If anyone gets any encouragement from this post that is great, but it is coincidental. Likewise, any discouragement is unintended. My goal is to inform. I spent two years as a Clyde (barely) weighing 203@ 5'10". Despite eliminating ALL carbs at dinner and eliminating ALL sugar at any other time of day, my weight remained fixed at 203. I do not own a car. I have two commutes daily. The first a 3mi. round trip to take my wife (blind) to her job on the tandem and then my own 3 mi. round trip. In addition 3x/wk we both hit the gym and do heavy weight work followed by 20 min. elliptical machine (me) 20 - 30 swim laps (her).
I presently weigh 196 and have been at this weight for most of a year. It wasn't the diet or the exercise that did it. It was the Flu. Last March my Father passed away and on the flight down to jawja from NYC, I had to sit next to an extremely ill individual. He spent so much of the flight in the bathroom I thought he might be a terrorist. No, he was just puking up his Last Supper. I know that because that was what I found myself doing a few days later. I've never been so sick in my life. I actually sought Emergency Care after 3 straight days of 104* fever. I have never done that. I was not able to work or exercise for one week and that is when I discovered that instead of weighing 203, I actually weighed 185!! So, yeah, I've been gaining weight since. 185 is what I weighed in High School. I'm 60. I like what 196 looks like especially when a lot of it is from heavy Bench Pressing and Lat Machine Pulldowns.
I just looked up 'calories burned per hour of cycling' and the short answer is: 650. That's for a 180lb cyclist at moderate effort. Friends ... a person has to do a whole lot of cycling to make any kind of dent in even a slight amount of overweight. Don't even think about it. Bike because you like to or because you need to. A better way to burn calories is a rowing machine, elliptical machine ... even a treadmill. Why? Because on a machine you don't have to stop until time is up. I can recommend the 'Flu Diet' as a quick and dirty (yes) way of dropping a decent amount of weight to motivate a longer term diet plan. However, to actually work, that diet is going to have to be pretty brutal. I know that because my diet is more extreme than many and does very little in terms of actual weight loss. The Paleo and Keto and Intermittent Fasting people may be onto something. Diabetes is a real possibility at the weight levels that come with being a Clyde. That should be checked, and strategies for dealing with its onset are worth investigating. FWIW.