dropping the fat

barrylad66

hi everyone,
i would be gratefull if someone could clarify something for me?
I have just got back on the bike after about a year and a half(due to a dogdy illness!!).
During that time i have managed to put on a stone and a half.I have managed to drop half a stone since i got back to training,but i would like to get some advice to which is the best method....I have read that doing interval training drops the fat quick,but then i read that long steady ride's are better.i do about 30-40 miles,2-3 times a week,and i try to eat a balanced diet....also if i use the turbo when the weather is to bad,should i try to do long and steady or intervals??
I look forward to any advice
kind regards
adrian

LJAR

The way to lose fat long term is to make sure you eat fewer calories than your body is burning. Being active by cycling is a great way to do this.

What I have found works well for me, is to work out how many calories I am burning (there are lots of ways of doing this - a quick internet search will throw up a few methods). It will depend on your gender, age and weight and of course how active you are.

Once you know how many calories you are burning, watch what you eat and try to have a deficit of about 500 calories per day.

Fat is 9 calories per gram so to lose a pound of fat (454g) requires a calorie deficit of 454 x 9 = 4086 calories.

at 500 calories per day that is about 8 days to lose a pound. That might seem really slow, and if you are building muscle at the same time your weight might not change, but if you lose the weight slowly it is much more likely to stay off.

Good luck!

FWIW I manged to lose 14kg (31lbs) this way! stick at it and eat well tand the pounds will come off!

Al_38

Essentially weight loss is a calorie balance in the long term:
if calories in < calories used then you lose weight. The most fat you can lose a week is around 0.5kg for most people, this equates to a 500 calorie deficit each day.

As to long exercise or intervals:
I have read a couple of papers that suggest that the optimal fat burning point is at around UT3 pace i.e. a HR of around 120-130 maybe a bit lower depending on age. However I have also heard that interval training can be useful.
Personally I think that as long as you are burning the calories then it doesnt really matter how you are doing the exercise - i.e your plan of going for a few rides a week makes sense. I wouldnt bother with trying to go slow or HR limit them either. Obviously more rides / other forms of training would help speed up the process.
As for diet, i normally find that I can eat as I like to most extents. It is important to eat before and immediately after each session. Otherwise when I have to lose weight I eat whenever i am hungry but only untill I feel full, If you haven't finished whatever you were eating then stick it in the fridge and eat later. carrots are a good snack if you feel peckish. Try and eat slowly too as it takes a while between eating before you feel satisfied and other than that make sure you get the fluids down as these help you feel fuller too.

Ultimately you will need to experiment a bit some things work better for different people and it is just a matter of finding out what works for you.
Al

barrylad66

hi ljar,
thanks for the reply,will take your advice on board!

holmeboy

About 6 years ago when I was doing a lot of running (at least 3 miles most days and upto 1/2 marathon distance, cycling accassionally) I damsged my Achilles and was told to not run for 6 weeks. As somebody with a big appetite and not wanting to put on weight in that time I decided not to eat anything made from or containing cow's milk. Unbelievably I started to lose weight almost as soon as I started this, I was 13 stone 6 Lbs (as I am now) and lost a stone before the six weeks was up. It was quite difficult to stick to and I did weaken near the end and once i started running again went back to my old diet (eat anything and everything!) and previous weight. I'm thinking of doing something similar again to drop weight and hopefully improve my all round cycling ability, i have cut out alot of biscuits, chocolate, buns etc but no notable weight loss yet. :oops: :shock:

ColinJ

I think 5/6 of those posts should be E-X-T-E-R-M-I-N-A-T-E-D!

mclarent

I clicked on here thinking "wow this thread is buzzing..."

In answer to your question, mixing up the training with one eye on your overall goals is the way forwards. In terms of fat burning, this has just come up at length on here:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12603112

pbt150

And to follow up on the calories in/calories out plan, as well as try to increase the amount of time you're spending riding, try keeping a record of what you eat in a week with an honest food diary. It's amazing how much slips through the net when you graze!

bahzob

pbt150 wrote:

And to follow up on the calories in/calories out plan, as well as try to increase the amount of time you're spending riding, try keeping a record of what you eat in a week with an honest food diary. It's amazing how much slips through the net when you graze!

Seconded. Fitday is a useful tool that can help do this if you are a geek like me....
http://www.fitday.com/

Another thing thats worth doing (if a little painstaking) is checking the weight of food, especially if you use the info on packaging. Often the portion size they choose bears no relation to reality. e.g. is breakfast cereal which has a standard portion size of 30g which looks tiny in practice.

mclarent

bahzob wrote:

Fitday is a useful tool that can help do this if you are a geek like me....http://www.fitday.com/

I'm all over that site, hope it lives up to expectations!

Frank the tank

I lost two stone over a year and I did that by riding steady and long, as has already been said calories out more than calories in and you'll lose weight (there were no fat b*****ds come out of Belsen).

It's by and large just a case of being sensible, eat the right stuff, ride regular and control the intake of alcohol (if you drink) the main thing is keep enjoying what you're doing else you'll pack in and lose out. Not very technical I know, but I'm a simple chap.

All the best.

DaSy

If weight loss is your primary goal then you will want to concentrate on riding that burns the most calories. High intensity intervals tend to be lower calorie burners than a consistent tempo ride, as although the intensity and heart rate are high for the duration of the interval, you drop down quite low between sets, plus a warm up and warm down are lower intensity, but much more necessary when doing high intensity intervals, so quite a proportion of your time is spent at low intensity.

If you look at your calorie usage at the end of an hour of 4 min x 7 at 110% FTP, this (for me at least) is hard riding, but the calorie usage is much lower than if I rode for an hour steady at tempo.

The best calorie burn tends to be a couple of hours of tempo on the turbo, where you keep your heart rate up consistently for the entire period, as opposed to a hard hour of intervals.

bahzob

DaSy wrote:

The best calorie burn tends to be a couple of hours of tempo on the turbo, where you keep your heart rate up consistently for the entire period, as opposed to a hard hour of intervals.

Good advice, as an example couple of recent turbo sessions

80 minutes warmup-hard tempo-cool down 1232kj
75 minutes warmup - hard intervals - cool down 729kj

(kj from a powermeter, roughly same as calories, usual calc is cals = 1.1 x kj)

Second session felt tougher than first but was approx 2 Mars bars less in terms of calories burned.

pbt150

bahzob wrote:

(kj from a powermeter, roughly same as calories, usual calc is cals = 1.1 x kj)

Erm...no. I'm assuming that your 'j' represents a joule, in which case there are 4.2 joules to the calorie.

bahzob

pbt150 wrote:

bahzob wrote:

(kj from a powermeter, roughly same as calories, usual calc is cals = 1.1 x kj)

Erm...no. I'm assuming that your 'j' represents a joule, in which case there are 4.2 joules to the calorie.

er no. That's correct in terms of a simple units of measure conversion but any process that converts potential energy into useful energy works at less than 100% efficency so some kj are lost in the process. By a happy circumstance the body is around 25% efficient so kj out is roughly the same as kcal in.

DaveyL

1232 kJ in 80 min - that *is* a hard tempo ride! What was it, 280 Watts?

pbt150

Bahzob - sorry about that. I'm just used to seeing energy output (kcal/hour) from rowing/running machines, I'd always assumed they measured actual output rather than input chemical potential energy burned. I guess the Wattage figures they give are accurate, but the calories burned takes into account the inefficiency of the human body.

Clearly 1232 kJ in 80 mins isn't a lot if it's the chemical potential energy burned in your session, but it quite a lot if you're measuring actual output. Sorry if I offended!

bahzob

pbt150 wrote:

Bahzob - sorry about that. I'm just used to seeing energy output (kcal/hour) from rowing/running machines, I'd always assumed they measured actual output rather than input chemical potential energy burned. I guess the Wattage figures they give are accurate, but the calories burned takes into account the inefficiency of the human body.

Clearly 1232 kJ in 80 mins isn't a lot if it's the chemical potential energy burned in your session, but it quite a lot if you're measuring actual output. Sorry if I offended!

np. I got confused/depressed as well when first got power meter and did the calculation kj to cals only to discover an hours hard work worked out as less than a bar of chocolate. So pretty glad when found out how inefficient the body is.

DaveyL wrote:

1232 kJ in 80 min - that *is* a hard tempo ride! What was it, 280 Watts?!

260W average, 270W excluding warmup/down. The it was a "sweetspot" session on the turbo so on border of high tempo/low threshold. As per DaSy above this sort of workout is great in terms of max cals burned per hour. Probably not coincidentally its also an excellent zone to train in as it pushes you hard but not to exhaustion so can keep up for a while and recover OK next day.