jru577

Hello - I'm new here! I've been cycling about four years now. Started with a cute hybrid but last 3 years have been on a Specialized Ruby. Started out by wanting to do a MS150 and got hooked. I'm F, 39, and currently about 210lbs. I'm beyond frustrated with my weight. This summer I started counting weight watcher points which pushes you more towards low sugar, high protein foods. But with work travel and such, consistency is tough. A personal trainer friend suggested the website: If it fits your macros, which suggested a breakdown of 146gProtein, 108g Carbs and 84g Fat per day (roughly1800 calories per day). Again - a higher protein diet geared towards weightloss. BUT.....
I seem to burn 2300 calories (apple watch) on days when I don't work out, but I work out kindof a lot.

I'm currently riding Ruby 3 times a week - with longer weekend rides. EX: Saturday-I taught morning spin class and then a 40 mile ride with Ruby. Sunday was a 60 mile ride. I also try to fit in a weeknight ride that's usually fairly short - less than 20 miles. I also will do 1-2 "other workouts" during the week....maybe a weightlifting/bodyweight class or even a barre class. I teach spin once a week and occasionally will do a spin class during the week too (I just gave up teaching a weeknight class).

So - here's the crux of my question. How much should I be eating? on days when I burn close to 5000 calories (per apple watch) - should I be eating 2000? 4000? and eating 1800 on days when I burn only 2300 from normal activities - should I stick with a higher protein diet? Should I be eating more carbs when I know I'm doing longer rides? This higher protein thing has be second guessing my gels and cliff bars in my bike bag. I'm so confused. HELP!

jru577

One more fun fact: I'm a strict vegetarian. I eat eggs and some dairy (yogurt) -but not any animal flesh or broth. No fish.

10 Wheels

What do you want to weight?

jru577

I don't think I'm ever going to be a small person. The lowest adult weight I've ever achieved was about 190lbs. At this point I'd be happy just to get under 200. Getting down to 175 someday would be nice. But at one point I was close to 300lbs (over a decade ago) - so I have a fair amount of loose skin. But also - had my fat % checked a while back and was already 130lbs of lean mass - so I don't think I'm ever going to be even under 150.

ypsetihw

too much protein . . . that's a bulking diet for someone trying to add lean muscle mass. if you're just trying to drop pounds while keeping your energy up, you can eat more carbs and less protein. that's what worked for me anyway. I was on a high protein diet last winter and put on about 30 lbs, and that was while lifting 3-4 days a week and doing some trainer work on the bike. a lot of that weight gain was muscle, but still, I got big.

summer came around, I started eating a lot more carbs, specifically in the form of fruits, and cut down the protein, and starrted riding a lot. my energy levels went through the roof and I lost all thatweight which left me looking better and stronger.

Machka 

Join MyFitnessPal
https://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Enter your data.
Select sedentary as your activity level.
Select the amount of weight you want to lose each week (eg. 1 lb/week).
MyFitnessPal will give you the number of calories to eat to accomplish that.

MFP does not include exercise, so when you exercise, you'll log that and then eat about 50-75% of those calories back too.


Regarding how much you burn while cycling, if you go with approx. 100 cal for every 5 km (or 33 cal/mile) that'll give you a good rough estimate. I have found that logging my cycling on MFP as "Bicycling, 16-19 kph, light (cycling, biking, bike riding)" works out about the same as 100 cal for every 5 km.


Stick to this like glue for a couple months, and then reassess where you are and what you want to do next.


This is the Weight Loss thread here: https://www.bikeforums.net/training-n...s-club-83.html ... I've linked to Page 83 where I started talking about my weight loss process. In 2015, I lost 25 kg/55 lbs. And I did it by doing exactly what I advised above.

ypsetihw

if you're veggie, check out durianrider on youtube. he's all about high performance cycling and getting and staying lean on a full vegan diet. good videos, good info, interesting to watch, and he's really into cycling AND being vegan, so you get the best of both worlds. he has a saying "carb the f&*k up"

FBinNY 

I'd aim for an average shortfall of about 500-1,000 calories/day. However rather than micromanaging daily ins and outs I'd base it on week long averages. A 1,000 calorie shortfall may leave you feeling unable to perform, so feel free to trim that back.

Also, I've found (personal results, not science) that carbs earlier in the day or before exercise, and protein later seemed to help me lose weight without feeling as tired on rides.

IMO the key is the long term shortfall, combined with experimenting to dial in what works best in terms of allowing you to ride without feeling dead.

Carbonfiberboy 

Besides counting calories, you can just go by your scale, weighing yourself daily and charting your weight. Reduce your portion sizes gradually until you start and continue losing weight. "Smaller portion sizes" works. Your Apple watch may not be telling you the truth. It's very common to see monitors of this sort reading double the actual calorie expenditure.

A better way of getting an accurate calorie burn on the bike is to use a Garmin or similar device on the bike, uploading your rides to Strava. Strava will give you a total energy expenditure in kilojoules (kJ). That number will be very close to your actual calorie burn for that ride. My practice is to eat no more than half my Strava kJ number during my bike rides, including a recovery beverage, and usually much less than that.

10 Wheels

You do Not need a Special Program.

Stop Thinking about Food.

Stop Thinking about calories.

For the Next week:

Just Write Down Every time you eat and what it was..Forget the calorie part, just what you ate.

You will soon realize that you Eat Too Much

Forget about Gels and Clif Bars..Eat Regular Food.

Forget the Vegetarian Thing. Just eat..

Weight Once a week.

Ride Much.

Photodoug

My personal experience tells me calories burned calculators are wildly exaggerated. If I ride 12 miles in an hour, Map my ride says I burned 800 calories. Not likely. More like 350.

caloso

Are you losing weight now?

jru577

No - not currently losing - mostly staying the same. within a 2-3lb window

caloso

My guess is that your Apple watch is overestimating your caloric expenditure. Pay attention to what you're currently eating, weigh yourself regularly, and adjust accordingly.

As to the question of what to eat, the most specific I get is to try to follow Michael Pollan's rules: eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Drew Eckhardt 

Just enough for you to be no longer hungry 30 minutes after the last bite. That can be less than you expect - I found I could eat 1/3 less without being hungry, and shrunk from over 200 pounds to under 140.

Just enough for you to be no longer hungry 30 minutes after the last bite, except on endurance rides where you need to stay ahead of your hunger - I eat half a Clif bar an hour for 125 Calories on 5+ hour rides from the beginning, tend not to eat on rides under 4 hours, and usually have one Clif bar around 4 out of 5 hours at which point I get hungry.

Energy comes from a mix of glycogen and body fat, with the balance dependent on intensity (lower favors fat), training (shifts the balance towards fat), and diet (lower carbs shifts the balance towards fat).

You can hit about 80% fat at an endurance pace, or drop below 25% on hard efforts.

While glycogen must be replenished, you're better off without the fat.

I wouldn't put too much faith in numbers from your watch - my Garmin's estimates were up to 80% high versus measured power output and known metabolic efficiencies among cyclists.

You're unlikely to average over 30 Calories per mile which suggests riding 100 miles on days where you actually go through 5000 Calories.

You don't need to eat more carbs (or anything at all) before riding, but can't digest enough of anything else to power 5+ hour rides.

redlude97

Drew, IIRC you posted a while back that your race training has shifted to mostly longer low intensity riding to keep hunger during and after down to lose the weight. How has that been working out?

cyclezen

agreed, first this ... apple watch is not even close

you never mentioned how tall...
pretty easy to get your Basal Metabolic Rate off charts - they've been around for a long time and are pretty accurate if you put in accurate info. then add 25%-30% max for normal daily activity (moving around activity, not couch time)

your burned Kcal numbers and replacement seem quite high, by maybe 30%. Eating 2300 Kcal for a normal day would easily sustain a 210 lb person.

here's a ballpark calculator for both BMR and Ttl daily expenditure (use the 'no exercise number' as a base)
How to Calculate Your BMR (And Why It Matters)

lotta good advise up there.
mine - eat for the weight you want to be - wanna be 170 lbs, eat for that.
add enough to cover exercise - riding - I use 25 Kcal for a middlin ride on flatish terrain (light rollers) at 16 mph avg. 30 Kcal if I'm working a decent but not hard tempo, 35-40 for hard efforts (21-22 avg).
example:
say your STD day Kcal expenditure might be around 1700-1800, Sat., you do 60 miles, some hard, that adds 30 Kcal/mi or 1800 ish, thats total 3600 Kcal. Going a bit harder, some climbs, tough headwind for a while - add another 500.
If you eat 5000 Kcal you're 1000 to 1500 Kcal high.
apple watch is way off, ignore. 25 to 35 Kcal/miles works well as close estimate, depending on effort. (35 Kcal is no talkin, head down, serious pace).
3500 Kcal is one lb.
daily diet composition only becomes really important (if you're a veggie) when you get close to ideal body weight. for now KCal IN/Out does the big work.
Late snacking after dinner kills all the gains! (unless its celery)

good luck

FBinNY 

IF that much.

IMO people are too focused on the details and day to day. They'd be better served by stepping back and looking at the big picture.

Track activity and weight gain or loss over weeks not days, then adjust accordingly, ie. trimming or substituting something out of the diet, then stepping back to see the effect.

wolfchild

Keep your diet the way it is and start lifting some weights to build some lean muscle. Lean muscle mass helps to burn more calories and burn more fat. You need to get your metabolism to a place where you are burning a lot of calories even while you are at rest and not just through exercise. Intense weightlifting and high protein diet helps to keep your metabolism running faster and burn more calories and burn more fat even while you are sedentary and at rest.

jsk

The difference in calories burned at rest by muscle versus fat is so insignificant as to be pretty much meaningless. Not to single you out but I just get so tired of hearing this myth. We're talking 7-10 calories per day for a pound of muscle, compared to 2-3 calories/day for fat. Lose 10 lbs of fat and gain 10lbs of muscle? Congratulations, your resting metabolism increased by a whopping 80 calories per day at most. Never mind the fact that most people will find putting on 10lbs of muscle is not so easy (especially while simultaneously losing fat).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all against strength training or trying to add muscle. For overweight sedentary people, strength training is likely to have beneficial hormonal effects such as increasing insulin sensitivity, and the protein synthesis required to build muscle will burn some extra calories. But the notion that lifting some weights will turn your body into a fat-burning machine even at rest just isn't true. The real calorie-burning benefit from increased muscle mass comes when you actually use that muscle to do more work (either volume or intensity) while training. There are no shortcuts, you've got to put in the work.

bruce19

How do you know you burned 350 cals?

Machka 

12 miles is ... 19.3 km.

Using 100 cal/5 km that's just shy of 400 cal.

Chances are Strava would give you a similar total.

Eat about half those calories back and weight loss should start to happen.

Jim from Boston

This spring, I participated in a Wellness Fitness Challenge at work that was very motivating to ride as much as time allowed, up to about 140 miles per week, much more than my usual 50-75 per week for that time of year. Concurrent with that was a series of Healthy Living Classes. One of the best assignments was to do a food log (for three days) to record items, quantity, protein, carbs, fat, and sodium.

It was eye-opening. I pretty much knew what to eat, but I vastly overestimated portion size. Now my diet is exemplary, and well-enjoyed. After about two months I wore a favorite suit unworn for about three years. I call that Spring a metamorphosis.

10 Wheels

Good post Doc.

Jim from Boston

Thanks @10 Wheels, but I had to edit it.