Lots of Cycling and Little Weight Loss

TimmyVee

Hello All - Hoping some of the group might be able to help with this predicament.

I am doing lots of cycling but not dropping any weight.

I am cycling about 70 km five times a week for my commute. Burn about 3,600 calories per day cycling, plus another 2,100 per day just being alive. I eat very clean (no sugar, no fruit juice, or booze) and try to consume about 3,000 calories a day on my cycling days. Cycled about 3,200 km so far in 2016 but the weight doesn't want to move (dropped about 3 kgs since Jan 1st.)

Age: 43
Weight: 110 kgs
BMR: 2,100

Any advice would be most welcome - or if you need more info please let me know.

Thanks - Tim.

markhewitt1978

What's your height?

When it comes down to it it's all about Calories in vs Calories out. So if you got a measure of your calories in and it's less than your calories out and you're not losing, then either one or both of those measurements are wrong.

Usual advice is to start logging everything you're eating, using the likes of My Fitness Pal, that'll give you a clearer indication of your intake.

What are you using to measure your cycling output? As calories measured using some fitness trackers can be wildly wrong, some can show as much as double others for the same ride.

TimmyVee

markhewitt1978 wrote:

What's your height?

When it comes down to it it's all about Calories in vs Calories out. So if you got a measure of your calories in and it's less than your calories out and you're not losing, then either one or both of those measurements are wrong.

Usual advice is to start logging everything you're eating, using the likes of My Fitness Pal, that'll give you a clearer indication of your intake.

What are you using to measure your cycling output? As calories measured using some fitness trackers can be wildly wrong, some can show as much as double others for the same ride.

Height is 6'3" or 190 cm.

Food is already being tracked via MFP and I use Strava to estimate calories burned.

0ced0

markhewitt1978 wrote:

What's your height?

When it comes down to it it's all about Calories in vs Calories out.

that is actually NOT true. need to take the macros into account. all calories are not equal.

TimmyVee

Here is a link to my ride to work this morning (the route is quite typical, but I mix it up with more hills some weeks.)

https://www.strava.com/activities/542016956

If the number look out of whack - then that will help me adjust things.

markhewitt1978

TimmyVee wrote:

I use Strava to estimate calories burned.

Do you use a heart rate monitor, or power meter? Is your weight up to date?

slowmart

All calories are not equal, what's the fat, carb and protein split of your daily intake? while determining % split I'd reduce your daily calorie allowance by 10% and see what happens after two weeks.

It depends how detailed you want to go, working out what your body needs in relation to the stress your placing on it by riding and eating the appropriate calorie count to aim for .5kg a week in weight loss

fenix

I'd reckon you're not burning anywhere near 3500 calories on the bike.

That's about 44 miles a day you do ? (chapeau)

If I ran it - it would be about 4400 calories a day burnt. Ish...

Cycling is much more efficient than running. I'd think you're probably burning ooh 1500 calories a day with it ?

I know that according to my powermeter - I can do about 600 calories an hour - but that hour is a lot harder than I'd go riding to work. Does it take you about 90 mins each way or so ?

TimmyVee

markhewitt1978 wrote:

Do you use a heart rate monitor, or power meter? Is your weight up to date?

No HR monitor. Resting HR is 58 and avg HR during rides is 150 (max HR is 170 for big efforts.) I know this as I have used a borrowed HR monitor in the past and had a VO2 Max test last year.

Weight is up to date.

For the power meter I used a bike with a power meter to cross reference / validate Strava and there is no major difference (15% maybe.)

TimmyVee

Fenix wrote:

I'd reckon you're not burning anywhere near 3500 calories on the bike.

That's about 44 miles a day you do ? (chapeau)

If I ran it - it would be about 4400 calories a day burnt. Ish...

Cycling is much more efficient than running. I'd think you're probably burning ooh 1500 calories a day with it ?

I know that according to my powermeter - I can do about 600 calories an hour - but that hour is a lot harder than I'd go riding to work. Does it take you about 90 mins each way or so ?

These are the questions i am trying to find he answer to.

Yes - I cycle 45 miles a day five times a week.

According to all the various calculators I have found the calories burned always come out the same based on the effort I am putting in. Time is about 90 mins each way (would be quicker but for traffic, lights, crazy bastards, etc.)

fenix

Calculators can be bobbins though and I know that my garmin really over estimates the calories burned.

If you know what calories you're taking in - and you're not losing weight but balancing the calories burned - then the number of calories burnt must be over estimated ?

The body is amazingly efficient unfortunately.

TimmyVee

Fenix wrote:

Calculators can be bobbins though and I know that my garmin really over estimates the calories burned.

If you know what calories you're taking in - and you're not losing weight but balancing the calories burned - then the number of calories burnt must be over estimated ?

The body is amazingly efficient unfortunately.

I hear you - and thanks for your thoughts.

napoleond

Track your macros on MFP. I plateaud ages ago, I started tracking the macros a week ago and am already seeing and feeling the benefits.

Use this calculator to find out what those macros should be (you automatically subscribe, it's worth it! Not spam, these guys are great and they don't talk any nonsense)

http://propanefitness.com/calculator/

teebs_123

Something isn't right in your Strava settings

332 Average Watts (appreciate this is strava rubbish, but it's based off something you've told it)
15.8mph
1900 calories or so

I'd estimate you'd be burning around 1,000 calories per ride at that pace/incline. In fact, I would estimate your Watts & Calories to be around 1/2 whats it's telling you.

markhewitt1978

Strava basically needs at least a heart rate monitor and preferably HRM & power meter before it starts to even get anywhere close.

My ride from yesterday with HRM&power https://www.strava.com/activities/540989162
1,000 calories which seems about right.

teebs_123

markhewitt1978 wrote:

Strava basically needs at least a heart rate monitor and preferably HRM & power meter before it starts to even get anywhere close.

My ride from yesterday with HRM&power https://www.strava.com/activities/540989162
1,000 calories which seems about right.

Looks pretty spot on for me.

kajjal

You are doing the right thing eating healthily and varying food intake depending on exercise level. Rather than go too much into stats listen to your body, as long as you don't eat alot of junk food / snacks it will be very effective at letting you know when to eat. You don't have to stick to fixed meal times and quantities just avoid over or under eating. I am guessing at the moment you are eating a little more than you need. Just don't starve yourself as it causes binge eating and poor cycling performance.

If you are training to compete then controlled diets, gadgets and stats do help alot.

stu-bim

Without sounding too blunt you are eating too many calories, not excessively buy more than you need to achieve weight loss

You are about the same weight as me and I would use up about 60-65 kcal per mile when cycling, that is about 2,700 kcal per day for you

IME, weight loss is a bit different than weight maintenance
Weight maintenance is fairly formulaic, kCal in vs kCal out

But your body will compensate for a lack of calories when you up the exercise stakes
And weight loss is driven by hormonal responses as well as the simple maths above, i.e. in and out

At the start of 2013 I was 267 lbs and had not been exercising in a while
Started cycling and dropped off about 45 lbs over 6 months

It was not straight lines and according to MFP and garmin was using up as many calories as I consumed some days

Depending on your level of activity before cycling you could have put on between 2-5 kgs of muscle around the leg and ass area. In early 2013 my things measured 32'' from cycling but quickly came down after a few more months of it.

The initial increase in activity will force muscles to hydrate in addition to growing and your legs and ass account for a lot of muscle mass, pushing 110kg causes a lot growth in your legs

So if you had added muscle of 5kgs and lost 3kg of bodyweight, that is 8 kgs of fat
It is better to measure yourself around the waist than rely on a scales to see if your body is getting leaner and not just lighter. Also if the riding is getting easier then you must be adding muscle as well as getting fitter

Try and cut your calories by about 200-300 per day and see how you get on, nothing excessive or it could screw up the work you are putting in

Also, maybe throw in some other exercise to help maintain muscle mass rather than starving your body


Edit: I tried looking back at MFP from 2013. I was eating around 1,750 to 2,250 kCal per day but less mileage than you are doing, maybe 300/400 miles per month

TimmyVee

Okay - thanks to everyone for your inputs and thoughts. I ran the ride I did on the way home tonight through BikeCalculator.com and it confirmed what many of you have said (screen shot below). Thank you.

So - it looks like I am burning about 1,700 cals a day from cycling, and about 2,100 a day from being alive. Total burn of 3,800 give or take a day. Food intake today is about 3,080 cals (which is normal - and all decent whole foods) and loads of water.

My clothes are getting bigger - and I have gone from a size 36" jean to a size 34" this year - and my thighs are nearly 29" so I am guessing that I might not be losing weight but toning up. However, it would be nice to see the scales heading southwards as well.

As a bit of background I went from 145 kgs in March 2014 to 110 kgs as of now via cycling, T25, and healthy eating - so I know a fair bit about sweating off the fat. I hit a plateau around December last year - and that's when I decided to up the ante and crank out some bigger miles to overcome that plateau, which hasn't really happened (which is a bit disappointing.) My aim is to get to 100 kgs this year.

I will think about cutting down the food - but cycling so much really does make me starving nearly all the time, and without eating a substantial amount I feel exhausted. I guess that somethings gotta give in this equation though.

Thanks for all your inputs

Sleeper Service

Hmm...

At 6'3" and 243 lbs I make your BMR to be 2,100 and your sedentary TDEE to be 2,500. If you're cycling that circuit five times a week then you're burning 1,250 per day on average (over 7 days) on top of that, giving a total of 3,750 to maintain weight. To lose two pounds a week (which is a good level for you to go for) you would need to consume 7,000 Kcal less than you use, which is 1,000 Kcal a day. This gives you an average of 2,750 Kcal a day to play with. Pretty easy.

Composition of food is relatively unimportant for weight loss, and 'eating clean' is a fairly meaningless term. That said, if you want to maintain muscle mass and not get that dreaded skinny fat look then you should be looking at about 1.5g/kg of bodyweight of protein a day. Again, the source of this is unimportant. Oh, and you'll need to do heavy resistance training twice a week too.

stu-bim

Ignore the scales in the short term and stick to the measuring tape.

Waist size is more of a determinent of health wrt to diabetes, heart attack, stroke etc. A 34 inch waist is not excessive.

If you are riding and eating consistently at the scales is stuck try a quiet well of both. See how the body reacts. Above I said leave scales out but if you try an 'rest week' your body may rebound with weight loss. Your body will fight you sometimes, hormones are a funny thing. A rest allows the muscles time to recover and grow and the reduced relative calories can force leaning out. Your BMR will be a lot higher than it was and will not fall through the floor from 2/3 rested days in a week.

I try to train 3 weeks hard 1 week easier and the easy week is when the body feels leaner

EDIt: great work at grtting35kgs off, so if none of the info here helps, keep doing what you have been doing and have faith in yourself

DDRider62

You also have to take into account that muscle mass weighs 3 times as much as fat. If you are starting to ride and building up muscles in your legs, and getting stronger, you may actually be losing fat even though the number is not going down. It is possible that you gain some weight initially. But if you feel fitter, your clothes start to feel less tight, then you are actually losing fat. Keep riding, and eventually the number should come down. I bike about 4,500 miles a year and my experience is that I would drop a pound for every 100 miles. But this is not a rule, it's just the way it was for me. Keep cyclying. You will drop a lot of weight.

markhewitt1978

Good stuff. Happens to a lot of people who say they are plateuing with their weight loss and the scales aren't moving, but at the same time their pants are getting slacker. Just means that your body is redoing some things in adaptation to the work you're doing, the weightloss will resume as long as you keep at it.

Good luck!

part time waster

I needed to shift a few pounds and tried 3 turbo sessions a week. 10 mins warm up , a 15 second hard sprint every 2 mins times 10 then 5 min warm down.
In all 35 mins turbo.
This seemed to raise my metabolic rate and kick start fat loss. I don't think 3x35 mins commuting pace would have made the same difference to fat burning.
I ride 60 to 90 miles club pace with some good efforts on the hills , sundays.
After 8 weeks I noticed the weight start to fly off. I also eat good food , and hardly have any beer,

0ced0

put in a few sprint efforts into your rides, that will crank up metabolism.
eat healthy fats : almonds, avocados, fish.
avoid red meats and pork at all costs.

homers_double

What's wrong with pork? Isn't it classed as lean white meat?

markhewitt1978

part time waster wrote:

I needed to shift a few pounds and tried 3 turbo sessions a week. 10 mins warm up , a 15 second hard sprint every 2 mins times 10 then 5 min warm down.
In all 35 mins turbo.
This seemed to raise my metabolic rate and kick start fat loss. I don't think 3x35 mins commuting pace would have made the same difference to fat burning.
I ride 60 to 90 miles club pace with some good efforts on the hills , sundays.
After 8 weeks I noticed the weight start to fly off. I also eat good food , and hardly have any beer,

I'm doing 30-45 minutes turbo most mornings, but I normally don't do big efforts, which is remiss really, I should. I use Zwift so I have no excuses as to not having the tools!

ugo.santalucia

Somehow you eat more than you think. If you cook yourself, it's easy to pile up the calories in olive oil or other condiments.
I don't endorse ready meals or tinned food at all, but if you want to have accurate maths, that's the way to go, provided the data on the box are accurate. It's surprising how little food there is in 800 calories, for instance

keef66

If weight loss is you goal, it's far more effective to do it by eating less than by exercising more. Measure and weigh everything you eat for a week. It's too easy to bump up portion sizes.

As above, get a HRM if you want a more accurate figure for cals burned. My Garmin nearly doubles it's estimate for calories if I forget the HRM.

If you get stuck, give the 5:2 intermittent fasting thing a go.

markhewitt1978

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I don't endorse ready meals or tinned food at all, but if you want to have accurate maths, that's the way to go, provided the data on the box are accurate. It's surprising how little food there is in 800 calories, for instance

That's the difficulty I would have with calorie counting, in that meals are often made from a dozen different components, and weighing them all out then figuring out how much if it I actually ate is very difficult. As you say, easier with ready meals which have the kcal written on the front!

buckmulligan

markhewitt1978 wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I don't endorse ready meals or tinned food at all, but if you want to have accurate maths, that's the way to go, provided the data on the box are accurate. It's surprising how little food there is in 800 calories, for instance

That's the difficulty I would have with calorie counting, in that meals are often made from a dozen different components, and weighing them all out then figuring out how much if it I actually ate is very difficult. As you say, easier with ready meals which have the kcal written on the front!

If you're using something like MyFitnessPal, it's not really that arduous, all you need is a smartphone and a set of scales. I cook 95% of my food from scratch and mostly end up rotating the same 15-20 recipes with minor variations. Once you have those ingredients and recipes set up on MFP, it's just a case of picking things from a list as you shove them in your face.