What scenario is best for fat loss
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No, the calorie in/out mantra is still correct - lower BMR just means that calories out is reduced.mrfpb wrote:diy wrote:The body turns some foods in to stored energy more easily than others. Some foods are more energy dense per kg than others. The best way to drop weight is have a calorie deficit equal to the amount of weight you want to lose over the period you want to lose it.
1lb of human fat is approx 2,300kcal. So work out your TDEE http://tdeecalculator.net/ then working on 2lb per week as a rough guide deduct 4,600kcal from your weekly tdee. Eat that and you'll hit the target. If you want to drop more than 2lb a week then you'll need to manage your protein intake and increase your strength training.
But as I said above, it is well established that after the body loses a certain amount of weight it responds by lowering the BMR (base metabolic rate) and TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) so the 4,600 calorie defict no longer has the same effect. This is one cause of people giving up diets because they are doing "more of what works" but it stops working.
The second link posted by Simon E above goes into the issue in detail.
Sticking to the calories in/out mantra is like the people in hill climbing/wheel weight threads insisting think Newton's laws of motion is the only science you need.
BTW I assume that you're implying that Newtonian mechanics is inadequate for wheel weight because it fails to take into account relativistic effects?0 -
bompington wrote:No, the calorie in/out mantra is still correct - lower BMR just means that calories out is reduced.
BTW I assume that you're implying that Newtonian mechanics is inadequate for wheel weight because it fails to take into account relativistic effects?
Both the calories in/out and Newtonian-only wheel arguements don't take into account thermodynamics (the different ways energy wasted in doing work) or bio-mechanics (the limits of the body to function on cetain diets or keep up an effort over time on the bike). They tend to go around in circles because people quote theories without recourse to any data.
An example from a hill climbing thread - "it doen't matter what gear you use to climb a hill becasue the energy required to get your body and bike to the top is a constant" this is true in Newtonian physics, but the ability to push a gear is a bio-mechanical funtion, the body has a limit what effort it can make to overcome inertia or gravity.
Similarlry the articles quoted by Simon E explain that the types of food we eat are digested in different ways, used by the body in different ways and inhibit or encourage appetite in different ways, so the claories in/out doesn't tell the whole story by a long way.0 -
Gotta love an internet nutritionist. Take this gem from one of those links -
"Even though it is true that obesity is caused by excess calories and weight loss caused by a calorie deficit, this is still such a drastic oversimplification that it is downright wrong."
These facts are both true AND wrong, simultaneously. Quantum nutritionism?
Perhaps one day we'll see an explanation on this forum of how weight loss can be achieved without a calorie deficit, or how someone running a calorie deficit can fail to lose weight. Anyone?
Most weight loss threads are really about strategies to run and maintain a deficit, because some people clearly find it harder than others.0 -
micrographia wrote:Gotta love an internet nutritionist. Take this gem from one of those links -
"Even though it is true that obesity is caused by excess calories and weight loss caused by a calorie deficit, this is still such a drastic oversimplification that it is downright wrong."
These facts are both true AND wrong, simultaneously. Quantum nutritionism?
Perhaps one day we'll see an explanation on this forum of how weight loss can be achieved without a calorie deficit, or how someone running a calorie deficit can fail to lose weight. Anyone?
Most weight loss threads are really about strategies to run and maintain a deficit, because some people clearly find it harder than others.
To pick a similar example. "We have had an in/out referendum on the EU. Out won, therefore we are leaving, it's that simple." Though the statement can be said to be factually correct, it is such a gross oversimplification it can be said to be misleading or downright wrong when the details are looked into.0 -
guy.spartacus wrote:Imposter wrote:Simon E wrote:
FTFY.Imposter wrote:Most efficient way to fat loss = eating less junk
More raw fruit and veg, less processed crap. Demonising fat without qualifying what you mean is not helpful.
Replacing one vague term ('fat') with another vague term ('junk') doesn't really move things on, IMO. But the point is valid either way.
'Fat' isn't a vague term though - its a macronutrient.
I think there needs to be a directive to change what overweight people (currently 'fat') are called. Excess adipose tissue is not caused by consumption of fat.
But fat contains 3 times the amount of calories per gram than protein or carbs and is also harder to 'burn' as a fuel. Eat 10g of fat and that's 90kcals before you have anything else.
My most effective weight (fat) loss comes when I eat healthily. I'm reluctant to call it a diet as when following the rules you'd be hard pushed to eat much more than 1500 calories a day. Usually my total daily intake will be between 1100 and 1400 calories with 3 proper meals and snacks. I aim for at least 100g of protein per day and less than 15g of fat. All it involves is eating only fruit, veg and meats that are less than 3% fat content. You can eat as much as you want, there's no fad. Yes it can get a bit boring sometimes but there is such a variety of fruit and veg out there at the moment and the range of lean meats is also surprising. I do this for 3 weeks when I feel my weight is going up and each time I've lost between 10 and 15lb with the majority of it coming from body fat. To maintain weight I would then look to add in a bit of extra 'good' fat such as oily fish and nuts.0 -
Are you very small? no offence intended.
I can't see how anyone doing regular exercise could fuel themselves on 1500kcal? I'd reckon you're burning lean muscle too during those lean weeks.0 -
Pross wrote:But fat contains 3 times the amount of calories per gram than protein or carbs and is also harder to 'burn' as a fuel. Eat 10g of fat and that's 900kcals before you have anything else.
before anyone panics and gives up the all important fat in your diet ... that was a typo .. he meant 90kcal not 900 :shock: .... or did he mean 100g of fat ?0 -
diy wrote:Are you very small? no offence intended.
I can't see how anyone doing regular exercise could fuel themselves on 1500kcal? I'd reckon you're burning lean muscle too during those lean weeks.
Nope, I'm about 85kg and 185cm. I get weighed and measured at the start each time and maintain muscle mass. I don't do a huge amount of cycling these days but I was running 20 odd miles per week during my latest weight loss. On days where I do a lot of exercise I tend to try to eat more calorie rich fruit or veg such as bananas and lots more protein but even then I don't get above about 1,800 calories.0 -
fat daddy wrote:Pross wrote:But fat contains 3 times the amount of calories per gram than protein or carbs and is also harder to 'burn' as a fuel. Eat 10g of fat and that's 900kcals before you have anything else.
before anyone panics and gives up the all important fat in your diet ... that was a typo .. he meant 90kcal not 900 :shock: .... or did he mean 100g of fat ?
Yep, typo which I corrected pretty much straight away so you must have been quick!!
The point was, if you have higher levels of fat you end up being able to eat less quantity. Having published recommended daily amounts on food packing doesn't help either IMO as both the fat and calorie levels always seem to be quite high for an average, sedentary person and make no differentiation between the type of fat.0 -
85kg ? ..... I don't think your diet works very well then because I can eat WAY more than you to maintain a mere 74kg.
why suffer eating 1500kcal of boredom when you can eat 2500kcal of boredom + crap and be lighter
but yes I agree .. I love cheese. but a block of cheese means I have to cut out a crap lot of other food
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fat daddy wrote:85kg ? ..... I don't think your diet works very well then because I can eat WAY more than you to maintain a mere 74kg.
why suffer eating 1500kcal of boredom when you can eat 2500kcal of boredom + crap and be lighter
but yes I agree .. I love cheese. but a block of cheese means I have to cut out a crap lot of other food
Middle age got me, when I was racing in my early 20s I was fed up of looking starved. I was 68kg, could eat anything I wanted and just couldn't gain weight! My problem is that for 49 weeks of the year my diet is crap until I decide to do something about it - I can't walk past a biscuit tin without picking up a handful - and I'm just too inactive when not actually exercising.0 -
I won't try and delve into the science of this, as I have no idea, but wanted to report what I have managed so far.
Since early Jan I have pretty much stopped eating chocolate, and cr@p, and ramped up the quantity of fresh fruit and veg, probably double if not more.
I have been on a Trainerroad course at the same time, 8 weeks in overall now, and have managed to lose 4.4kg\ or nearly 10lbs.
Pretty content with that, not quite as fast as I was hoping, but now the intensity on TR has ramped up (After a far more successful FTP test) it seems to be paying dividends.
Hoping to lose the same again by the end of July, and then ideally, lose 10 or 11kg in total, and try and maintain that weight and the food choices (64\65kg) from then on.
I have a massively sweet tooth, if allowed to go unleashed, so am simply trying to use willpower to turn down desserts, biscuits, and of course, and simplest of all, just not to buy them.
Oh and I work in an office, so am sat at a desk all day - well aside from the 2 days when I work at home, where I use my lunch hours to turbo Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
Pross wrote:Middle age got me.... I can't walk past a biscuit tin without picking up a handful - and I'm just too inactive when not actually exercising.
Me too! As a kid I was like a badly knotted piece of string, and into my 20s I was still lean but muscular too. But in middle age I was moving about far less and eating too much, and abdominal fat kind of crept up on me. Even when I started road cycling again aged 50 I was able to out-eat any amount of riding.
Cannot do calorie counting 24-7 as I have the impulse control of a labrador pup; if there's food I have to eat it, and I seem to have no off-switch.
My saviour has been the 5:2. I manage to eat nothing at work on Mon & Thurs cos I'm busy at my desk, then just a snack in the evening. Rest of the time I eat what I like. It'd bloody brilliant!0 -
Thinking on the 5:2 has been updated recently - you do need to make sure you get a fair amount of protein in your 600kcal and also the day after.
last night was fasting day and also did double spin class and weights, so I had
2 desert spoons of porridge made with water to fuel me through the gym and came back and made a 2 egg omelette with some mushrooms and tomato. There is the square root of f**all in those vegetables, but the eggs at least helped my post exercise recovery.
I too cannot resist food on a normal eat day and can only just about cling to target weight fasting a day a week and exercising 10-12 hours a week.0 -
Low Carb diet (10-30%) with Medium protein (20-25%of calories) and the rest in 'good' fats (no Omega6 Veg.oils or trans fats) will lessen hunger and thus cheating, which will speed up results. Training your body to be a fat burning machine also decreases lactate build up.
The first 45 min. of bike riding mostly burns up stored glycogen, then the real fat burning starts, so slower longer rides are best for fat loss. With just a 45 min commuter ride, then as soon as you eat any carbs, the fat burning stops since the body usually goes for the 'easy' energy first. Skipping breakfast and late night snacking so as to do intermittent fasting of 16 hours is thus effective in overcoming this. Lunch should be your biggest meal, and dinner low carb (no starches, beer, or desserts). Snack on nuts, peanut butter, or greek yogurt. Only fruit should be berries and an occasional apple. Fructose goes straight to fat stores and is NOT 'quick' energy, like glucose.0 -
1. We burn what we eat. If your carb intake is inadequate, then you'll i. burn fewer carbs, ii. not be able to go as hard for as long and iii. fitness development will stagnate meaning capability to metabolise energy stores at a greater rate and for longer is not improved, i.e. power at lactate threshold won't improve further. If you want to improve power at lactate threshold, at some stage you'll need to lift the power output beyond a cruising pace and need to incorporate harder efforts, and that requires carbs.
2. What proportional of metabolic systems (i.e. PCr, anaerobic and aerobic glycolytic, and lipolytic systems) we use to fuel our energy demand at any moment and overall is multifactoral but it's not overly important wrt the medium to longer term loss of excess body fat. The calorie deficit over the course of days/weeks/months is what matters. But don't attempt to run a large average daily calorie deficit as that will be counter productive. 250-500Cal/day is about right for most for the period of desired loss of excess body fat.
Train to improve power, eat to get lean.0 -
@Pross your TDEE should be around 2,500 - 2,800. I'd say your blitzing weeks aren't doing you any good and you'd be better off with a once a week approach rather than a 3 weeks a year approach. If you are cycling less competitively now - maybe its time to hit the gym and do some bigger weights?
daily targets aren't important its hitting a weekly avg that is key.0 -
Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:1. We burn what we eat...Train to improve power, eat to get lean.
This is a weight loss thread Alex. There is no place for reasoned, sensible advice here. For example...
"Fructose goes straight to fat stores".
No. Best estimates suggest that in humans less than 1% of dietary fructose is converted to lipid. The majority is used to generate glucose, glycogen and lactate.0 -
Seems people want to be able to point to a single component of diet and demonise it. Avoid eating / drinking just one thing, and we'll all be suddenly healthy and a sensible weight. Makes for great headlines and spawns a lot of ill-informed pseudo-science on the interweb, and hundreds of bizarre diets / eating fads. Unfortunately many people lap it up. With the possible exceptions of alcohol and tobacco, which really do cause serious problems, it's been fiendishly difficult to pin the ills of the world on single nutrients / ingredients. Most of the health effects of Western diets are caused simply by overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles. Just eating sensible amounts of a varied, balanced diet, and getting a reasonable amount of exercise is all that's really needed. But that makes for a crap headline and doesn't get you many zealous followers on Twatter. Let's eliminate fat, or sugar, or salt, or carbs, aspartame, caffeine, red meat, processed meat, barbecued meat, eat nothing but green smoothies and claim we're eating clean, whatever that means. Rickets probably.0
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well said !!!!
there is no such thing as a bad food, just a bad diet0 -
diy wrote:@Pross your TDEE should be around 2,500 - 2,800. I'd say your blitzing weeks aren't doing you any good and you'd be better off with a once a week approach rather than a 3 weeks a year approach. If you are cycling less competitively now - maybe its time to hit the gym and do some bigger weights?
daily targets aren't important its hitting a weekly avg that is key.
Not being funny but I've got the measurements and on each occasion I've done it (under supervision from PT / nutritionist) I've lost around 10-12lb of which the majority has come from body fat. For example the last one I did I started at 86kg and 20% BF and finished at 81kg and 16% BF. I'm not unique, there are usually around a dozen people doing it and they all get similar results but I tend to be at the higher end of the daily calorie intake. I monitor my calories all year and if I go over around 2,200 a day my weight goes back up (I exclude any additional calories from exercise and replace them like for like).
On that basis I'll keep using the method as I know it works for me and it's just very simple, healthy eating. My biggest problem is I have no will power for the other 49 weeks and like my high fat / high sugar snacks.0 -
One thing that helped me at least to shed the body weight was getting my gut health back in shape. I always felt bloated after meals no matter what i ate and even though i never got much indigestion i would still get it now and again. And last year at 41 YO, the weight loss was going pretty slow.
I started taking Fage yoghurt 1st thing in the morning, a digestive enzyme during my main meals and a probiotic after. I've carried on with the yoghurt and stopped the enzymes/probiotics since the start of the year and the weight has stayed off as well as my stomach feeling great. I can't even remember the last time getting a bit of indigestion either. I'm not recommending anyone starts popping pills, but i think gut health has a lot to do with weight loss also and i think that yoghurts with live cultures really help in that regard.0 -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedheal ... hy-adults/Essentially, none of the studies provided evidence that probiotics had a beneficial effect on gut bacteria0 -
It's not quite as cut and dried as your one quote suggests:
"Essentially, none of the studies provided evidence that probiotics had a beneficial effect on gut bacteria.
The results were as follows:
Four studies reported no difference in the diversity of, composition of, or stability of bacteria between probiotic and placebo groups.
One study reported that the probiotic reversed the age-related increase in certain disease-causing bacteria (such as C. difficile and Campylobacter), but did not compare between groups.
One study reported some difference in the diversity of bacteria, with increased abundance of certain bacteria (such as Proteobacteria) in the probiotic group.
One study also reported some differences in the abundance of certain bacteria, but did not directly compare between groups"
I've always maintained a healthy scepticism about the many and varied health claims for probiotics and live yoghurts with hilariously named bacteria. My simplistic view was that tipping a bacterial culture into a stomach full of hydrochloric acid would quickly kill them all, but I suspect that's not quite the case.
These studies were all with healthy adults, and there were still effects in some of them. I can imagine that with a dysfunctional gut, there's more scope to improve things. I've seen a couple of programs recently where faecal transplants have been used to almost miraculous effect in restoring gut function, and also some interesting studies manipulating gut microflora by varying diet.
As a scientist I'm always amazed by how much we are still finding out about the way the body functions as an ecosystem.0 -
I got hammered on here last year for asking about a power meter for weight loss. 2016 reminded me that you will never outride bad nutrition and this year my milage has remained much the same as year before, with 100 single speed commute miles approx logged each week and one 50 mile and one 30 mile ridden. The big difference is I joined slimming world autonomously and use that to help my nutrition as like many others I am not a nutritionist and I have lost 8lbs since week 2 Feb which equates to 3.6kg. I aim to lose 2 stone (12kg) for summer 2017 and already the difference on and off the bike is great. SW simplifies the process and effectively strips fat and sugar from the diet and in leyman terms it works. when people start breaking down ratio of food ergo protein, carbs, macros etc many people panic and fail. For myself, so far so good. The paradox here is the more I lose, the stronger my will and my determination gets. Happy days, happy cycling.0
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Pross wrote:
On that basis I'll keep using the method as I know it works for me and it's just very simple, healthy eating. My biggest problem is I have no will power for the other 49 weeks and like my high fat / high sugar snacks.
As you say it seems to work.. I was more commenting on your desire to look less like a cyclist. If you are at the point where you don't need to look like a tdf rider, then a bit of excess muscle mass wont be slowing you down, since you are no longer competing. 20% - 16% is very good in a short time.0 -
keef66 wrote:As a scientist I'm always amazed by how much we are still finding out about the way the body functions as an ecosystem.
If you get a chance, read "Gut": a book that is essentially all about this and is a simple and thought-provoking read. It suggests we have way underestimated the effect of your gut on your health and the rest of the body. The body is infinitely more complex than we give it credit for and why I believe these nutrition threads or the training threads can give nothing more than generic advice that may or may not work for any particular individual.ROAD < Scott Foil HMX Di2, Volagi Liscio Di2, Jamis Renegade Elite Di2, Cube Reaction Race > ROUGH0 -
diy wrote:Pross wrote:
On that basis I'll keep using the method as I know it works for me and it's just very simple, healthy eating. My biggest problem is I have no will power for the other 49 weeks and like my high fat / high sugar snacks.
As you say it seems to work.. I was more commenting on your desire to look less like a cyclist. If you are at the point where you don't need to look like a tdf rider, then a bit of excess muscle mass wont be slowing you down, since you are no longer competing. 20% - 16% is very good in a short time.
Yeah, I'll be targeting arms and chest a bit but I'm running these days (first marathon next month) so still don't want too much excess mass to lug around.0 -
I was struck by the extreme sensitivity of the human gut when our eldest son was born. He was a healthy weight, and took to breast feeding like a little Dyson. But at 12 weeks he contracted some kind of viral enteritis. The contents of his nappies went from a consistent mustardy colour to a bright green, and he started getting violent bouts of colic after each feed. He seemed to have developed some kind of intolerance overnight. He spent a lot of his toddler years having soy based milk rather than dairy, and we've always had a suspicion that wheat, especially wholewheat, doesn't suit him. He's 28 now, but his insides still don't work normally.0
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meanredspider wrote:keef66 wrote:As a scientist I'm always amazed by how much we are still finding out about the way the body functions as an ecosystem.
If you get a chance, read "Gut": a book that is essentially all about this and is a simple and thought-provoking read. It suggests we have way underestimated the effect of your gut on your health and the rest of the body. The body is infinitely more complex than we give it credit for and why I believe these nutrition threads or the training threads can give nothing more than generic advice that may or may not work for any particular individual.
Well up to now I've just read the odd New Scientist article and watched a few documentaries, but crikey, there's an entire library of this stuff out there.
I've also found I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong, and The Diet Myth by Tim Spector. I think I'll be downloading a few things to my Kindle tonight!0
