Weight Loss Discussion Thread

[DrMekon]

It's not rocket science is it?
I'm not losing weight, so I must need to eat less and/or do more. I just don't want to, I'm doing as much as I've time & energy for, and I'm eating as little as I can bear.
No wonder I'm depressed.

Put more crap in your panniers?

I dunno the answer - I feel the same as you - I just don't lose weight quickly. Overall, I lose weight at about .6 of the speed mfp suggests I should be, hence I run a 1200+ calorie deficit to get a .5kg weight loss.

You could always catch the flu. Worked for me.

[Lady Cavendish]

Simon- I don't eat stuff that I don't know the content of apart from at Audax controls......

I don't even bother with MFP now as it just gives me massive deficits whatever I put in. If we are just talking about weekdays, I cycle for 3 hours a day on those days and do 2 hours of stuff in the gym whether it be classes or weights stuff. Whatever I use, when I'm eating 2000-2200 a day, I have huge deficits. The calories MFP gives me before exercise is 1200 to lose weight, so in theory, I'm having 1000 for 5 hours of exercise. Surely I burn more than 1000 in 5 hours? Maths doesn't work.

[Feline]

A high volume exerciser such as yourself will be more sensitive to errors in estimation of calorie burn. Trying to maintain a precise calorie deficit (250 kcals per day, say) in the face of an error of only 10% in calorie burn figures if you burn say 2000 calories per day becomes quite tricky, since the error bars are already nearly as large as the thing you are trying to measure.

It's also problematic when trying to estimate food intake if you didn't prepare it yourself. I try to weigh stuff I do myself, and it helps that Feline is doing MFP as well, so when I ask how much stilton she gave me, she can tell me "70 grammes". When I was at my parents' over Christmas & New Year 2009-2010, I had just started the Livestrong calorie counting and was often not cooking for myself. I had to guess how much food I was given. My sister also thinks I'm greedy and doesn't get how I can eat as much as I do. Hence small portions which I seemed to be over-estimating, constant hunger, and excessively fast weight loss.

When preparing food for you it is generally easiest to assume that you are in fact 2 people and feed you accordingly!

I keep having this hunch reading this thread that some people might be sending their bodies into starvation mode from the heaps of exercise and so are storing more than normal from what they eat. I reckon what makes up the calories eaten is as important as how many there are overall. Carbs can be the enemy if they are the wrong kind at the wrong time.

[L CC]

I'd put up with constant hunger if I had excessively fast weight loss!

Surely I burn more than 1000 in 5 hours?

Well that depends, doesn't it. Are you sweaty? What does your HRM say? Are you drinking enough, resting enough, burning muscle for energy rather than fat?

[Chris S]

Lack of sleep is probably a significant factor.

Lack of sleep is both a cause and effect of depression. If you're tired, it makes you more prone to comfort eating, and less inclined to want to exercise. Your body does most of its adaptations and repairs when you are sleeping - or at least, resting. A "high volume exerciser" (tm - SimonP ) will generate a large demand for repairs, and sleep time is when that takes place. This is the basis of overtraining, is it not; a chronic backlog of recovery and maintainance tasks in the body?

Lack of sleep buggers up your seratonin and melatonin levels - both of which are involved in the appetite/satiation cycle.

Lack of sleep makes you grumpy, and suppresses your mood, which makes you less fidgety and your overall background BMR drops.

If you are exercising a lot, have a protein shake before going to bed. Have a Vitamin C chaser for good measure - your body can't make collagen without it. Make sure you drink enough too.

If the lack of sleep has an external cause (as I suspect is the case with fboab), deal with that (as I suspect she is going to, in due course).

[simonp]

I was probably overtrained in 2010. The worst was ride a 600, ride a 300, ride a 600 on consecutive weekends, cycling to/from work during the week, and going to the gym and doing things like PBs for 10,000m on the rowing machine, and swimming club on Thursdays. I also failed to get sufficient sleep before two of the 600ks, managing 1h the night before the Denmead 600k and 2.5h before the Border Raid 600k. In both cases the 4h sleep at around midnight led to a better second day than first.

By the end of the 4th 600k I was pretty shot, and did virtually nothing except commuting for the 3 weeks before the Mille Cymru, just commuting and a bit of swimming iirc. It meant I managed to recover in time. What I did gain was the second day of the Mille Cymru I was riding well because 4x600k had got me used to riding for two days. After the Mille Cymru I took a while to recover and skipped the Mille Miglia Italia. I was struggling and had digestive issues just riding a 200k. It took me until March 2011 before I got back up to speed again.

[simonp]

Ah!

"The metabolic rate can be affected by some drugs, such as antidepressants, which may produce weight gain.[22]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

[L CC]

The source is the most vague piece of tosh I've ever seen not exactly thoroughly researched and scientific.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_1_23/ai_107488078/?tag=content;col1

[DrMekon]

I keep having this hunch reading this thread that some people might be sending their bodies into starvation mode from the heaps of exercise and so are storing more than normal from what they eat. I reckon what makes up the calories eaten is as important as how many there are overall. Carbs can be the enemy if they are the wrong kind at the wrong time.

I see people claiming starvation mode on MFP, and have to say I'm a skeptic. If people mean they have induced ketosis, yes, but wouldn't they know from the pear drops taste? FWIW, I've never had it so maybe it's difficult to tell.

My guess as to the discrepancy people experience is that the model is much more complex than calories in / calories out and physical activity energy expenditure measurement isn't easy to do and BMR estimates having a load of error in them. As such, the only answer if you aren't losing weight as quickly as you want is to do more and eat less and to marvel at how awesomely your body has adapted to the circumstances you've put it in. It's why I made a spread sheet so I could get a handle on the average discrepancy and adjust my behaviour / expectations accordingly.

[Lady Cavendish]

Fboab, I cycle to work at 70-75% MHR, certainly enough to be quite sweaty when I get to work and then my spin classes, I pour with sweat and put a lot of effort into it. Things like body pump I do lift the maximum I can, so its not like I'm ptting no effort in. Audaxes I dawdle a bit.

Sleep, well it could be an issue.

I do take anti-depressants and suspect I will as long as I am not running.

[Lady Cavendish]

Just looked at my HRM for ride into work this morning, for 70 mins it gave me 600 calories. I 'give myself' about 300 for it.

[L CC]

I do take anti-depressants and suspect I will as long as I am not running.

Me too. And I've been banned from running 

(Really- you never hear diabetics going on about how glad they are to be off the insulin. Sheesh)

[mattc]

Starvation mode:
I don't have any sources, but I recollect reading some stuff in a few places. It's related to the business about eating within 30mins-ish of a training session - if you leave it too late your body panics a bit and goes into preservation mode. The idea is that you stop repairing the damage done by exercise, and send all possible calories to fat stores.

This makes "sense" to me, but might be proved wrong by REAL SCIENCE. (The above might just be a simplification of what insulin actually does in a 'normal' body. I like simplification.)

As for sleep, well it's a waste of time, isn't it? I only do it when absolutely necessary. (Experience says this is nearly every night.)

Of course Neil the Hippy had the best tip:"Everyone knows sleep gives you cancer" which is indeed supported by (certain) statistics.

[Lady Cavendish]

Hmmm. Thinking about when I eat and exercise- I exercise in the mornings then eat breakfast, at lunchtime then eat lunch, and after work and then eat dinner so it all falls quite well for me in that respect.

As for the sleep thing, well I'm moaning that I don't get enough lol, and i'm fairly recently in remission from cancer so I'm not too sure about that theory!!

If no sleep was required wouldn't life be so much easier. All those extra hours would be amazing

[geraldc]

I got myself a fancy body composition monitor http://www.amazon.co.uk/Omron-BF508-Composition-Monitor-Bathroom/dp/B0033AGBVG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332953545&sr=8-1

So I monitor weight, fat, visceral fat and muscle %ages daily. It's not totally accurate (hydration can cause things to fluctuate), but it shows overall trends.

Started logging everything 21st Feb, since then I've lost 2.5 kg. I weigh myself first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.

When I'm sleeping, I'm not eating, so I can only lose weight when I sleep, so sleep is good.

[Wowbagger]

The past two days have been a salutary lesson in what happens when I let up. Tuesday was Dez's birthday and we had take-away curry and, even though Mrs. Wow and I shared stuff we might well have had one each of previously (onion bhaji, nan bread) I still ate too much.

Yesterday involved absolutely no cycling, about 120 miles of driving, some lovely fresh bread at lunch time in which I over-indulged, and another curry, home-made this time, in which, again, I over-indulged. And beer - 2 pints.

The result is that the lowest the scales would reluctantly allow was 109.7kg, but mostly 110.3kg. Given that, on Tuesday morning I couldn't make them go above 110 and they settled, eventually, on 108.8, that shows that I've gone backwards extremely rapidly.

Next week I'm on holiday. I think I'm going to steer clear of ale if I can. There will, at least, be reasonably cycling days: not huge number of miles, but there will be hills, it being Southern Scotland.

[Auntie Helen]

I had a curry last night. My normal amount (which is a lot), although it was a rather mediocre curry in Framlingham. Boy, was my belly stuffed! Think my stomach has shrunk.

I'm unreasonably annoyed about my HRM packing up as I used it a lot to estimate my calorie burn. The same route varied widely in calorie burn depending on wind strength/my effort/other variables. Now I just don't know. Or I buy another. But £35, and it only lasted a year???

[Wowbagger]

Has the battery packed up, or is it the machine itself?

[L CC]

Lidl/Aldi regularly have HRM for £not much.

Dunno if they're any good though. I could send you mine for all I use it, actually. YHPM.

[CAMRAMan]

Wow! This feels like AA! Well, I've acknowledged that ordering a 3XL YACF jersey is the trigger to lose weight! It's good to read everybody else's experiences.

My vice is crisps. I can eat a six pack of crisps easily in one sitting, but my portion control when I cook is generous, to say the least. I tend to graze a lot as well.

Anyhow, I started to cut down on crisps and to watch what I eat relatively carefully two weeks ago. I'm weighing myself at the same time every morning to be consistent and am 2.2Kgs down. My loss is not consistent, and weekends slow down/reverse the process, but I'm feeling motivated to do this. I've even realised that carrots are tasty and a good filler.

There is an occasion at the end of April that is fuelling this effort, so whether I maintain things after (& up to) that remains to be seen. At the moment, infuriating as it may sound, I'm finding it straightforward. I'm sure there will be trickier times ahead. Easter is a ostensibly a walking trip to Hereford, but I know it's an excuse for a piss up, so that could see a reverse.

[Auntie Helen]

Has the battery packed up, or is it the machine itself?

Well I changed the battery (for the only spare I have) and it still didn't work.

Phoned Garmin who suggested taking the battery out completely for 10 minutes (still didn't work) and then turning the battery round for a couple of minutes to reset it (still didn't work).

I have another battery which I think still has some juice in it in my bike computer. Just took that off the bike - it has these four tiny screws that I don't have a screwdriver small enough to remove it with.

I need to find some brand new, fresh CR2032s but I have a sneaky suspicion it's more than that and as I can't find the packaging I'm probably out of luck with this one which goes with my Oregon.

I am considering fboab's kind offer to borrow hers as it does help with the diet tracking for me.

[Auntie Helen]

Well you could knock me down with a feather.

Just went into the kitchen to have another go. Fiddled with the Oregon (turned of HRM, then back on again, done this dozens of times). "Connected". Hurrah.

But for how long...

Anyway, I shall buy some more CR2032s as one always needs 'em and this battery might be a bit flaky too. But hurrah. Off for a ride to buy some cake now (the minister is coming round this afternoon - he invited himself round for some cake and to pick my brain about the best way to get to Berlin. He won't like my answer of 'train' or 'bike', but he will like the cake from Hall Farm Shop, Stratford St Mary)!

[Auntie Helen]

Well my HRM worked all the way round my 21 mile loop today.

Except it was consistently reading lower than my usual, around the 110s instead of the 125s. I decided to go super-effort up a hill and got it up to 172, but that's nowhere near my former max (not that I felt I was riding at max effort).

Downside is I've only burned 550 calories for what would normally have been 800ish. My average speed was as usual (11.6mph for this route). Weird. But if it's going to have an error, underreading is preferable so I don't eat calories I haven't burned off, and yet the diet was working well on the previous reading. It could all be in my head but somehow I don't think so. We shall see!

[mattc]

If it's a "good brand" HRM I very much doubt the figures would be wrong. When mine lose signal (or the batteries fade) the figures go barmy (215 usually) or drops to zero. Anything in between is always bang on. (Cheap Polars, various models)

I've often found my HR to be about 10beats lower than perceived, so I'd put that down to "user error", not a technical fault. (I can usually guess it within a few beats before I check the display, but I have the odd off day - generally when truly knackered.)

Don't forget the transmitter and the receiver have batteries in them (not always replaceable in the straps, sadly).

[rafletcher]

The past two days have been a salutary lesson in what happens when I let up. Tuesday was Dez's birthday and we had take-away curry and, even though Mrs. Wow and I shared stuff we might well have had one each of previously (onion bhaji, nan bread) I still ate too much.

Yesterday involved absolutely no cycling, about 120 miles of driving, some lovely fresh bread at lunch time in which I over-indulged, and another curry, home-made this time, in which, again, I over-indulged. And beer - 2 pints.

The result is that the lowest the scales would reluctantly allow was 109.7kg, but mostly 110.3kg. Given that, on Tuesday morning I couldn't make them go above 110 and they settled, eventually, on 108.8, that shows that I've gone backwards extremely rapidly.

Next week I'm on holiday. I think I'm going to steer clear of ale if I can. There will, at least, be reasonably cycling days: not huge number of miles, but there will be hills, it being Southern Scotland.

I'd say that means your gut is full and you're well htdrated, nothing more. Weight trending over such a short period is pointless IMO.