chefisaac

One thing that I like to do with anything is to see the whole picture. Sometimes when we look at something at a mico level, we get "lost" so sometimes its good to take a step back and look at the macro level of things.

In this case, weight loss. I take my weight since I started and put it in an excell spreadsheet along with the comments I might have noted for that week. It is interesting to look at the whole thing as a whole to see the patters.

So tell me, what patterns have you see.... both good and bad, that you have realized throughout your journey.

Looking at my speadsheet and notes, I notice:

- I suck at eating when I business travel
- I need to track more with business and personal travel
- I fell apart this Thanksgiving but did better over over christmas
- When I do not track, I gain
- Even though activity is good, it is not the key. Eating is the key
- Sometimes I need to dive deeply into my weeklies (when I am bicycling a lot...100 to 200 miles a week) or I will not lose the weight

bassjones

I eat better the more I exercise. Like my body wants healthy food instead of junk. When I'm less active I crave crap food.

youcoming

The only pattern I notice is I loose weight I gain weight and on and on and on. Actually alcohol is my demise, I drink I eat therefore I need to keep alcohol out of my daily life.

goldfinch

Sitting around on the Internet (it used to be TV but I gave that up) contributes to my overeating. So, rainy day like today I have already surpassed my calories allotment.

kc0bbq

That I love to eat.

The more I ride the more I can eat and still maintain the calorie deficit I want. It's a circular thing that creates its own motivation. Just as long as I don't get hurt...

bbeasley

"Even though activity is good, it is not the key. Eating is the key"

It all comes down to that.

magohn

Yep. After two years of riding Ive come to this basic conclusion. Without a strict calorie plan, the bike alone isn't going to do it for most people. Ive started aggressive calorie counting to prep for a summer century. I need to lose 40lbs by July.

Myosmith

I've noticed a big correlation between the amount of sleep I get and my eating and fitness. It struck me as funny at first that I could train like a man posessed for a week and see little or no weight loss, nor physical improvements but when I took a couple of days off and got some extra sleep, boom, 5-pounds gone and energy to burn. I've found that about a ten-days on two-days off cycle works well. I can train hard and get about 8-hours average sleep per night and feel OK, but then two days off with 10+ hours of sleep a day are when I see the significant improvements. More days off don't seem to provide any additional benefit and more than 10 days hard training in a row leaves me burned out, tired and lacking motivation. When this cycle is interrupted because I can't get the training in or because I can't get enough sleep, the benefits decrease significantly.

I also notice that when I don't get enough sleep, I have a lot more cravings and tend to eat more. When I get 8+ hours a night, I almost have to remind myself to eat. Less than 6 and I'll snack all day.

vesteroid

I have daily data since thanksgiving 2011. I can track my weight, and my activity since that time. I was not tracking my calories. I personally dont buy into the it all in what you eat theory. I can see a very clear correlation between my exercise and my weight. i can see steady week over week loses when I am riding or running 5 days a week, and steady gains if I am not.

its hard to see on a single week basis, but when i graph it over a quarter its clear as a bell.

I think too many people overestimate their intensity as well. I have a power meter to measure how hard I work, and as such I can see trends. I can see when I lazed, and when I hurt myself. I can also see quantitative improvement (or lack there of).

I was traveling last night and I had a 1:15 workout planed. I had to ride at 85% of my ftp for a half hour and then fill in zones 2-3 for the rest of the time. I had to do this on a hotel recumbent cycle. i picked an hour hill climb program and set it up so that at max I could only sustain about 60 rpm. I then set it up for 15 minutes on a spin setting.

All this rambling is to say any way you slice it there is a direct correlation between hard work and reward. Hard work can come in the form of strict diet, or exercise or both. But you have to be honest with yourself about effort....saying you rode 5 miles and calling that a hard workout is folly. Saying you eat well without tracking exactly what that is, is folly.

This is not as hard as it seems, it just requires work and commitment.

magohn

I think it all depends on the individual. I rode for for 3.5 hours on Saturday (MTB trails) with my HR in the 150's - didnt lose a pound.
Then I spent the last 4 days aggressively tracking cals and Im down 4lbs in 4 days. Of course there is a correlation between exercise and weight loss but for me, my 50 miles a week isn't cutting it without the cal tracking and losing the bread and sweets.

InTheRain

I've been tracking my daily calories, fats, carbs, protein, and fiber for the last two months. I've also tracked my exercise. Since most of my exercise is done on the treadmill it's fairly easy to track my effort and calories burned. I have daily goals on calories (2200) and carbs (under 100 grams.) I also have a goal of burning 1000 calories each time I go to the gym (4-6 times per week.) The tracking makes me more aware of how much I should eat. All the tracking has produced some great results. Down about 20 lbs in 2 months. 15 lbs more to go to leave the Clyde category!

steve2k

This is me too.

I'm also a bit of an excel geek, but I'm not tracking sleep so I'm going to start doing that, I'm not seeing a consistent behaviour in my weight loss. This is partly because I'm not so good at estimating portion sizes but I also wonder if this is the missing piece of the puzzle.

I've also noticed that if I exercise hard I often put on weight - I've read this is due in part to muscles swelling - more liquid stored in them to repair - partly why my muscles ache.

TrojanHorse

Yep. I do enjoy my wine though. *sigh*

tpy2010

3500 calories per pound. Drink plenty of water. Eat healthy and less. Exercise and train with purpose and intensity. Add resistance training. Get good rest. Have fun. Okay, I get this, I just don't do it. Well all except the fun part, I do have fun.

SeanBlader

I've realized that what passes for portions in the US is simply atrocious. At most restaurants, you could call it a meal if you about half of it, unless you're talking about a place like Cattlemans steak house, Then maybe closer to a quarter. Those places should be banned. I wanna start a restaurant where you get a 350 to 400 calorie meal and you pay an appropriately low price for it, then since it's a sit down restaurant our waiters will be trained to wait like 20 minutes after you've finished eating before they talk to you again. Then they'll ask, "still hungry?"

Fricken capitalism, "take more, so we can charge you more!" Evil!

chefisaac

Restaurants like this have been opened up in the past and failed. Thats why there is no real "healthy" restaurants much more in the US. Yes, there are healthier places to eat like Seasons 52 for example or Subway but even Subway doesnt do much business to be honest.

chandltp

When I go out to eat, I'm not planning on eating a low calorie meal. We're usually celebrating something and indulging.

And I don't want someone else deciding what I should or shouldn't eat.

chandltp

I think you'd probably find that portion size isn't going to influence the per-meal cost that much, unless it's an expensive product.

Neil_B

Include Boston Market in that group.

Neil_B

For some people, Orwell's 1984 is a how-to manual.

chefisaac

The original concept of Boston Market was far from healthy. Only when they started seeing the "trend" of healthy eating did they decide to twitch which was a terrible mistake as most places were making the same mistake.

chefisaac

Coming from the restaurant business all my life, portion cost does have a tremendous effect on cost. Yes, you will have your fixed expenses and covering other costs like labor, etc but at the end of the day, portions costs really do play a big roll in it that is why it is imperative, as a restaurant owner, that your cooks are not heavy handed with the scallops!

rideorglide

Hmmm. veeery interesting.

These days they're calling it sleep hygiene or some such thing, but while in the back of my mind I wondered if there was a correlation, I never gave it much thought.

OK off to sleep.

goldfinch

I have upped my exercise intensity in the last couple of weeks. I decided that I was coasting along. What I am seeing is that the days I exercise intensely I am not hungry for hours afterwords but then end up coming close to overeating in the evening. Which gives me a stomach ache at night. I am enjoying time where I am actually not hungry, which is rare, but I think I have to eat more than just a post ride chocolate milk even though I am not hungry in order to have a better balance throughout the day.

Neil_B

Interesting. I've often needed a meal after a hard ride or workout, but no longer eat in the evening, and for just the reasons you give. Also, when I eat at night I tend to skip breakfast the next morning, which creates problems of its own - for example, a late dinner with a friend in downtown Philly led me to skip breakfast the next morning, so that when I took my mother to see Les Miserables at midday I wound up having a 'lunch' of theater popcorn because by then I was starving.