Starting from scratch

[Veloman]

I dislike gyms but I do know that spinning is a great way of getting/keeping fit as it is cycling related has obvious appeal to a cyclist.  When I attend a class I normally inform the instructor that I might not follow all the instructions and at time will be doing my own thing, which has never been a problem.  All sorts of folk attend the class which is relatively short for those short on time.  Yes, I could have a trainer at home, but that is a lonely existence and who wants sweat all over the house?  I would recommend something like that as the social aspect is also good.

Other than that, cycling at whatever speed is burning more calories than sitting on the sofa.

[mark]

Sergeant Pluck's comments mirror my experience and observations.

Carrying too much weight around is going to put extra stress on all your joints, regardless of what anyone says about "fit and fat". I've seen too many overweight/obese coworkers, family members and other acquaintances needing joint replacement surgery to believe otherwise. Your weight issues are not as severe as the people I'm thinking of, but I still see a correlation between being overweight and experiencing mobility problems later in life.

Food: again, I agree with Sergeant Pluck. Calorie counting might bring slow to almost nonexistent progress, but it will be progress, and at least you won't be likely to gain more weight. If nothing else, you'll save a little money on food! Part of my small progress in the last year or so has come from my modest efforts at portion control and avoiding too many processed foods.

You mentioned walking 4-5 miles a day at work, and being in pain sometimes at the end of a work shift. Are you familiar with Superfeet insoles (https://www.superfeet.com/en-us/why-superfeet)? A number of people on this forum use them, so I assume that they're available in the UK. I've been using them for most of my adult life, and I can feel the difference when I leave them out of my shoes for a day.

If you're going to run, please do it on unpaved surfaces, not concrete or asphalt. Paved surfaces are hard on the whole body, especially the knees.

Spinning classes with a good instructor can be a lot of fun, but they can be brutally hard. Find out beforehand how demanding the class is meant to be, and don't be afraid to go at your own pace.

[Ruthie]

You're not starting from scratch. I just rode with you in the Wicklow Mountains. A ride which passed over Sally Gap down and then back over the Wicklow Gap. Someone who can complete 100km with 1500m ascent is a pretty decent cyclist.

I thought my riding was totally crap in Ireland.  I was very disappointed in myself.

[TheLurker]

Ruthie,

What's the food supply like at work?  I might be wrong but I think you works shift in hospitals and that generally means either crap canteen food if you're lucky or even crappier vending machine offerings if you're not. 

Are you taking your own food or subsisting (I choose the verb with care) on what's on offer at work?  If you're not already doing so mebbe take your own grub in?  If nothing else it'll taste better* and with luck your capacity for exercise will improve with better quality fuel.

Shift work also plays merry hell with the body so that may not be helping your general fitness or capacity for exercise either, but I daresay there's precious little you can do about work.

Any road up I wouldn't beat yourself up about it; just do what you can when you can and you'll be ahead on points.

ETA - mcshroom is right. That's serious cycling and you didn't fall off, not once, in the mountains.  That automatically makes you a better cyclist than Geraint Thomas, Richie Porte, Alberto Contador and Marcel Kittel - miaow(tm).

*Probably be a bloody sight cheaper too even with better quality ingredients.
(tm) Iz a regisstred tradmeerk of Pandemik Pord's Ltd Pty PlC ect ect.

[perpetual dan]

I'm with you: had the "sort your diet out" chat with the nurse a couple of weeks ago, my Dad and his siblings all have type 2 diabetes, nearer 50 than 40, don't fit my old jeans, not as flexible as I'd like, much slower up a hill than I'd like. I don't claim to have the solution, but an observation: Wearing a Fitbit on its own hasn't done much. Wearing it and logging all my food and keeping n calories under what I burn day by day has shed a few kilos and mostly not gone back on. So, as said above really. Oh, and I've looked at the website for a Pilates class. Good luck.

[rogerzilla]

The thing about cycling is that it's miserable when you're unfit, unless you ride really slowly, and that tends to put you off - so most people never become cyclists.

If you habitually eat empty calories like chocolate, you may be able to lose weight relatively painlessly by just missing out that stuff.  Riding to work maintains a kind of base fitness but doesn't do a whole lot to improve endurance or speed unless your commute is long and hilly.  Using a turbo trainer, horrible though it is, then going on club runs, is probably the best way to get fit fast.

[Kim]

I find that I lose weight if I'm doing a lot of cycling, simply because cycling turns off my appetite until an hour or two after I stop.  I don't think the extra calorie-burning is that all that significant.  Problem is that you need to be doing touring/audax levels of hours on the bike for that to have much of an effect, which doesn't survive much of an encounter with Real Life.

I'm not one for training - that's like PE or something, and fuck that.  But my regular riding is hilly, and if I'm out riding for its own sake rather than transport (and not nursing an injury) I do tend to have a proper go at at least some of the climbs on general principle, which does seem to make a real difference.  It must be a lot harder if you're somewhere relatively flat.  I regularly ride past a gym, peer through the window at the people on those cross-trainer things, and think about how much more fun I'm having mixing with the Birmingham drivers in the pissing rain.


(Disclaimer: I shouldn't give advice on losing weight.  Staying safely on the heavy side of the healthy weight line counts as a hard-won victory, and I'm wary of anything that might encourage me to actively avoid eating food again.)

[IanN]

I really like it.  It's a Jesuit initiative.  It's a podcast, basically.  Starts with bells ringing, some music, a Bible reading, a reflection, some time for meditating, and finishes with the Gloria Patri. 

I access the Office for Morning Prayer as an app as well, the Bible readings and certain other bits are different every day, so the app gets rid of the need to rifle through putting placeholders in your book before you start.  Reflections for Daily Prayer is another good one, you can buy it as a book (I did for years) but now it's an app, a short form of the Office of Morning Prayer, with one of the daily Bible readings, and a reflection on the reading.  Usually the reflections are written by people quite prominent in apologetics/theology/similar stuffs.

It has just occurred to me that a short run could well be combined with meditative prayer in the style of John Main - essentially reciting a simple phrase - The Jesus prayer or 'Maranatha'.

[edit] I got a lot from a recent introductory course run by  http://christianmeditation.org.uk/  [edit].

And isn't running on a cup of coffee and no food meant to promote fat burning?  It might even get me running again.

[Clare]

Pilates for flexibility, Vernon and I have been doing one hour each week of Pilates for a few years now and have never really seen any results BUT four weeks ago we laid a new patio, the work included moving about 6 tonnes of earth, scalpings, sand and slabs over two days. We both expected to not move after the first day and were amazed to wake up on day two feeling fine, didn't even feel achy at all. Felt fine by the time we finished the job as well.

Yeah, Pilates quietly works.

[jsabine]

A ride which passed over Sally Gap down and then back over the Wicklow Gap.

I’ve riddendriven that. I think you are being somewhat modest about your current abilities Ruthie!

Me too.

[mike]

I've spent 10 years trying to kid myself that I'll lose weight by training more but for me it has the opposite effect because it makes me so damn hungry and I eat more than I burn. Am now experimenting with eating a bit less and not drinking anything like as much and my clothes seem to be getting a bit looser..   

You cant outrun a poor diet, as someone told me.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think the problem with "fat and fit" is its opposite assumption: that if you're slim, however defined, you must be fit. I really don't think losing weight in and by itself makes you fit, you need activity for that.

[Monty]

Sounds like me, all this.
I've lost a bit over2 stone over 6 months just by stopping eating sugar & trying to cycle around 50 miles a week. Oh, and I've stopped eating cheese for lunch as well.
The very thought of a gym fills me with A) Terror, and B) I'm buggered if I'm going to spend £30 a month when I can do similar on a much less comfortable seat, out doors!

I'm now 13.5 stone. Looking to lose another stone perhaps by Christmas...however somewhere along the line I'm going to have to try to actually eat less too!

I have some other health issues which mean that I can't be doing hand-stands & break dancing to keep fit...I need my world to be as level as possible.

So, it's cycling, sugar and cheese for my advice 

[Veloman]

And apart from the sugar and cheese, I would also add alcohol.

I like coffee (black and no sugar) and cake so in return for indulging in the bad habit of cake I avoid the booze which is often seen as 'empty calories'.  "Wafer thin piece of ham sir?" results in no thanks too full, but always room for a quick G&T which is also calories.

[Ruthie]

I've been kind to my body this week, eating lots of fruit and veg, and I went for another flail in the park. 

This morning I went out on the Novices ride again, but this time I went with the fast group.  They were a lot slower with me on the back, but I thought I was going to throw up at the top of Hangman's Bank.  They were very encouraging.  I just had a latte at the cafe stop, no cake this time.

We'll see how it goes.

[McWheels]

Strong work. It can be easy to forget what hard exercise feels like. It's good for you. If you can come to terms with being aerobically uncomfortable, then you will progress faster. I used to love my commute across London, as a scruffy t-shirt and trackie bottom wearing fool who'd turn himself inside out there was always another back wheel to chase down just to go past someone in lycra.

Lots have mentioned muscle mass, and for that you need to move heavy things, which isn't biking. Admittedly I benefit from a work gym that's free and PTIs that hand out the good news in spades, but without that and them I'd narrow down to 2 or 3 really core moves. Deadlifts, press-ups and squats. Youtube is full of guidance on how not to hurt yourself or adapt the moves. Something heavy enough you can do it only 6 to 8 times is ideal, but doing them at all is worthwhile.

And if anyone talks about not wanting to 'bulk up' there'll be a reckoning, that's not the space we're in.

[Ruthie]

I like muesli and yoghurt for breakfast. Weighing and measuring my breakfast portion shiwed me I have been eating way too much in the mornings. I made a huge bowl of salad and that did me three days' worth of lunches and a couple of dinners when paired with something proteiny. A big fruit salad with sqirty cream meant I could have pudding a couple of times. Tonight I ate the pineapple that was about to go off. A hot chocolate or a horlicks at bedtime so I don't feel deprived.

[Ruthie]

Out with the Newbies again yesterday, but went with the fast group.  We didn't ride as tough a route as last week and I never felt like I was going to throw up.  Lance, one of the proper riders, reckons I'm grinding too much and need to spin more so I took that on board and will try to keep it in mind.

I've used Myfitnesspal to watch my intake, and ate more yesterday to try to avoid the hunger today.  So far so good, and it's Sunday so I had a nice breakfast.

Something JenM said in London stuck with me - that I compare myself negatively with other people, and Lance said the same thing.  It's a difficult habit to break.

I need to bite the bullet, join a gym, and go there.  For bendy stuff and lifty stuff.

And I'm not going to log my weight more than once a month.  It's too easy to get obsessional/disheartened.

[Wowbagger]

Del said the same about me re cadence, after he had stoked the tandem. "Wowbagger doesn't spin...". I find it difficult with my enormous thighs. Wears me out.

[mrcharly-YHT]

spinning pushes up heart rate and makes you breath faster (IME) - but it does enable people to generate more power over time.

[CrinklyLion]

Something JenM said in London stuck with me - that I compare myself negatively with other people, and Lance said the same thing.  It's a difficult habit to break.

But one worth the effort of breaking.  You aren't them, you're you.  Our one and only and ever so lovely Ruthie.

[Ruthie]

Something JenM said in London stuck with me - that I compare myself negatively with other people, and Lance said the same thing.  It's a difficult habit to break.

But one worth the effort of breaking.  You aren't them, you're you.  Our one and only and ever so lovely Ruthie.

Aw   .

[Sergeant Pluck]

I like muesli and yoghurt for breakfast. Weighing and measuring my breakfast portion shiwed me I have been eating way too much in the mornings. I made a huge bowl of salad and that did me three days' worth of lunches and a couple of dinners when paired with something proteiny. A big fruit salad with sqirty cream meant I could have pudding a couple of times. Tonight I ate the pineapple that was about to go off. A hot chocolate or a horlicks at bedtime so I don't feel deprived.

Your determination to change things really comes through in your posts! Don’t be too hard on yourself. It doesn’t sound as if you need to do anything too drastic: a little bit less of some things, a bit more of some other things, plus time.

Muesli: some muesli (maybe all muesli) has massive quantities of calories, partly due to lots of added sugar in some cases (e.g. Alpen). I have read that making your own offers some control over this. I’m a porridge man myself, but I always add fruit of some kind (e.g. banana + ground cinnamon) or bung on some almond or cashew nut butter. So even that can add up to a good proportion of what I think my daily intake should be. That’s fine though - a decent breakfast intake is essential and even after my porridge-de-luxe I am starving by about 12 at work.

[Mrs Pingu]

Spinning is good. My (very overweight & not terribly fit) brother said on our Belgian holiday this year that he doesn't understand how I can twiddle up hills. Then proceeds to complain about how much his knees hurt. Twiddling in smaller gears = less hurty knees = more aerobic exercise = better cardio endurance.

[Graeme]

I miss the fun social rides we used to do - we used to go riding so often. I remember you being faster and lighter - but I also remember you having asthma attacks. I also remember that you've been through lots of life rubbish.

Seeing the photos you and mcshroom post from the touring holidays demonstrates you've got the cycling strength to tour effectively. What is it you want to achieve? Do you secretly want to do a 200? I think you recently missed out on a 200km ride due to faffing (is that the reason?) - come ride with me on the Humber 200 route check and let's get a DIY 200 under our belt. You can do this already. Anti-faff. Slow and steady!

Newtoncap tried a couple of years of being battered by the fast group in her local club - but also struggled to change body shape and speed. She nearly lost her love of cycling.