evanr

Hello,

For context, I am a 25-year-old male who weighs 195lbs and is 5'5".


I'm sorry if this is too much information. I want to make sure you have as much information to go off of as possible. So, I recently started getting into biking (or cycling) and have purchased a Trek Dual Sport 3 Gen 5 from my local Trek store. I live in a suburb of Houston, TX, and my bike paths are mainly sidewalks with some dirt paths mixed in (this is why I went with the Dual Sport). So I have been getting up at 4:00 am every weekday for the last two weeks and doing between 10 and 11 miles each morning before I get ready for work (I have also biked 15 or 16 miles on Saturday for the last two weeks). Currently, I am averaging about 12mph, and it takes me about 50min to 65min to complete my 10-mile goal. Today, my 5-mile splits were 25.38 minutes and 26.34 minutes, with an average heart rate of 136. I track everything I eat and weigh all of my food, and I should eat about 1750 to 2150 calories a day for a healthy weight loss rate; I would like to lose 45 lbs and be at a healthy 150 lbs. I have trouble hitting my calorie goals but not in a surplus. I am consistently ending my day with only about 1200-1450 calories on the day. With all this information out of the way, I have not noticed a consistent decrease in weight loss. I am getting faster on my bike but I thought with me having such a caloric deffacit that i would be dropping weight fast and I am not seeing that. Is there any advice or help that you guys could offer me to help with my journey?

Breadfan

Similar results for me, I'll be following this.

RH Clark

Get under 20 grams of carbs a day and zero sugar and alcohol. You will drop weight fast. It will suck for about a month, but you will drop 5-10 lbs. a month after that.

Iride01 

Short rides at high intensity always seemed to have me eating more Calories back than I burned. Longer slower rides of 2 plus hours always seemed to do more for weight.

At your age and current times for the miles and HR, I'm not sure if those short rides are that intense as mine will have been. However you might try to get at least one 2 to 3 hour slow ride in there during the week. And you don't have to ride 5 days a week unless you just want too. But if those short rides are a high intensity for you, then you might need more recovery in between.

Recovery doesn't mean rest and stay off the bike. Just means keep your activity intensity low. IMO.


And for weight loss, don't think in terms of weeks to see results. Think in terms of months. With the various plateaus you will go through some results will require most of a year to see.

evanr

Thank you! I think this helps. I would not say that my rides are at the top of my intensity I could for sure ride for longer but I also don't feel like I am doing it too slow. I just don't have anymore time than the hour I already dedicate in the morning since I am getting up at 4am and have to leave the house by 6am for work.

MinnMan

Weight loss is really about food intake discipline. No cheat days. Exercise can help, but it will not be the determining factor.
Day to day weight changes are not reliable. Take the long view, and stick with a careful diet,.

Vary the length and intensity of your rides. Don't do the same thing every day. Go for longer rides on the weekend.

Longer rides do not give you license to eat more.

bruce19

This is a timely topic for me. For a little background.... when playing college football back in the late '60's I was 5' 10 12" and weighed 180-190 lbs depending on the amount of resistance training I was doing. These days I'm 5'9" on a tall day and 186 lbs. If I"m not paying attention I can easily get to 195 lbs. Cycling does not seem to affect my weight very much. My doctor says I should keep my calories to 1800 / day. In practice my intake is around 1600-2000 calories a day. Typically this includes 300-400 calories in whiskey. Because of a month long respiratory issue (it really sucked) and what seems like constant rain in CT I haven't been riding much. Still I remain constant at 187 lbs. FWIW back in the day when I was doing stuff like riding from ME to CT my low weight was 175 lbs.

RB1-luvr

as someone else replied here, I tend to eat more calories than I burn after a ride. I think a disciplined diet is key in addition to exercise.

terrymorse 

A common rough estimate for energy burned while cycling at a moderate pace is 50-60 kcal/mile.

So a 10-mile ride ought to burn 500-600 kcal (Calories).

Consider that when deciding how many Calories to consume.

But if you really want an accurate estimate of Calories burned, get a power meter for your bike.

RH Clark

Calories burned is a good thing to know and it does matter but you also have to remember the human body does not process all calories the same. All calories do not cause the same processes to be activated in the body and so calories are something good to know but not necessarily the most important part of the equation.

terrymorse 

If weight gain/loss is the target, I would think that Calories is the most important part of the equation, and that the mix of protein/carbs/fats is secondary.

The body is pretty good at doing what it wants with the food it takes in, or so I've heard.

Sierra_rider

Yep, if one wants to gain/lose weight it's mostly about calories in/out. As far as tracking macros, those are partly a tool to sustain the overall caloric deficit IMO. I.E. getting enough carbs and protein, at the correct time, to maintain a caloric deficit without hurting strength/recovery. My racing/fitness improvement coming into this season was nailing down my nutrition. It's been eye-opening to say the least and generally, a caloric deficit has equaled weight loss.

Kinda echoing your comment about power meters, it's rather disappointing to see how few calories I actually burn during an hour of low intensity riding. Without a power meter, I'd wager that most people over-estimate their caloric expenditure. Especially with non-whole foods, it's pretty easy to blow through a 500 calorie workout.

downtube42

If I'm not hungry all the time, I'm not losing weight.

It doesn't matter how much or hard I ride, I can (and will) eat more than I burn, unless I stay hungry.

MinnMan

This is simply not true. As MoAlpha said in the other thread, a Joule is a Joule is a Joule (and a "calorie" or kcal, is always 4184 Joules).
What is true is that not all caloric content is necessarily absorbed by your gastrointestinal system. Some goes directly to, umm, waste. But this applies to foodstuffs that are not easily absorbed, and that's a small part of the caloric content of most diets. Once it's absorbed, it's the same amount of energy content and has the same effect on the net balance of weight gain.

Carbonfiberboy 

I'm another one who has to be hungry to lose weight. Not all day, but say for at least a couple hours before a meal. The issue with that is feeling weak, dizzy, etc. from low blood sugar. The fix for that seems to be more training at low intensities, to encourage one's fat burning ability. I find that it's not easy to lose weight, duh.

RH Clark

No, all calories are not the same in the human body because they cause different reactions. You cannot say that 500 calories of processed carbohydrates effect the body the same as 500 calories of animal fat and protein. All calories are not the same as far as what the body does with them and what they cause in the body, and that isn't even taking the nutrition value into consideration.

Iride01 

You seem to be moving the cheese around. Do you want to talk about Calories or do you want to talk about nutrition. I didn't see that the guy in the video actually said anything. He too was just bringing up stuff and not answering the thoughts he put out there. And no where did he even support any of his suggestion with evidence. Just the usual blabbery of saying a bunch of stuff that has some truth to it for other things, but never makes the connection to the subject spoken of.

Polaris OBark

You cannot escape the First (or Second) Law of Thermodynamics, despite the magical thinking displayed in YouTube videos.

RH Clark

Nobody is saying that you don't need to burn more calories than you ingest to lose weight. Is it so hard to understand that all calories are simply not the same as to how they affect your body and that should also be a consideration in a proper diet?

Polaris OBark

A calorie, or a joule, is a unit of energy. As such, it is a thermodynamic state function. It doesn't matter what its history might be.

MinnMan

All calories are the same in terms of weight gain.
Stop getting your information from Youtube.

MoAlpha

Here is a nice review of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity from Kevin Hall, a giant in this field, who does actual research on people, showing why it is very unlikely to be correct.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2016260

This is the consensus among real nutrition scientists.

terrymorse 

An interesting speculation in the conclusions:

"The rise in obesity prevalence may be primarily due to increased consumption of refined carbohydrates, but the mechanisms are likely to be quite different from those proposed by the carbohydrate–insulin model. For example, such diets may lead to greater overall energy intake by increasing palatability, increasing appetite or decreasing satiety."

MoAlpha

Yep. That is the current theory and Hall’s focus is now ultra-processed foods.

Carbonfiberboy 

Those of us who don't subscribe to the right journals can't read the study. However I found this quote from it in Nature:
Which seems a bit counterintuitive, knowing nothing about the science behind this finding. HOWEVER, it's really good to know that I can keep on eating my wife's dinner cooking without issues. That's been working for 50 years, no desire for changes there.

My guess at that finding is it's the old saw, "Fat burns in a carbohydrate flame." IOW, one can be more energetic with carbs in the diet than without, and more calories expended means that some of those "more calories" are from fat and one's fat burning ability is being augmented.