Advice Needed re: weight loss.

Dizzy the Egg

Newish ro riding and I need to lose a stone for my new job.

Have started cycling to work and including my MTB rides I'm probably doing about 60-70 miles a week.

My fitness levels are actually not bad but my diet has been (up until recently) disasterous.

My question is will these miles simply on the road and trails be enough to lose weight (with new diet) or would I need to do gym work as well?

Cheers

homercles

Hi Dizzy

Congrats on the new job.

If my recent experience is anything to go by you should find excess weight will drop off as long as you keep the miles up and take steps to eat healthily (or rather MORE healthily). Since introducing commuting into my cycling routine I'm now doing about 100-120 miles a week and generally keeping to around 2000 calories a day on the food front.

Since early July I've dropped 1.5 stone and the weight continues to go down. Of course, I'm putting a fair bit of effort in rather than just cruising along (try and get the heart pounding at least a couple of times week!) but my gym membership now lies completely unused as cycling is taking care of everything I wanted to achieve anyway. Trousers and the like are starting to hang off me a bit!

The only proviso is probably whether or not you have the weight to lose. I was a pretty big lad (had crept up to just under 17st at 6ft tall) and it tends to be that bigger people with weight to shift do it quickest. If you're only just overweight you would probably find you'd need to do more, diet harder, etc.

A word of caution: make sure to give your body enough good fuel to keep the mileage up. Starving yourself is counter-productive as you might find that you don't do as much work on the bike if you start to feel lethargic and weak from not eating enough.

Best of luck with it and let us know how you get on.

Dizzy the Egg

Cheers for the advice mate.

I'm 5' 8" and I'm now over 13 stone, so I should be at least a stone down on that. I was under 12 stone 6 months ago when I was doing loads of martial arts training but a couple of minor injuries, shift work and diet has combined in my weight jumping up.

I eat loads of fruit and vegetables and don't smoke or drink, but I eat loads of crisps and fizzy juice and loads other crap. Hopefully a combination of training and more disciplined eating habits will have my weight down, but not too much!

ash68

Hi Dizzy, sounds good advice given already, only thing i would add, keep some healthy snacks for when you've finished your rides so you don't get tempted to pig out on crap, when the old munchies kick in. I'm about 5ft 8 and weight just under 12 stone. i think I'm fairly lean so you'll not be far out at 12 stones IMO. keep up the good work and you'll soon be in good nick.

nickcuk

Don't get hung up on weight - even a few hundred miles at a decent rate will get the trousers dropping off you unless you stop off every ride at the chip shop. Mix your work-rides with a few long weekend rides of 2 - 4 hours and some short fast rides where you push yourself - you'll find it enjoyable, your performance will improve week-by-week and keep us up to date on the forum

!