Can you cycle regularly AND diet at the same time ?

nickcuk

Should this be in the Cake Shop thread ?

If you are cycling for 100+ miles a week or more, can you really afford to be dieting at the same time ?

My and my mate ( he's average size but old - ha ha - but I'm younger and fat ) have gotten the cycling bug but there are some differences in our approach. He's been running a fair bit in the past - little whippet of a p/t fireman to go with his office job - whereas I was a rugby player who put on all the weight by keeping the same lifestyle when the training and playing stopped many years ago. I now cycle 100+ miles a week while he comes on 2 decent rides with me between Friday and Sunday and manages 20 - 60 miles a week. One difference is that his wife has him on a diet as well, whereas I'm eating a good mixture of 'normal' food ( fresh stuff, vegs, etc ). My belt notches are steadily going down and my weight probably is, if I could bear to weight myself.

Although he's been faster up the hills in the past, he isn't now - and he's not been a match for speed endurance for some while now.

So in a nutshell - shouldn't he knock the diet on the head and burn it off with extra hours in the saddle ?

ut_och_cykla

Moderation in everything? Severely limiting calorie intake will leave him sapped of energy. If he upped his carbs % it might help, as would getting the timing of his food intake optimised but a severe 'negative balance' in energy is just that.

If he was prepared to lose weight more slowly (perhaps about a pound /0.5kg a week) he could probabaly keep riding fairly well.

Eating loads more and hoping to burn off probably wont work so well.

philip1880

'Diet as a word ' means different things to different people, I ate a healthly mixed diet with plently of fruit and veg, fish and cut down on processes food, I did this over about 3 months and cycled about 100-150 miles a week and lost 2 stone.

Blonde

I agree with the above poster - what do you mean by 'diet'? People should be eating a balanced diet anyway and not restricting their intake of useful or nutritious foods. If he wants to lose weight, he needs to work out roughly how many calories he burns each day just being alive - based on his current weight, then add his aproximate calories used in cycling or other excercise each day, then work out aproximately how many he currently eats. He then needs to make sure he eats about 200-300 KCal per day, less than he is using up and he will lose about 1 to 2 pounds a week, which is widely considered to be a relatively safe and sustainable way to lose weight. I can't remember the links, but just do some Googling for websites to help with the rough calcuations, and info on calorie intake and output for various types of exercise. I hope he avoids processed 'diet' / 'light' and 'low-fat' foods like the plague, as they are crap and usually full of sugar, salt and preservatives and short on any kind of nutritional value. (God, those Special K cereal adverts really annoy me! Bah! Encouraging people (well, women mostly) to fill themsleves full of processed sugary cardboard with a few low quality 'added vitmains' is not helping them lose weight, stay healthy or lose their learned but deeply ingrained taste for refined sugar (backed by the massive sugar industry which has deals with food manufacturers, meaning vast amounts of refined sugar in every processed food you buy). He is better off making interesting and flavourful home cooked meals from fresh, raw ingredients, perhaps using some vegetables or fruit or spices that he hasn't used before, and trying different fish and meats if he's not vegetarian, to keep him interested and enjoying his food. If you are restricting calorie intake (or can't eat a particular food group for allergy or other reasons) it's very important to make sure you are getting all the vitamins, minerals, essential fats (such as Omega 3 oils) and fibre, that you need, so he may like to take a few good quality dietary supplements, and try to make his diet as varied as possible from one day to the next (eating many different foods for breakfast, lunch, tea and snacks) to ensure he gets everything he needs.

Blonde

Found something about KCals used here:
http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/4/4_1/94.shtml
It's a good estimation tool, though the actual amount will also depend on your effort level or heart rate (which is effected by the terrain and weather - head winds etc) and will also depend on the air temperature and wind chill factor (you use more energy to do the same things in cold weather/winter than you do when its warmer).