. I'm not sure whether you make this stuff up for abstract fun or you really believe it?
Sorry.

 

[Fab Foodie]

It's exactly one year since I took up cycling again after a gap of several years.

I started off doing regular half hour sessions on an old turbo trainer, then I started going out on the road but on my old mountain bike, then I bought a new road bike, then I got a commuting bike. In all I've done about 3,500 miles in the year.

On the plus side, I've lost a stone and a half in weight (down to 12 stone), my resting pulse has dropped by about 10% (now low 50's) and my blood pressure has dropped a little to 120/80 (about normal, I think).

Slightly disappointingly, my longest ride has been about 60 miles and I just don't seem able to get beyond that. Also, my turbo trainer sessions indicate I'm only about 10% fitter than when I started (measured by how far I go in a half hour session for a given effort i.e. average heart rate).

I expected better. Was i wrong to do that? Perhaps I'm now just too old to see a marked improvement (obviously I'm sticking at it, though).

Any ideas or guidance would be appreciated.

bc

You've done great! You're obviously fitter and healthier than you were. Great acievement!
Going further is about getting your ride fuelling right so that you eat enough cals for the effort you're doing. You will burn plenty fat during a long ride, as well as carbs at the same time. If at the end of the day you only replace the amount of carbs you lost then you'll have lost some fat, if you mega-munch then you may end-up putting fat back as well as replacing your carbs.
'Bonking' is the worst situation because you tend overcompensate on the cals in desparation and the body cannot deal with the onslaught without generating some fat to store all the energy ingested.

Regarding the Turbo, there is a limit to how much extra performance you can get for a given average heart rate. You're talking about your efficiency and a 10% improvement in output for the same HR I would reckon is pretty damn good (anybody have data on this?).

The easy way to really improve fitness and performance is to ride with others, to push you harder, to vary your regime, to take you around different circuits, it's
very easy to ride the same way all the time and not really push yourself as hard as you could, group ridingor riding with a buddy does this.

 

[beancounter]

Regarding the Turbo, there is a limit to how much extra performance you can get for a given average heart rate. You're talking about your efficiency and a 10% improvement in output for the same HR I would reckon is pretty damn good (anybody have data on this?).

I didn't expect there to be a limit, although I did expect diminishing returns, and if there is a limit I didn't expect it to be as low as 10%! But experience is now telling me this is true, unless I switch to intervals on the turbo, which may help.

The easy way to really improve fitness and performance is to ride with others, to push you harder, to vary your regime, to take you around different circuits, it's very easy to ride the same way all the time and not really push yourself as hard as you could, group ridingor riding with a buddy does this.

I used to ride in a group but I'm not sure I'm quite ready for it yet. I can only manage 14 to 15 mph for a long ride over undulating roads. I'm not looking to get faster - I just want to go further - and I very much stick to the same circuits currently.

What I'm taking from this is, having achieved some initial weight loss, I now need to fuel properly for the rides I'm trying to achieve.

Thanks for all the good advice on this thread, I really appreciate it.

bc

 

[jimboalee]

I shall keep my gob shut now as regards to fuelling properly for rides.

What works for me prob' won't work for anyone else.

After forty years riding a bike, cycling 100 mile outings eating not much more than a couple of bananas and a can of peach slices, this might be WRONG advice for a beginner.

 

[tyred]

There's a lot of variables involved, I guess .. how heavy / fit you were before you started, how good / bad your normal diet is and so on.

For example, I've lost around 10lb this year (covered a little under 2000 miles having taken up commuting in March), which isn't really much. But, I do eat a lot and I think I was building up quite a bit of muscle in my legs in the earlier weeks which offset the loss of fat to some extent ... I think this because much of the weight loss has come in the last few months, whereas I have been losing my waistline during the whole period. I'm now 3-4 inches less around the middle than I was a year ago.

And I feel much fitter, too. Many of my colleagues tell me I walk too fast now. And that's despite little short-ass legs.

My diet mightn't be perfect but it's much better than it used to be. I'm about 13 stone 8 and am 5'11" in height. I am broad shouldered and have big bones as they say. Lots of people have told me if I lose anymore weight I'd be too thin. My doctor told me I should be 10.5 Stone. Personally I would settle for losing another stone. I used to be 18 stone before making diet changes and doing a lot of walking. I had got bored with walking and decided to start cycling. When I started cycling, I was 13 stone 10. I was expecting a bigger change than that. On the plus side, I've lost about 2 inches of my waistline so maybe it's just a question of building muscles on my legs keeping my weight up. But either way, I feel so much healthier, I've found a form of exercise I enjoy and I should be thankful for that.

 

[jimboalee]

The Royal College of Nursing have a clever little equation which allows you do determine your ideal weight based upon you height, Radial length and wrist circumference.
Here is the quick calculator
www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/framesize1.asp

BTW. RCN is where I got my 'expertise'. I have known a few nurses in my life, and none have criticised my nutritional regime.

 

[jimboalee]

Incidentally, coupled with the 'total immersion' fat percentage method, my Nursey friend got my Ideal weight 2 stones heavier than the 'Doctor's Surgery' BMI poster.

So if your Quack said 10st 7lb, it might be closer to 12st 7lb for a mediocre ( that's me ) Athlete.

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

My diet mightn't be perfect but it's much better than it used to be. I'm about 13 stone 8 and am 5'11" in height. I am broad shouldered and have big bones as they say. Lots of people have told me if I lose anymore weight I'd be too thin. My doctor told me I should be 10.5 Stone. Personally I would settle for losing another stone. I used to be 18 stone before making diet changes and doing a lot of walking. I had got bored with walking and decided to start cycling. When I started cycling, I was 13 stone 10. I was expecting a bigger change than that. On the plus side, I've lost about 2 inches of my waistline so maybe it's just a question of building muscles on my legs keeping my weight up. But either way, I feel so much healthier, I've found a form of exercise I enjoy and I should be thankful for that.

Your situation sounds a lot like mine, apart from being a fair bit taller than me!!

My diet's not bad - plenty of fresh fruit and veg, good balance of other stuff - but not the best: I do like beer. And pies. Are you in the same boat?

You'd already lost a lot of weight with the diet change and walking (congratulations, by the way) so you're probably into the area of diminishing returns. Also, the inches off your stomach sounds like me, as does the limited weight loss .. I put that down to more muscle in my legs; after all, I've clearly lost fat off my gut but not lost loads of weight. Unless my bone marrow is turning to lead something else has to make up the difference.

But I feel much like you: I've found an exercise I enjoy - love, actually - and which fits into my day really easy, I feel fitter, my resting heart rate is down and I am losing weight - albeit slowly. It all sounds good to me.

 

[tyred]

My dietry weakness is fresh sausage rolls from the bakery down the street from my work....

 

[peanut]

Yep good advice, and I do understand the calculations around calories in/out.

I'd like to lose another half stone or a stone, but will need to address my eating habits again!

The major disappointment was the level of fitness, though - only 10% improvement? I really expected better.

bc

You might find it helps to try some longer rides with some friends . Try riding out with a local club on Sundays. You'll soon team up with others who want to do some longer rides.
I remember doing my first 100 miles round the Somerset century. Brilliant route with loads of little villages to retain interest. 4-5 mates to cycle with .We made an early start and got back at dusk completely wasted but what a sense of accomplishment. It really helped to be in a group and keep each other motivated,just like Audaxes