brushog65

Hey everybody I am looking for some new diet ideas. I know everybody is different, but I need someplace to start. I am 6'1 345. I have a great bike and plan to start riding again next week I do good on a low carb diet, but I would not have enough energy to ride I don't think. I guess I don't know good carbs from bad carbs. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Shellyrides

No Diet. Just change your lifestyle. I was 365 last year, I am now 300. I could have lost more but had some major bumps in life. Eat more "REAL" food. If it comes out of a package pass it by. I eat nothing but whole foods now and am getting back into to biking. I eat carbs and protean and real fat. I am losing between 2 to 3 lbs a week and this is before I am really getting into my training. I adjust what I eat to what I am doing day to day and dont get locked into a "plan" , I feed the engine the best fuel I can put into it and its all ready paying me back with better mileage!

brushog65

I hate to be a complete dope, but what are some examples of "packaged foods" and "real fats"?

Shellyrides

Packaged food is anything that comes out of a box or bag. I eat from the outside edge of the grocery store. Fruit and veg, meats and dairy. I drink whole milk, but watch my amounts. Keep meats to better cuts with less fat. Have fun with the fruits and veggies.
Real fat is olive oil, coconut oil, butter (not margarine that was to be a food additive to fatten turkeys but it killed them!) and lard. I use a little bit of bacon grease to cook my stir fry. Two slices of bacon cut up and cooked them, remove the meat leaving the grease in the pan to cook veggies with is only 70 cal(yes add the bacon back in after cooking) Whole foods will change your heath in amazing ways.

jethro56 

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index Low carb is going to be tough when (if) you get into longer rides and or high intensity riding. Most anyone including underweight people have enough fat to ride long distances as a pound of fat has enough energy to take you 50-100 miles.

CommuteCommando

Avoid refined sugar. Learn to cook and hit the produce section, as almost everything pre-packaged is loaded with refined sugar. Use olive oil instead of butter. If you don't already, learn to like avocados. Soups are filling for low calories. Avoid white bread and white rice. Eat about an ounce of nuts a day. Get a little scale. Eat potatoes in moderation.

There's more. These are some of the things that work for me.

SouthernGirl

Something I have been doing lately is the paleo diet. It is anything the paleolithic ancestors could have eaten such as meat, vegetables, fruit and nuts that can be picked. It does not include legumes such as peanuts. This works well for my family as I have a son with peanut allergies and two members are gluten intolerant. So this works nicely for us. It is low carb in a sense. However, plenty of good carbs are in the plan, so lots of energy. I have to say, I feel better than I have in a long time. My kids are eating tons more veggies with little to no simple sugars and they are ENJOYING it. Their energy level is better too. So, if you are looking for lower/controlled carbs, this may be something to check out.

Corn is not included in this plan, but we do have it at times, especially the kids, for variety and because I want them to enjoy healthy eating without feeling deprived. It is working for us at the moment.

Just an option if you are interested.

sstorkel

Start by keeping a journal of everything you eat, along with the fat, protein, carbohydrates, and calories. Weigh and measure everything initially, until you have a better feel for portion sizes. If you don't know the nutritional value of something, look it up or don't eat it.

If you're anything like me, once you see how much crap you're eating you'll be motivated to make a change. Look for carbohydrates with a low glycemic index, eat more fruits and veggies, and find lower-calories alternatives to high-calorie foods (ex: the fat-free salad dressing I use is 15 calories for 2 tablespoons versus 120 calories for the normal version). I find that eating 40% of calories from carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat seems to work well for me.

GeorgePaul

Enroll in a medically-supervised diet program. They will teach you about what you should/shouldn't eat, determine what your risk factors are and how to mitigate them, make sure that you are getting the nutrition you need while losing weight, etc. A University or clinic near you should have a good program.

bbeasley

^ lots of good advice.

Ride for fitness
Eat for weight loss
Sleep for strength

gabeham206

Great advice everyone. I'm 2 1/2 months into my lifestyle change, and have lost 53lbs. One thing that has been a huge help is having a protein shake in the morning. It is filling, and gets me off to a great start everyday. I've also been having many small meals a day, rather than 3 big ones. Another huge part of my success has been using the app "my fitness pal". Having a food/excerise log will really make you think twice about what you eat... It's no fun entering in that cheeseburger or Icecream when you see all the bad stuff.

CommuteCommando

My daily starter is peanut butter on a slice of wheat bread with some honey. If a protean shake works for you that is good. I think the key thing here is consistency.

This has also worked for me.

I have recently discovered a site called Training Peaks. It is much better at tracking calories burned and it lets you upload .gpx and .fit files.

brushog65

Thanks for all the great advice. I cant wait to get started on this journey to feeling better about myself,and to better health.

cagedbird

Portion control!

TTom0814

I know this is a long read, but i promise you it will help you out if you take the time to read it.



First things first you gotta introduce yourself into eat cleaning habits slowly, if you go all in balls out you're going to get fed up and give up quickly, so once you know the basics you will be able to just implement the same rules towards your future every day meals.

You gotta keep your metabolism working for you all day, so breakfast. never skip breakfast! breakfast jump starts your body systems, your body has been digesting and fasting through out the night and it's best to feed it when you wake up to provide proper energy through out the day, it's important because you generally eat dinner around lets say 7 or 8 pm ish, the problem with skipping breakfast is your next meal isn't until lunch the next day which means that's when your metabolism begins, thats almost 15-16 hours before you start your metabolism engine..

so to start working on a diet you gotta manage your metabolism.

You always need protein in your meals. Protein provides the proper building blocks for your muscles to work efficiently.
Carbohydrates, Carbs are used as energy for your body, so even though you said you don't mind a low carb diet you need carbs in your diet for energy, think of it like gas for your car, if you are going work out or be physical, or in this case cycle make sure you don't miss out on eating your carbs, brown rice, oatmeal, wheat bread, whole grain pasta, yams etc.

you need a balance of carbs and protein in your diet to naturally burn fat a lot of people eat only one of the two when dieting, but you need balance.

depending on your schedule you gotta figure out the meals you want to cut carbs on, if you're a 9-5 guy and work out after work after dinner, then you're going to want to cut the carbs during lunch, than at dinner is where you're going to want your full servings of carbs.. however if you work out or cycle prior to dinner then make sure you have your carbs in your lunch and cut the carbs during dinner, look at it as carbs is fuel for your body so if you're going to be doing something that require a lot of activity like cycling then eat your carbs prior, if you're not doing anything active after dinner then lay off the carbs no need to pack extra energy which you won't burn and then will eventually turn into fat. try not to workout or cycle with no carbs prior, that would hurt you more than it will help.

so if your job or daily routine requires you to be more active and walk around more i would suggest starting with 1 cup o brown rice or any other carb equivalent such as whole grain pasta, yams etc, if you work at an office and don't get to move around much all day you can minimize your carb intake and focus on the protein and veggies..

If you're not cycling or working out as much as you would like but still want to focus on weight loss then you should limit the carb intake a little more but like i said you still need it in your diet, veggies will help break down fat and clean your digestive systems as well.

also change up your meals, if you're going to eat brown rice and chicken breast for lunch and dinner every single day you're going to get soo tired of it, there is a lot of different things you can eat..

for example for breakfast i usually eat 4 egg whites about 4-5 slices of yams, the yams are slow digesting carbs so it will give you energy for your morning hours through the afternoon to avoid those sluggest mornings.

other options would be oatmeal and eggs, cereal and peanut butter and toast protein shake, oatmeal with a protein shake, omelet with turkey sausage and toast etc.

for lunch you can do all kinds of things salmon, turkey, chicken, lean beef etc.

some simple rules to follow eat lean, and eat clean.

Stay away from sugar!
easy on carbs if you're not very active that day!
NO DEEP FRIED FOODS! the oils used in those are the worst and makes you take 3 steps backwards from what you're trying to accomplish, it takes an extremely long time to burn off this bad fat off.
Easy on the pork, Pork has the highest fat content, there's other meats out there.
Beef is really good for you, especially for dinner because beef is the slowest digesting protein, so if you eat it at night you can feed your body through out the night.

"Cheat Days"… DONT DO IT.
I would rather you do 1 or 2 "Cheat Meals" a week where you treat yourself instead of one full day of gorging down food that will set back your whole week.

brianogilvie 

This is great advice. You need to know your current baseline before deciding what to change. Be brutally honest with yourself, and use a scale to weigh food. I've been using MyFitnessPal for tracking what I eat, because I have an iPhone and the MFP app makes it easy to record what I eat on the go. (However, the nutritional information in MFP's database comes largely from other users, so it's best to verify its accuracy against the USDA database.)

I think it's best to focus on lifestyle changes: on "diet" in the sense of "the food one normally eats," not in the sense of "a restricted eating pattern done specifically to lose weight." Once you have a healthy diet in the first sense, weight loss comes from portion control, i.e., expending more energy than you eat. I like Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." By "food," Pollan means something that our great-grandparents would have recognized as food: no Twinkies, Slurpees, McNuggets, etc. His short book "Food Rules" is worth a look. Mark Bittman's approach of being a vegan before 6 p.m. isn't a bad idea either.

But however you choose to eat, it has to be sustainable in the long term. A lot of people who lose weight on restricted diets (whether Atkins, Paleo, Grapefruit, whatever) put it back on when they declare the diet to be over and return to how they ate before. Gradual change is probably best: pick a few things you can live without, or with less of, and replace them with healthier alternatives.

hammockman

Hi,
I've lost 40lbs since April 7th (about 3 month) by using a FREE program on the computer called Sparkpeople.com. It's a great site that lets you set a goal of how much you want to lose, by what date, using how much exercise you are going to do per week. The program tells you how many calories you need to eat per day and lets you enter what you eat which gives you the calories, protein, carbs, and fat value of the food. I knew next to nothing about nutrition when I started using the website but now have a basic understanding and what I need to eat daily. It has many really helpful ideas and a community people on the site to help.
Mark

Sixty Fiver

My wife and I have lost a lot of weight after adopting a low carb, wheat free diet... I gained 15 pounds because of being forced into a rather sedentary lifestyle and my wife has battled with weight after surgeries and health issues that slowed her down and despite eating the healthiest diet imaginable, she really struggled to lose weight.

The wheat free aspect is essential for my wife as she has celiac disease and cannot handle gluten and after not eating wheat for some time I find I cannot tolerate regular pasta but will eat a little rice pasta and rice although I limit that.

More and more evidence is suggesting that even if you do not have celiac disease that modern wheat is really bad for you as it messes with your metabolism and triggers more hunger because of the psychologically addictive qualities it has that work much like opiates.

Since I do the cooking my wife is really happy and I always cook low carb meals with a small portion of meat, lots of vegetables, and we often skip any carbs at dinner and save those for breakfast when you need that kickstart... this is usually oatmeal with dried fruit, nuts, hemp oil, and goat's milk.

We also shop around the outside of the store and do not buy overly processed foods; we drink raw goat's milk, love our cheeses, and limit our fruit intake because of the high level of sugars. We purchase quality cuts of beef, pork, chicken, and fish, and indulge ourselves with the occasional evening cocktail.

So I have lost most of the extra weight I put on as all I have to do is eat well and be able to move and my metabolism takes care of the rest... my wife is blown away at the results as this lifestyle change (it is not a diet) has resulted in her shedding extra pounds with ease and she has not cut back on how much she eats but changed some of what she was eating.

As for energy levels I have also found that when we wake up, food is not the first thing on our mind and find my energy level is very good through the day and I have very few cravings (corn ships will be my downfall).

I went and hammered it on the trail today and was running on a banana and coffee... I find that if I consume too many carbs I find myself dragging my tail and have no energy and a bunch of food cravings.

I have no problem riding 60-100 miles on a low carb diet and don't dawdle either... once your body adjusts to a more natural diet (which is lower carb) your energy levels will amaze you and this is better for long term health.

Bluish Green

This was the key that helped me lose 60 pounds and keep it off. I got rid of the worst foods I had been eating (chips, processed snacks, fast food) and replaced them with healthier foods that I actually like and are easy enough to keep on hand and prepare (for me, homemade granola and fruit). If it is something you can do day in and day out, it will be a meaningful lifestyle change that you can keep with and will get you big weight loss, long term. Trying a limited duration "diet" is likely to give limited duration results. Pick a strategy you can stick with.

Cycling for fitness is a great counterpart to dietary lifestyle change. As you have success and feel better, have more energy, lose nagging aches you had before, etc., it can actually get easier to keep going... if your basic lifestyle change is repeatable/sustainable.

Good luck, you can do it!

Rhodabike

Actually, that's a myth. Margarine was invented by French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1813, and it was always a replacement for butter for humans. Not sure where the turkey fattening myth comes from, but there is no basis in fact for it. For people who can't have dairy, margarine is okay, in moderation of course.

lenA

"You can manufacture all the glucose your body needs from a combination of protein and fat in the diet. In fact, the only macronutrient for which there is no actual dietary human requirement is carbohydrates. We never have to eat them at all! And if we want to be optimally healthy and live longer, cutting out the carbs (all the sugar and starch) can only improve your health and well being in the long run. Low insulin levels are the single biomarker that most consistently characterizes all the longest lived individuals."

License2Ill

The best carbs come in low densities, like vegetables rather than grains. The bulk of my carbs come from rice or potatoes, an unprocessed grain(basically, brown rice is whole) or a higher starch(sugar) root vegetable. Green leafy vegetables, just remember that. Fruits are lower density, but high in sugars and higher in calories than vegetables(again, more dense calories). The less dense in carbs and fat, the better. Folks eat things like bananas for potassium and carbs, but you will find that a medium sized potato has double the potassium, much less sugars, and the same cals as a banana, so choices can sometimes be deceiving, and vary. I hate the taste and texture of bananas, but like potatoes and can eat one without adding fat. Other folks will like fruit and pretend it's the same as vegetables. It's not. The more leaves you consume each day, the better, really.

sstorkel

The problem is that the potato has a lot of carbohydrates and they're very easy to metabolize. The glycemic index for potatoes is very high. As an insulin-dependent diabetic they're one of the foods that I routinely avoid because they're so likely to cause blood sugar spikes... no matter how much insulin I take. Bananas, on the other hand, seem to have a much lower glycemic index.

If you want to loose weight, or have steady fuel for a ride, a banana is actually a much better choice than a potato. Most raw fruit has a (relatively) low glycemic index and calorie counts that are lower than packaged or restaurant foods. It's true that veggies have even lower calorie counts, but fruits are still a very good choice when dieting!

m1aman

My Fitness Pal is a great, free way to track what you eat.

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/

License2Ill

Yeah, but potato chips have a lower response than bananas.