Need to lose 7kg body fat over the winter

Anonymous

guttertrash wrote:

K, got some info back from Barry at optimumnutrition4sport. It sounds interesting. One thing though, is this plan all done over email. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it can't be done online, but i would have thought a consultation would involve a 1 on 1 so he can actually 'see' you.

You do go and see him...

I got my plan and then went to visit at my convenience. It's all included in the price...

You don't have to see him though.

liversedge

What's with this 'over the winter' thing?

7kg = 15.5 lbs or just over a stone. So if you can lose 1 or 2 pounds a week that should take somewhere in the region of 10 weeks, i.e. over Autumn.

I find that weight-loss is pretty straightforward - you need to be honest, determined and consistent.

1. Eat the right amount of food at the right times i.e. breakfast/lunch/dinner (i.e consistent)
2. Avoid consuming crap i.e. booze, sugar, fat (i.e honest)
3. Ride your bike as much as you can (i.e determined)

Do those 3 things and you'll be 7kgs lighter before Guy Fawkes Night.

Lots of folks will try and 'optimise' 1-2-3 by talking about glycemic indexes, metabolism shocks, insulin, HIIT etc. In my experience, they can help, but the #1 rule for weightloss is honesty.

Hope that helps.

simon johnson

NapoleonD wrote:

Diet -

Low GI carbs except during/after training.
Lean meats/fish
Eat good fats like nuts/seeds/fish oils.

Plenty Veg.

The fat will fall off.

It did for me, I lost 6kg body fat in 6 weeks. Put it back on during my hols but back doing it again and already lost 2kg in the last 10 days.

This is in addition to your training BTW...

I did this and lost 12 kilos in less than three months ( 5,8 ...82kg to 70kg), I never looked overweight just needed to get leaner and stop eating too much crap.

Squillinossett

huuregeil wrote:

Here's my take:

Diet
----
A good vegan diet is getting pretty damn near to as healthy as you can get. Lots of whole foods, protein from plant sources, high in fibre, low in fat. This is backed up by various studies linking vegetarian and pariticularly vegan diets with lower body weight, and a whole host of secondary benefits (e.g. reduced heart disease) - e.g. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 033106.php . It's also cheap! All the expensive things in your shopping basket will tend to be the chicken breasts etc. - rightly so, cos meat is expensive to produce.

Now, I do like my fish & meat and I have a soft spot for cheese in particular! I'm not going to go vegan :-) But, do take away the principles - lots of whole, plant-based foods and get your protein from beans & pulses if you can, reducing the amount of meat and dairy you eat. After that, try to eliminate processed carbs as much as possible. If you do this, you'll be on the right track. If in doubt, think like a vegan :-)

Exercise

---

Hit the gym for two high quality sessions targetting the "big" exercises with free weights - squats, deadlifts, pulls (pull-ups, rows), pushes (benches, shoulder press). These are the most effective for burning lots of calories and building muscle mass, which in turn boosts your base metabolic rate and helps with the weight loss. You only need (or should, actually, because of the recovery time you need) to do 2 or maybe 3 1-1.5hr sessions per week to see good gains.

The other sessions, swim for the full amount of time, and mix it up with intervals and shorter sets. Do weights one day, swim the next, followed by a rest day, so you're fresh for the gym again and can get a really good session in.

Do this and you'll be in shape in no time!

You wont be doing any of that if your in neg cals...

I think people really try to over complicate matters when it comes to weight loss.

Prior to cycling I bodybuilt for 6 years, during this time I tried alot of fantastically strange ways to cut each summer, the more complicated they were, the less they seemed to work.

There is a big difference is loosing WEIGHT and loosing FAT. I assume from what you are saying you want to loose fat, whilst keeping your LBM much the same.

The method that I found the best, and is one of the most tried and tested is AM pre fuel cardio. 5 mornings a week I did 45 mins on my spin bike, keeping my heart rate in-between 100-110. You do not want to go higher as in general this will tap into muscle reserves for fuel (bad)

This helped me get from my off season 14/15% down to 9/10% in 10-12 weeks whist loosing very little muscle.

Diet wise again, keep it simple, clean protein from fish or chicken, complex cards and fats from sources like olive oil and omega 3 (these fats will help promote fat loss)

Do not bother with any form of fat loss tablets as from my experience the only ones that work you cant buy in shops...

Any questions please feel free to ask, I will try to dig out my old journal on Muscle Talk so you can have a look at how I structured my 12 weeks and my week by week results.

Anonymous

+1 on the pre fuel cardio.

I've just got back from a 50mls flat ride, set of 1hr after waking, start on empty then after an hour have a banana, then te at the second hour too...

Works a treat for me.

guttertrash

I also did a 50 miler today, my first 50 miler in fact, and don't I know about it!

Was pretty exhausted by the time I got home. Mistakenly thought a small bowl of porridge would be enough fuel to get me through, although I did take an eccles cake to eat if I got hungry (which I did).

I blame the route - according to SportsTracks 44% of the route was ascent of 4,820 feet.

Still plucking up the courage to raise the nutrition plan idea with the missus... I need to find the right moment

If I don't end up doing the plan, then can anyone recommend a book with low GI recipes?

simon_e

Your body has got to a point where it is doing what you ask of it, having adapted to your lifestyle changes. Don't worry too much about the accuracy of your scales, what matters is whether your body fat (and weight) are going in the right direction. I think I read those scales are influenced by water levels so make sure you measure yourself at the same time of day, and no point doing it more than once a week. But why set it at 15% body fat? Why not set a target related to performance, or even your waistline, rather than an arbitrary percentage?

Drink lots, mostly plain water. Eat healthily, especially unprocessed and even raw food - fruit, veg, nuts, seeds, (sounds like homemade muesli, soak it overnight in water or skimmed milk). In fact, I'd suggest you follow neeb's advice in this thread.

If you can't find an alternative route for your commute (not even 1 or 2 days a week going 'the long way', if there is one?) then swimming and indoor cardio would be good - alternate with spinning classes or rowing machine, and do ab crunches and perhaps something like pilates or yoga. Not sure that pushing weights will benefit you as a cyclist or help you shed the fat.

Bear in mind that winter is not a good time to lose weight as that's when the body is naturally going to want to retain its fat stores. I find I get leaner once the days get longer, regardless of whether I'm trying or not. If there is a weakness such as drinking or the annual spending / bingeing opportunity called Christmas try to ration yourself - set limits beforehand. Self-discipline might not be easy (but then nothing worth achieving is easy) but you may surprise yourself by how good you feel by sticking to your limits and not giving in to temptation every time you spy the Quality Street tin. I'm not saying you should live like a Trappist monk, but if you have a goal try not to undo the good work too often.

volké

1) Eat at least 1g per lb of protein per day.
2) Work out your BMR - that's the minimum you have to eat each day.
3) Full-body weight sessions 3 times a week (Squats, Deadlifts, Benchpress, Shoulder Press and 1 other of your choice)
4) 30 minutes of interval training every day on the turbo trainer, do not do steady state. Work on speed rather than on endurance.
5) If you can, a long(ish) ride at the weekend to keep endurance up.
6) Come February, swap some of the interval training for actual cycling to build endurance.

Result:
You'll build a few kg of muscle.
You'll drop more than 7kg of fat
You'll be less than 15% body fat
You'll be faster
You'll have more endurance

Do not eat a 'vegan' diet and lift no weights. You won't get enough protein, you'll lose muscle and you'll end up looking 'skinny-fat'. Your calculations are that you'll be 15% body fat at 66kg. So you'll still be fat when you weigh 66kg, and that's assuming you don't burn any muscle from your body whilst doing this.

huuregeil

Volke,

I agree with your general training prescriptions, but 2.2x kg bodyweight of protein is way too much. As an active sportsperson, you need something more like 1.0-1.3x, which is actually difficult *not* to achieve given general calorie requirements. (Yes, even on a vegan diet!)

http://212.117.142.45/NR/rdonlyres/629A ... Sports.pdf

Also, don't dismiss a vegan diet; there's sound scientific evidence to suggest it's very helpful in weight loss, not least because it's naturally a low-GI diet, low in saturated fats, and it's low energy density increases your metabolic rate. As I said, while I'm not a vegan, the think-like-a-vegan approach to diet is a good one, both for weight and general health.

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v15/n ... 7270a.html
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/88/3/769

simon_e

huuregeil wrote:

don't dismiss a vegan diet; there's sound scientific evidence to suggest it's very helpful in weight loss, not least because it's naturally a low-GI diet, low in saturated fats, and it's low energy density increases your metabolic rate. As I said, while I'm not a vegan, the think-like-a-vegan approach to diet is a good one, both for weight and general health.

I'd say the same. A vegan diet is not counterproductive to losing weight while maintaining lean muscle, though I'm not saying it's better or worse than any other.

black_spring

i'm going to join in this thread - i'm currently about 63kg and want to cut down 5/6 kilos over the next few months and keep training throughoutt er..

The main problem is motivation to stick to a 'clean' diet, especially when trapped in a inhospitable/non-diet friendly office.

what sort of diet have people found to be most effective? Low carbohydrates is ok for 2/3 days and then I give into bread!

joeyhalloran

Anyone got any good recipe ideas? I am a student so doing things on the cheap the easiest thing to grab off the shelves in normally a large bag of pasta and/or a tin of baked beans. This year I am gonna lose weight but am at a loss of what to eat.

LJAR

you don't want to go low carbs if you are training!

When I was at my skinniest (72kg) I was resigned to the fact I was going to eat chocolate biscuits almost everyday.

As such I assumed I would, adjusted the rest of diet for the extra calories in biccies and felt a lot better for it.

So eat away, just remember how much you have eaten and it won't cause a problem!

rdt

JoeyHalloran wrote:

Anyone got any good recipe ideas? I am a student so doing things on the cheap the easiest thing to grab off the shelves in normally a large bag of pasta and/or a tin of baked beans. This year I am gonna lose weight but am at a loss of what to eat.

One of the best skills in life you can have is to cook well yourself. You're in charge of your own dietary destiny then, and it opens the door to one of the finest pleasures in life (along with birds, booze and bikes, obviously) - eating great food.

If you don't know much about cooking, "Beyond Baked Beans - real food for students" by Fiona Beckett should help feed and educate you a bit. The only downside is there's no pictures in it to inspire you.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Baked-Be ... 1899791833

The BBC Good Food magazine & books are great sources of recipes, and zillions of them are online, grouped into sensible categories. e.g. 'student' recipes:-
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/reci ... s/student/

Most of this is decent, healthy stuff. The key to weight control then becomes discipline: discipline in your portion control, and the discipline of not eating other things (espesh junk) in between. If there's some junk food you have a weak spot for, just don't allow it in your cupboards in the first place. That way, you don't need to battle temptation every day - just the once a week you go down the soopy.

joeyhalloran

yup, thats why I have banned myself from chocolate (done it before and it does work) until 2011.

thanks for the websites/book! looks great!

rdt

JoeyHalloran wrote:

yup, thats why I have banned myself from chocolate (done it before and it does work) until 2011.

thanks for the websites/book! looks great!

I see there's a "budget" version of that book, for cheaper recipes, so that may be worth a look instead:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Baked-Be ... 904573452/

Although I've not used it myself, this book "Nosh 4 Students" is along the same lines, and also sounds good (well reviewed), plus it has pictures, which are a big help and give inspiration to cook stuff:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nosh-Students-S ... 954317939/

Best of luck!

huuregeil

+1 rdt

I'd second your sentiments completely, rdt. Despite the media image, Jamie Oliver's books are excellent in this regard (e.g. Jamie at Home, Jamie's Dinners), because they teach you no-nonsense cooking and he has a way of distilling the process to the absolute essentials, while turning out great food.

Also, good cooking doesn't have to be expensive. My second suggestion would be to learn how to cook beans & pulses. Extremely healthy and extremely cheap! E.g. a lentil soup made from a cup of rice, a cup of red lentils, an onion, a stock cube, (optional curry powder + chilli) plus whatever veggies you can throw at it (e.g. carrots, cabbage, potatoes) all thrown into a pan and cooked for a bit is delicious, nutritionally balanced and costs peanuts.

mclarent

I'm aiming to get down to 80kgs by the start of next season, I'm using the myfitnesspal iPhone app for a food exercise and weight diary. I love playing with my iPhone, so bizarrely I'm enjoying something that I expected to be tedious!!

simon_e

black_spring wrote:

i'm going to join in this thread - i'm currently about 63kg and want to cut down 5/6 kilos over the next few months and keep training throughoutt er..

Are you sure you need to lose 5kg? 63kg is 10 stone, hardly a heavyweight (unless you're 3'6").

black_spring wrote:

what sort of diet have people found to be most effective? Low carbohydrates is ok for 2/3 days and then I give into bread!

Low carb diets are IMHO a rather extreme and counterintuitive step to take and can lead to ketosis and even kidney damage. I wouldn't do that to my body, thanks. As I said before, lots of fresh fruit & veg, ration / avoid naughty food (processed foods or laden with animal fats) and too much alcohol. Also try not to resort to bread, biscuits and other high GI / carbohydrate-dense foods for snacking.

joeyhalloran

I don't think low carb diets work for cylists, but choosing when to eat the carbs is important.

G-Wiz

I used tips from this for ages.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Guide- ... 0713667419

Pretty basic book, and the most useful bit is straightforward lunchtime and snack recipes you can find in your local cornershop rather than some that are too difficult to follow.

Having a decent selection of easy to cook stuff is really important if you're coming home knackered and having to cook for yourself.

olib85

Everything you will ever need to know about losing weight.....

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/

ag_glover

guttertrash wrote:

OK. I have been losing weight over the past couple of years, going from 95 kilograms down to 73 kilograms. My body fat has gone from about 35% to 25%.

Over the winter, I would like to lose another 7kg of body fat which would take me down to about 15% body fat, without losing much more weight, so I know that means doing some muscle building as well as fat burning workouts.

I would love to do a proper diet, but to be honest, I don't have the kind of money going spare to have a specific diet just for me. I don't particularly eat bad - but I do have a chocolate weakness every now and then. I think the diet is the area I need help on, but one that isn't going to cost an arm and a leg. I can't afford to be eating chicken breast every day of the week, so need a realistic one. I'm hoping i can manage the diet by carrying on as I currently do, but just cut the portion sizes down.

I know I don't drink enough water - probably only two or three glasses a day, and I know that 1 or two cans of diet coke a day probably does more harm than good regards hydration.

As I won't be able to ride to work again till the spring after the end of this month, I will be joining the local gym again for six months to try and get rid of the extra body fat over the winter. I'll also be getting into swimming again, after not doing it for about 15 years.

So ideas? What kind of work should I be doing in the gym? Can probably spare around three or four evenings a week at about an hour per visit, and maybe a half hour swim after that. The gym has pretty much all the equipment, and classes for spinning and body pump which I thought may be worthwhile.

Cut out/down alcohol, makes a very quick difference in my experience.

mclarent

ag_glover wrote:

Cut out/down alcohol, makes a very quick difference in my experience.

+1

itboffin

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

390w for half an hour would be 700 kcals

easy 8)

195 for 1 hr would be the same

easi.... er 8)

Okay smarty pants how without a power meter does one calculate WATTS?

APIII

liversedge wrote:

What's with this 'over the winter' thing?

7kg = 15.5 lbs or just over a stone. So if you can lose 1 or 2 pounds a week that should take somewhere in the region of 10 weeks, i.e. over Autumn.

I find that weight-loss is pretty straightforward - you need to be honest, determined and consistent.

1. Eat the right amount of food at the right times i.e. breakfast/lunch/dinner (i.e consistent)
2. Avoid consuming crap i.e. booze, sugar, fat (i.e honest)
3. Ride your bike as much as you can (i.e determined)

Do those 3 things and you'll be 7kgs lighter before Guy Fawkes Night.

Lots of folks will try and 'optimise' 1-2-3 by talking about glycemic indexes, metabolism shocks, insulin, HIIT etc. In my experience, they can help, but the #1 rule for weightloss is honesty.

Hope that helps.

+1
I'm a stone heavier after letting myself go a bit over the summer (cycling objectives were achieved in June, so I had the summer off). Paying a little more attention to diet, and increasing the mileage will see this gone over the next couple of months. I guess it depends on what level you are coming from. If you are already riding/exercising the most you can fit in in a week, it can only come from diet.

D@VE

If you can do is Fitness - Boot Camp Workout 1-6.
you'll get here in no time :shock: i think i lost 3kg just watching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfNA_lmkHM&feature=related

bexley5200

you think its bad for you ive got to lose 4 st over the winter but i am determend to lose the weight and get cycling again after a lay of of about a year,after cycling for 15 years,too many cakes and kfc ps i have started doing training on my turbo daily and walking 1/2 hour a day and cutting back on the food and fat intake

plankton_brain

I was (am) chocoholic. I converted myself from milk chocolate to dark. With Milk chocolate stuff I cannot stop until its all gone. Now on the dark side (90% coca) I can put a chunk in and let it dissolve slow, then Im ok. A bar will last a week or more.

Apparently high in phytochemicals to. Its probably better to eak it than not eat it.

This exchange wont lose you 7kg over winter, but youve gotta live at the same time.

SteveR_100Milers

mclarent wrote:

ag_glover wrote:

Cut out/down alcohol, makes a very quick difference in my experience.

+1

+2 remember its energy in vs energy out. I know that my biggest over induelgence is guinness / wine. I add betwen 1500 - 3000Kcals a weel from booze, and that a lot of miles + hunger pains to offset!