jsigone

3500 cals of twinkies would be a good lunch

Jarrett2

I didn't have that luxury. If I ate too much at 20, I gained weight. In fact, I started really putting on the pounds around age 25. It takes years to amass enough calories to get morbidly obese. Also taking a while to back out of it as well.

pdoege

Work stress and booze for me. I am firm follower of CICO, but booze is a hell of a good way to get calories in.

breadbin

Pardon this rant about stress and how I think it is linked to my eating/exercise habits.

There has to be a reason we eat too much and don't exercise enough. For me it's not as simple as telling myself to go out for the spin.

The way I see myself now is, and sorry for being dramatic but, like a man thrashing against a strong current in a river. I'm swamped by the river and if I let down my guard I'll be swept away. So here I am throwing my arms about not getting anywhere but not being swept away.

So my options are to learn to swim or be swept away with the current. Now the problem I have is that there is a time and a place to learn to swim and thrashing against a strong current is neither.

I liken the job I have to the river. It's getting worse everyday. There are so many people struggling with it. Some people manage it well and others don't.

We need tools to deal with the everyday stressors and I guess I don't have them. I've never needed them before. I eat when I come home from work. On my days off I'm exhausted and I don't exercise as much as I should. I've been off for a week now and I find I'm exercising well now but when I jump back into the river it's a struggle again. So I've decided to get out of the river and maybe take the road instead.

Cyclist0084

While in high school, I participated in sports, so all that activity helped to keep me slim. After graduation, I worked at a restaurant where free food for the employees was abundant. Without the physical activity of sports, all that free food added many pounds to my once slim body. When I enlisted in the Air Force, I had almost four months before actually heading off to basic training, and I used that time to work like hell to lose the extra weight and I was able to keep it off for the four years I was in the AF.

After getting out, it was back to my lazy, mostly sedentary ways. I was cycling some, but it was nowhere near enough to offset the calories I was consuming on a daily basis. I was working the night shift in a hotel then, and eating was a simple cure for many long, boring nights. For many, many years, my weight varied anywhere from 240 pounds to 280 pounds.

Finally, in the fall of2013, I decided that I had had enough and I really determined to lose weight. At that time, I weighed in at 255 pounds. It took a lot of exercise and eating healthier foods, but by the spring of 2016, I was down to 200 pounds, which is pretty much where I've stayed up until now. Now I've begun a new push to try to get down to 185 pounds.

wvridgerider

Eating, beer and being lazy

mstateglfr 

Im 6'5 and was in multiple year round sports growing up. I still eat like I did growing up, but am much less active and have a lot slower metabolism.

Even being pretty active still, the sheer caloric intake does me in. I appreciate feeling like I need to only lose 20#(and still be clydeworthy), but its tough to stay disciplined to do so.

KarlK

Eh, for me it's more calories in than out. Plus I'm genetically programmed to store calories. According to my doctor. Been a battle my whole life. Now at 55 I'm trying once again to change my lifestyle.

jonpear6

Used to be an athlete on a competitive level for football and lacrosse. My career has taken hold via college, grad school, etc and my riding time per week has gone from 12-15 hours per week to 5. I kept eating like I did in the ol' days. I stepped on a scale in December. Saw something over 300# for the first time and have done some change making over the last few weeks. Down about 2lbs per week, so that feels good.

InOmaha

Eating. Metabolism is 1/2 that equation, food the other half.


Then again weight and fitness are separate too. The more I work out the heavier I get. But it's a good heavy versus a bad heavy.


During my solid cross training of running, biking, weight lifting and proper diet I almost always settle into 220-225 lbs. At 6'3" most people think I weigh less then I do. Without lifting I'll stay around 200-205. Without exercise 235-250 depending on how hard I watch my diet.


The last time I was below 200 was in high school over 30 years ago. According to my workout and diet history I will likely always be a Clyde as defined by this section of the forum. Just in shape or not to different levels. My weight is more a function of the different activities I'm currently focusing on at the moment.


IMO I look aand feel the best when I'm cross training and at 225. So getting to the lowest weight number isn't really a goal for me.

rustymetal

Beer, slow metabolism, and the fact that I've always been big.
At my lightest I was maybe 250 lbs with a 36" waist at 6ft2in tall. I eat less now, but I'm not as active both due to my schedule and my age.
I can't eat any less, and I don't have the time to ride as much these days. I sure don't have the time to exercise just to get exercise either.

dagray

Getting a job where I sat in a patrol vehicle driving in circles all day, coming home tired and not exercising; all the while eating like I still worked at a lumber mill.

I dropped some of that weight, but then was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and went on insulin... when I was at a high enough insulin level I ballooned up and gained 65 pounds in less than six months.

I was able to cut my insulin down by exercising and taking a supplemental oral medication. I have lost 60 pounds in three years and kept it off for the most part give or take 10 pounds either way.

Darth Lefty 

High school: two bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast, spaghetti and breadsticks every day for lunch. College: make your own grilled sandwich buffet and make your own pizza buffet side by side

Dennis609

Eating the same way at 40 as I was eating at 20.

Difference? At 20 I was cycling, hiking, and worked in an "active" job. At 40 I was doing NONE of those things.

Darth_Firebolt

Calories In > Calories Out. I fixed both by getting a realistic basal metabolic rate, tracking what I ate for 6 months, and getting realistic numbers for how many calories I was burning. The weight fell off, my internal portion size-o-meter got reset, and the weight has stayed off. I didn't have to change what I ate, just how much. I do eat a bit better now, since foods that are better for you tend to be more filling for longer.

Milton Keynes

What made me so big? Genetics and love of food. My dad was always a big guy. Hardest working man I've ever known in my life, but he was still a big guy. And I've always had a love of food, especially sweets. Didn't matter the first 18 years of my life, but when I turned 19 and my metabolism slowed down, not to mention that I was in the military stationed overseas where you were of legal drinking age as long as you had money to buy drinks, all that beer didn't help either. But then being single with poor eating choices and hatred of exercise made me slowly but surely put on weight until I decided to do something about it and discovered bicycling.

RubeRad

I graduated in high school at (if my memory is correct) 145lbs. I have a wide ribcage and frame, so (a) that camoflauges my 240ish weight well (nobody can believe I weigh as much as I do), and (b) back then I looked like a freak, with the bottom of my ribcage sticking way out.

Back then, the family didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't eat like a lot of teenage boys get to, which morphed into a "must eat everything possible" mentality, which I still combat to this day, and consider a bit of an eating disorder.

Everybody's heard of the 'freshman 15' from eating every meal in buffet cafeterias. Well for me it was more like freshman 40.

I remember by the time I was in grad school (probably 23) I was 205, because I was working out with my roommate, and was able to bench my weight.

(Apart from lifting with that roommate) I never got regular exercise, but I gradually learned to cook, and fed myself too well, and so I drifted up to where I am now. Since I moved 5 years ago, I've been cycling to work (11mi rt) almost every day, and haven't really lost any weight, but at least I've stopped drifting up. Toss in some recreational trail riding, and playing pick-up ultimate almost every week, and I consider myself 'fit fat'.

I don't expect to ever lose significant weight, because food is delicious. I'm already getting enough exercise, that it would be literally impossible to add enough extra exercise to offset my intake (and keep a job). And I've come to terms with the fact that I just don't have the willpower (or interest) in drastically rolling back my intake. So here I am.

oldspokes

For me, I think a lot of it was just inherited, most of my relatives are huge, most are over 400 lbs, but I got height on top of a big build.
I like my beer but I never saw myself as a big or unhealthy eater. I don't do snacks, chips, sweets, etc. I never ate fast food, and I don't drink soda. I worked an active job, rode a hundred plus miles per week in my younger years yet I was still 300+ pounds.
Now, as I get older, my weight is increasing but I can't imagine eating any less, as it stands now I only get a chance to eat one or two meals a day. My average intake is two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast with a glass of orange juice, and maybe if I'm lucky a ham and cheese on rye for dinner, on occasion I get a chance to make a real dinner but I rarely have the time.
If I do get a lunch break, its usually just one of those Wawa wraps or a quick salad from the grocery down the road. About once or twice a month I'll go out on a Friday night and have a three or four beers.
I've been gaining size and weight pretty fast over the past year, even though my activity and riding has increased. But at work, my job has me sitting behind a desk 8 hours a day.

youcoming

Beer, chicken wings, pizza, potato chips, ice cream and six cans of coke a day.

Penny4

Depression. Using food to self medicate. Trying to fill an endless emotional hole with the wrong "medication".

tds101 

I use food for comfort,...I'll eat until I drop if I don't pay attention. I don't seem to be able to feel when I'm full.

RubeRad

For me not depression, but definitely stress.

Penny4

Yeah, a little of that too....

raria

This is a really unusual situation. You seem to be eating barely 2000 calories a day and still putting on weight. I calculate 2000 calories by:

"two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast with a glass of orange juice, and " 500 calories

"maybe if I'm lucky a ham and cheese on rye for dinner, " 750 calories

"If I do get a lunch break, its usually just one of those Wawa wraps or a quick salad" 750 calories

Note, I'm being very generous here and assume its a big glass or orange juice and a huge amount of cheese and a salad with lots of dressing.

northtexasbiker

That's because when a person recalls what they ate they often miss a lot.