Weight loss - mental strength....

hulla the hulla

elmsallmissile wrote:

I have drunk at least a pint, sometimes more of full fat milk (3.6%) per day and have lost 32lbs since the beginning of July, if it's the Devil's work bring him on!

That's all well and good but completely out of context as we don't know what your diet is, what your exercise regime is, your body composition etc etc. If it, works for you then great but general opinion is that dairy is not helpful in weight loss. Who's to say that you wouldn't have lost more weight if you hadn't drunk milk every day...?

hulla the hulla

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

I'm all for cutting down on carbs - although I don't really need to lose weight, 4 or 5 lbs maybe to be at best racing weight - but I get nervy about running out of steam on training rides.

Like if you're hammering it hard on a 2 or 3 hour club run and you've had minimal carbs all day, something's gonna give isn't it?

Totally agree, correct fuelling is essential so care is needed if making high demands on the body. Again, intelligent nutrition playing a vital role.

elmsallmissile

hulla the hulla wrote:

elmsallmissile wrote:

I have drunk at least a pint, sometimes more of full fat milk (3.6%) per day and have lost 32lbs since the beginning of July, if it's the Devil's work bring him on!

That's all well and good but completely out of context as we don't know what your diet is, what your exercise regime is, your body composition etc etc. If it, works for you then great but general opinion is that dairy is not helpful in weight loss. Who's to say that you wouldn't have lost more weight if you hadn't drunk milk every day...?

If I had lost "more" weight it wouldn't be considered "healthy" would it?

Pokerface

The point is, you could eat cheeseburgers every day and still lose weight.

It depends on lots of factors but essentially you have to make cuts somewhere else. So yes, you can drink a pint of milk a day and lose weight, but you obviously had to cut something else out.

If you had cut the full fat milk out (or down) then you could have had more of something else, or your weight loss would have been easier.

I lost 6 stone in 3 months and have kept it off for 4 years. And I ate Haribo daily while doing it. I still eat Haribo daily.

But I rarely drink milk

KnightOfTheLongTights

hulla the hulla wrote:

Eggs are fine as they are not dairy

you know what, that's a very good point, ha! But I'm sure in some sort of weird nutritionists / dietician categorisation thing, eggs are included as 'dairy' aren't they? or am I talking total b * llocks?

One thing I've always believed in is allowing yourself to eat things that you like, whatever they are. Doing lots of hard exercise is difficult enough, without living like a monk.

I'm a big fan of cake, chocolate and biscuits - particularly with tea / coffee. Find it imposs. to have a brew without having 'something with it'. So if I'm trying to shed a couple of lbs, I'll keep a bar of posh dark chocolate handy and just have a couple of squares to satisfy that craving at the cost of minimal cals.

(But my exercise regime means I can generally sustain cakes and biscuits too...)

BillyMansell

Peejay56 wrote:

I've been trying to lose weight all this year with mixed results. Plenty of riding including my 50 mile commute three times per week - but...
When cutting down on food, how do you cope with the hunger pains, and, when you've eaten not having the feeling of satisfaction you're "full".
I know lots of you have lost weight and have gone through this, have you any tips or advice to combat these feelings? I know it's "all in the head" but it feels like mental torture.

Thanks, Pete.

Okay, I'm going to do something really odd here and answer the OPs question about mental strength rather than just bang on one-dimensionally about 'diet, diet, diet!'


Losing weight isn't one dimensional and the more dimensions or motivations you can have the better your chance of success against the quite small negative side effects of hunger pangs.

Create a list of what would be the benefits of losing weight including short, mid and long term benefits as you will ask yourself 'why?' on a daily basis, you'll question whether you've made any improvement each week/month and you will question whether you'll ever achieve your end goal.

For example, some cycling motivations could be; you'll be lighter on the bike, find it easier to commute, get less sweaty and enjoy cycling even more.

Some non-cycling motivations could be; by eating less you save money, produce less food waste and rubbish to landfill/recycling, possibly use the car less on shopping trips, be fitter, slimmer and possibly more attractive...

whatever the list of motivations are for you, the more you have, and with strong co-dependencies, the stronger you'll be at sticking to your goals even when the hunger pangs strike, and as time goes by and you have your motivations reaffirmed then the easier it will become to stick to your aims.

Oh and yes, it's all in your head - your not really hungry it's just that you're not being as full as you used to.

HTH

hulla the hulla

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

hulla the hulla wrote:

Eggs are fine as they are not dairy

you know what, that's a very good point, ha! But I'm sure in some sort of weird nutritionists / dietician categorisation thing, eggs are included as 'dairy' aren't they? or am I talking total b * llocks?

One thing I've always believed in is allowing yourself to eat things that you like, whatever they are. Doing lots of hard exercise is difficult enough, without living like a monk.

I'm a big fan of cake, chocolate and biscuits - particularly with tea / coffee. Find it imposs. to have a brew without having 'something with it'. So if I'm trying to shed a couple of lbs, I'll keep a bar of posh dark chocolate handy and just have a couple of squares to satisfy that craving at the cost of minimal cals.

(But my exercise regime means I can generally sustain cakes and biscuits too...)

Debatable about the eggs thing, I asked the wife as I was typing the response and she said "eggs, yeah of course they are dairy..." so it depends on your POV - I think it's because they often get lumped together so people see them as one.

On your other point - totally agree as well, life would be f'ing awful if we couldn't treat ourselves ! I'm a sucker for a curry and the occasional beer but everything in moderation is a good rule. The issues come to those that don't exercise as they have lower calorific needs or routes to work off unwanted calorie intake.

@BillyMansell - you of course totally right, we have strayed off into nutrition and have pretty much ignored the OP question. I whole heartedly agree with all you points, especially around contextualising "Why" you are trying to cut down in the first place.

With a combination of nutrition and psychology, what could go wrong !

hulla the hulla

BillyMansell wrote:

rather than just bang on one-dimensionally about 'diet, diet, diet!'

- don't think of it as banging on, more healthy debate on a topic that is close to a lot of health conscious riders hearts

Pokerface

To further what @BillyMansell said - for motivation...


I have kept a photo of me looking slimmer and in my Ireland kit on the fridge and in the living room in the past. When I would go to the fridge to snack, I would see the photo and it would remind me why I needed to lose weight (or keep the weight off) and would (sometimes) deter me from overeating.

Tracking calories and daily (yes DAILY) weight also helped motivate me. It became a bit of a contest to see how much I could lose. And I realised that by tracking daily some days the weight would go up, etc.

I buy nice bike things (clothes, parts, etc) and it helps me want to ride.

And these days... I'm (personally) motivated by winning medals. I think I will hang a Rainbow Jersey in the living room by my turbo trainer to help me through the winter sessions! Remind me what I have to defend!

snoblett

Pokerface wrote:

I lost 6 stone in 3 months and have kept it off for 4 years.

How!?

Pokerface

snoblett wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

I lost 6 stone in 3 months and have kept it off for 4 years.

How!?

Lost it on a low fat, low carb and high protein diet. And lots and lots of road miles. It was lower intensity because I didn't have the carbs I needed for high intensity efforts. It was prior to my racing days so I could ride at low intensity and wasn't training for anything.

Have kept it off with a balanced diet and lots of exercise!

Nancy Luger

Tom Dean wrote:

lose

ha ha my pet peeve as well.

snuff playboys or coke dessies?

styxd

Eat natural foods, dont eat too much, do a bit of exercise. Jobs a goodun.

Eggs arent made from milk so I dont think they're dairy.

keef66

An egg is not a dairy product!

Milk, cream, butter, yoghurt and cheese are all dairy products.

An egg is just a very young chicken.

mattshrops

the rainbow bands are one sweet motivational tool- woohoo 8) 8)
my eggs come from the garden you cannot beat fresh eggs-and they dont have many calories, medium egg 80 cals?
Ooh ive just spotted that of course you CAN beat fresh eggs :roll:

OP you will get used to smaller portions.
Anyone struggling- try to change things around a bit(bit like doing some different training) try to almost trick your body into action again.Re-examine your diet/nutrition, small things can make a difference. like ditch vegetable oil and only use olive oil. keep learning and keep trying. maybe try the 5 or 6 meals for a while? We are all different.

mattshrops

keef- most eggs are unfertilised so technically they are in fact a chickens period

Anyone hungry?

SBezza

I have lost loads of weight, and did it by eating sensibly, which meant cutting out alot of processed rubbish, and smaller portions, and more frequent meals/snacks.

There is no need to cut out ANY food group, dairy is fine, if eaten in moderation, as is carbs. Alot of the food we eat is carbs, so you can't get away from them. You just need to eat whole foods in the main. Try to eat protein with every meal, it fills you up, and lowers the GI of the carbs you eat, and hence insulin spikes are not as great, though eating lower GI foods is a good start anyhow.

Fructose in fruit is no where near as bad as manufactured fructose, and even the most heavily ladden fruit calories wise is likely to be a banana, and with only 100 calories, doesn't really represent alot of sugars.

One thing to avoid is trying to lose too much weight each week, the body will start breaking down more protein rather than use fat predominately. Best way I have seen with losing weight, is a slow process, aim to lower calorie intake by around 10-20% daily, based on your Rest Metabolice Rate and Exercise added on top.

There is no magic bullet, and you can lose weight various ways, but after having lost 45 kgs and kept it off for about 2+ years now I do think the slow long term way is the more sustainable way. Pokerface did it slightly differently, though to be honest I think his way wouldn't work for alot of people, alot of people put the weight back on when they go to a normal balanced diet, as they can't control the calorie intake.

Pigtail

A lot of what we eat is about habit - finish your supper then an hour later have a bag of crisps etc. You do it because you always/ usually do it and your body has come to expect it.

What you need to do is break the habits and replace them with more positive ones. I'm with SBezza here, slow and steady, which gives you the time to make long-term changes.

So find diversions, do something different (get out on the bike a while?) but above all don't dwell on it! Sitting thinking how hungry you are is not going to work. Find healthier replacements with less calories, rather than leaving gaps.

My biggest problem was lunchtime. For over twenty years I have eaten shop bought sandwiches at lunch during the week, with occasional hot food in cold weather. A small shop near my work started selling 5 items of fruit for £1 and that has now become pretty much my lunch. That single change probably had the biggest impact for me.

KnightOfTheLongTights

I think it's easier for a lot of the fitter posters to forget what it's like to 'really' need to lose weight - I've just fallen into that trap with my posts.

I and others on here are coming from the position of doing, by most standards, a huge amount of exercise each week, some of it at a very high intensity.

So my (or their) diet guidelines are almost certainly not going to work for someone who wants to lose a stone or more.

Even with a tough exercise regime, I'm a few lbs above my absolute best racing weight, so by the very strictest standards, I 'overeat' myself.

stonehouse

but after having lost 45 kgs

Chapeau!

I was puzzled why with over 5000 calories of exercise a week I was struggling to keep my weight down as I don't eat excessively.

Having just had a VO2 max test and found that I had almost no aerobic capacity, it would seem that the culprit was a poorly judged ramp test last year, knocking my heart rate zones out by a sufficient amount that when I thought I was training aerobically, I was actually threshold training, and when I thought I was training @ threshold I was actually Anaerobic! No wonder they felt such hard work...

I'm hoping that correcting that will sort out my weight loss plan.

SBezza

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

I think it's easier for a lot of the fitter posters to forget what it's like to 'really' need to lose weight - I've just fallen into that trap with my posts.

I and others on here are coming from the position of doing, by most standards, a huge amount of exercise each week, some of it at a very high intensity.

So my (or their) diet guidelines are almost certainly not going to work for someone who wants to lose a stone or more.

Even with a tough exercise regime, I'm a few lbs above my absolute best racing weight, so by the very strictest standards, I 'overeat' myself.

I am in the same position now, and I know how hard it is to lose those few pounds, damn sight easier to lose weight when I was massively overweight. The same process applies however, it is just you need to be extermely careful of what you eat to what you burn off, and doing even more slowly still.

It is so easy to actually overeat whilst training hard, I don't lose much weight at all whilst racing, as I am concerned at getting the best recovery, and hence probably eat just enough to maintain weight. People also tend to over estimate the calories burnt as well which doesn't help obviously.

ozzy1000_0

in my earlier reply on this thread i was extolling the virtues of going low carb for weight loss.... however I take it all back....

It does work if you want to loose weight but it also makes you very prone to over-reaching. In my first week of very limiting my diet and carbs I felt fantastic on my bike, really light and quick (for me anyway!!) but after four weeks of pushing myself quite hard I have run out of beans and i'm knackered and look worn out.... I have gone from 82kg to 78.5kg in four'ish weeks, I did an 80miler last sunday, which i thought i'd have felt ok for, and I still don't really feel recovered from it now (friday)... I tried to do a 65-70%HR spin for 50mins on my turbo on tuesday just to see if it perked me up but alas I'm in a funk...... feeling a tad better today after eating shed loads of carbs and meat for dinner last night, but basically I think I've over-reached abit..

the little graph on this page sums it up nicely;

http://heatdoc.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

I'm supposed to be riding the exmoor beast next weekend so hopefully I'll feel more spritely for it.. the quesion remains; ride tommorrow? or not ride tommorrow?

I'm a total Div'!!!




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meanredspider

ozzy1000_0 wrote:

the little graph on this page sums it up nicely;

http://heatdoc.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

The logic that guy uses is the same as a book I've been using on-and-off for a while. In it, the author argues for the slow day & fast day alternated. On the slow days (below 70%), your reliance on glycogen is minimal and your body adapts to burn more fat. Both of these things help you on your fast days. He has a very similar chart and a very similar analogy to the candle wick/wax (his is BBQ lighter fluid and charcoal).

The book is Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat [sic] Idiot by John L Parker Jnr.

The hard part, though, is going that slow.

fuzzynavel

+1 for primal/Caveman/Paleo here for weight loss.

I have noticed, though, on full out efforts I have less stamina...which kind of follows the trend in the link that Ozzy1000_0 posted

I've been primal since 6th August and have lost approx 1 stone..(94kg to 87kg)..

In that time I have increased the lifts that I am able to do in the gym so no muscle depletion...The vascularity in my muscles has increased and overall body shape has changed. I am now lighter than I have been since I passed this weight growing up...
I'm still losing it at a rate of 1lb or so per week.

I just have to remember to carb load the day before a turbo session.

bigdaveskinnytyre

Calories in versus calories out has worked pretty well for me since August; my wife decided to join a calories counting website (www.weighlossresources.co.uk) back in July and I loosely followed what she was doing for a few weeks and dropped from 89kg to 87. I joined myself on 30 August at 87Kg, since then I have dropped to 78Kg with a goal of 75kg, the loss has been pretty easy and consistent and I've done this having a fairly regular intake of kebabs and curry (seriously at least one chicken shish and a curry most weeks).

It probably helps that I batter myself senseless during most workouts but even on a base intake of less than 1800kcal I did a 100+km ride last weekend in 3 and a quarter hours (the more I lose the faster I get)