Training, trying to lose weight and after training diet
JSL
Posts: 17
Apologies if this is in the wrong forum....
I do a lot of training on the turbo (mostly because I am not yet confident enough to go out on the real roads yet and I really need to improve my fitness and lose weight before I would feel happy doing so).
After traning however I find, just like after swimming, that I am hungry and in danger of eating too much, too quickly and the wrong sort of food. I do try to re-hydrate usually by having a pint or so of water (with a little squash) and normally (with no training) I would find that doing so would be enough but not so after training.
What should I be doing? As in what should I be drinking /eating or do I just have to dig deep into and use will-power?
I do a lot of training on the turbo (mostly because I am not yet confident enough to go out on the real roads yet and I really need to improve my fitness and lose weight before I would feel happy doing so).
After traning however I find, just like after swimming, that I am hungry and in danger of eating too much, too quickly and the wrong sort of food. I do try to re-hydrate usually by having a pint or so of water (with a little squash) and normally (with no training) I would find that doing so would be enough but not so after training.
What should I be doing? As in what should I be drinking /eating or do I just have to dig deep into and use will-power?
0
Posts
Just as an aside, the turbo is not the ideal tool for loosing weight. Gaining fitness yes but not loosing fat. 2-3 hour steady rides in the wind in rain will soon blast a belly/gunt away.
If you want a list of possible foods, just check here:
http://www.the-gi-diet.org/lowgifoods/
After you train, you want a recovery drink. Whether that being a hypertonic drink such as Lucozade energy, a protein or milk drink, or a self made beverage with added salt. You need to have high GI foods after exercise, immediately after, so you can replenish muscle glycogen stores. Because you are looking to lose weight, you don't want to eating loads, but otherwise you may have the circle of feeling too weak to work out. On the other hand, little dietary compensation will mean you are having close to the required energy intake, but you won't lose too much weight.
Surprisingly, to burst the common myth of low intensity, long duration exercise being best for weight loss, the best exercise is actually high intensity. You burn a higher percentage of carbohydrate and less fat compared with low intensity, long duration exercise, but most importantly, the overall amount of energy expenditure will be higher. For example, 90% of 20 is not as high overall as 50% of 30. High intensity exercise will have a greater enegy expenditure overall. So you are doing the right thing. There are also many other benefits of high intensity training too.
Hope that helps a bit. PS, exercise does play a role in losing weight. But also essential is dietary compensation, and exercise alone, will result in minimal weight loss. You need to combine the two. So if you want a bit of advice on that, let us know.
You can only loose weight by burning fat not spectacular (?) number of calories (mainly from carbs) during intervals.
As demand for energy is much higher when training hard, calorie balance and hunger are much more difficult to control and it's all too easy to overeat as a result.
Eat too little and you won't be able to ride at high intensity. Eat too much and your weight will stay the same or will go up.
That's why my advice would be to stick with long slow rides (because they work) with hard sessions from time to time.
The extra advantage of slow sessions is that one can make it as long as one wants, time permitting.
there is also a stream of thought that actually the best method for fat loss might be anaerobic exercise such as strength training.
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
Hills are just a matter of pace
Is this your own personal oppinion or just something you read?
I disagree completely. Strength training is about putting your body in an anabolic state meaning you gain mass. You cannot lose weight in this state, or if you do its highly dangerous.
If you want to burn off 'fat' and lose weight properly (i.e. keep it off) then gradual exercise for sustained periods of over 30-40 mins is the way to begin. Build up to long rides at a steady pace. Also of course which is the other side to the 'fat' loss is chiefly your diet. Eat proper foods and cut down portion sizes if required.
try any general fitness website and see what people are doing and writitng about - for starters every lb of muscle burns a further 50Kcal / hour while you are sat on your censored and the "training effect" of raised metabolism is far more pronounced in anaerobic than aerobic training.
That said - I guess there is a massive difference between just plain 'losing weight' and "getting into shape" - i'm not really that fussed about what the scales say but I want to look in good shape.
I think all the things mentioned will all add to yoiur weight loss, increasing your metabolism will have an effect, and of course if you burn more calories than you take in you will also lose weight, there are many ways of achieving it.
My scale must be broken then
I just think there are other methods which are more effective - either for losing weight or fat loss.
Whilst cycling on a turbo may not be the best (or most interesting way) to lose weight I feel that it works for me - at least at the moment. Its interesting to read about taking sports drinks as I was under the impression that these sorts of things would have only a very limited effect at my current level and its not until one is working much harder and for extended periods that this helps...but then I may have mis-understood that one.
I
Get a pair of accurate digital scales that you can use on rechargeable batteries such as 4 AA or a 9V block. Write your weight on a calendar first thing each day before breakfast and before exercise. This gives the most consistent readings.
Eat exactly the same things each day. When your weight doesn't go down for a couple of days make an adjustment. Not always just cutting things out, but sometimes replacing things with other things.
Firstly - it is fine to eat after exercise - and it sounds like you know what the wrong foods are - so i'm guessing you know what the right foods are too. I guess it's just being organised and having some of these to hand. Personally i wouldn't try to over complicate it.
second - re the roads thing - If i can do it (think new born foal on ice) then anyone can. Do you drive? While you are gaining confidence why not take your bike to some where a bit quieter, and ride on some nice roads. You can work towards riding from home (although i still like to start somewhere nice/different sometimes).
Good luck.
Click here to view Top_Bhoys RC2:
Actually you aren't agreeing with Joe then as he says high intensity burns more carbs and LESS fat. It may well be the case that higher intensity exercise burns more calories than low intensity but low intensity workouts are widely held to burn more fat. Most people losing weight (myself included) want to lose the fat stores they have already built up. I'm not a qualified sports scientist so I am only going on the numerous articles I have read so it would be nice to have the comments of anyone who is actually qualified before we end up with yet another thread of pseudo science and gut feeling like the compact chainset thread!
More percentage of fat, but not necessarily more fat. It depends on how long your low intensity ride is for compared with the high intensity. You have to ride for about 3 hours to get any decent amount of fat burnt doing low intensity. If you can do this for the majority of the week, all well and good, but one low intensity session a week (ie one weekend ride) will do nothing IMO.
Even burning 3,500 calories in one ride, only equates to 1lb of weight loss, so high intensity several times a week, will probably do more in the low term. Or even better mix it up, and do a combination of both. It all depends on how often you can get a decent low intensity ride in.
Generally though less calories in compared to what is expended,and you will burn fat, the body will use it as a fuel for living as well as exercising.
Well, he does agree with me, as I said that HI training burns a higher percentage of carbohydrate. Ultimately, the overall and absolute fat utilized will be similar to low intensity training, as the HI requires far higher energy utilization. Following HI exercise, you will also have increased fat oxidation because lower carbohydrate stores of the liver and muscle glycogen. For example, at low intensity of 50% VO2 max you are likely to have 50% of the energy utilization from fat, and at 70% VO2, the energy from fat would be 30%. But, as I mentioned before, absolute fat utilization will be similar, as to work at 70% requires far more energy. As an example workout, it may require 500 kcal more to work at the 70% VO2. Therefore you will have a few g difference in the absolute fat burned between the two workouts, as well as a higher energy expenditure overall, and also fat oxidation will increase after exercise because of the lower respiratory quotient because of greater glycogen depletion. And another benefit is a greater EPOC.
Hope that helps a bit.
Very good post! You beat me to it
And yes, ultimately 7000 kcal equates to 1 kg of fat mass. So if you are in negative energy balance by 7000 kcal by dietary compensation or exercise, that means you will only lose 1 kg. Add that up over time, and it shows you how tough even that could be.
Thanks for the clarification it was this bit that confused me
That seemed to be saying the opposite of GKerr's assertion.
I assume that unused calories turn to fat hence the long-term wait gain. I am still a bit confused but am I right in thinking the lower intensity will burn off more of the existing fat supplies but working at a higher intensity will burn off more calories so therefore prevent the weight getting there in the first place?
EDIT Have re-read your last post again and think I see what you are saying. My idea of low intensity would be about 5 hours at the old level 1 and 2 zones. My aim is to get one session a week in at that level with 2 or 3 shorter rides of about 1 hour at the old level 3 or high level 2 area. Once I start doing this regulalrly I reckon the weight should start to shift!
My feeling is if you ask 100 cyclists how to train you will get 200 different answers, so don't worry too much about what everyone else says.
I use boots rehydration powders after strong workouts: they seem to get me back to feeling normal quicker than just water.
When you're ready to go out on the bike, you may be able to find a quiet traffic free place to start off on, such as part of a sustrans route or an urban cycleway, depending where you live. I was very nervous in traffic at first but fairly quickly got used to it (within reason, anyway)..
If your weight loss starts to tail off, you might want to have a look at the Weightwatchers website: I did one of their programmes for a few monhs and lost a stone and a half.
Whatever you decide, good luck and keep pedalling.
I would say he is just confused. Whilst you have alot of advice to base on here, your body will respond to different methods than what may work best for another.
If you can get frequent outings and do them at high intensity as suggested it would be great, sadly my lifestyle (work) doesnt allow for this. Stating longer distances at lower intensity wont burn fat (better) is a bit conflicting as most riders on here will have seen the proof by just doing this.
To continually gain progress will be hard without changing your lifestyle as eventually you will reach a plateau. I make enough changes but still enjoy cycling, I think if I went much more intense I would certainly start to enjoy it less and consider it more of a chore.
i try to ride as much as i can but its tough with work and the family life (see link) and in 2 years i haven't dropped an ounce cos i eat and drink too much! still 17 stone!
but the 2 years before that i lost 7 stone by starting cycling and changing some stuff in my life. i did all training at 100% and never rode 2 consecutive days. then 2 more kids came along and the time dried up, as did the weight loss.
good luck.
www.justgiving.com/steven-loxam/
At the moment I'm still at the stage that getting out the bike is a bonus and anything is better than nothing plus I like the freedom of being out and about so when I do get out I like to get a fairly long ride in but once I have my lights set up I will be going out for a couple of shorter, more intense sessions in the evenings.
Dorian Yates (6 x Mr Olympia) is an big advocate of doing aerobic exercise in the morning, without eating. That said, from what I gather he only did a small amount, and got rid of most of his weight through diet.
One of my old club mates is well into body building and I intend to use him for diet advice although what he goes through is really extreme and I suspect the low carb diet would cause problems in fuelling bike rides but his all round nutritional knowledge is very good.
this is true - and the current thinking is - no aerobic exercise at all ("unless you must for the good of your heart") and the 'diet' being fairly free from carbs - and in particular free from sugar / simple carbs
Also, I found a slide that might help you understand the relative and absolute issue that a lot of people have problems with:
As you can see, only 3 g difference in fat utlilized when you talk in absolute terms. So as I mentioned earlier, when you consider the much higher energy expenditure, higher EPOC, and the glyocgen depelted state after exercise requiring more fat, you will see added benefits of HI exercise.
Well, it will be a higher percentage/relative amount of fat, but overall it is not going to have much difference in absolute terms. Because HI exercise requires much more energy than LI. You will see very similar absolute terms of fat utilized during exercise. Consider an average work out, you would probably require 1/3 more energy to maintain a HI workout. So even if the percentage of fat being utilized in LI is higher, you won't really have much of a benefit overall, due to the much higher energy demands of HI. Add in other factors such as after HI exercise you will be glycogen depleted, therefore burning more fat after exercise. Also, you will have a higher EPOC, which means you will be burning more fat to help recover from the oxygen debt. And also weight loss is correlated with energy expenditure, which is much higher in HI exercise. Unless you are able to ride 200 km rides at LI and go for hours and hours, you are going to benefit from HI exercise more. That being said, I don't know how fit you are, and in some cases people who are untrained may struggle to keep up HI exercise for long enough.
Also bare in mind that resistance training can be a very important part of weight loss, so it might be worth checking that out if you are serious about losing weight.
Although not a scientific piece, this is actually not a bad set of recommendations for someone new to HI, and the more intense workouts which should have benefits for weight loss:
http://exercise.about.com/od/weightloss ... tlos_3.htm
Any time on the bike is burning calories. The high intensity workouts are claimed to carry on burning calories for some time after you stop. My recovery drink is a pint of tea, and I don't eat anything over and above my normal balanced diet. If muscle glycogen is depleted it will be replaced from fat reserves or diet; if I don't stuff my face after a ride, I'm assuming that will help with weight loss. It seems to work for me.
Calories in < calories burned = weight loss. Simples!
I'd avoid any extreme dietary advice from body builders unless you're a body builder.