The Long and Winding Road

[Torslanda]

Friday. Induction & assessment with the gym

Weight. 18st 5lbs    BMI 34.61     Body fat 36%

Pardon the language but Holy Shit! No wonder I can't ride the bike any more.
Why? Depressed, doing a job I hated, for a firm I hated, with a management I hated.
Result? Comfort eating and severe self delusion.

Monday. First gym session.
20 mins static bike, variable resistance, 7 kms. HR max 142
10 mins 1000m rowing machine. No HR but 'quite wobbly' for a couple of minutes afterwards.
20 mins treadmill, nothing over a brisk walk (can't run), 1 mile. HR max 156! Walking.

Shit! This is serious.

Any advice, tips, encouragement, criticism most welcome.

John

[Chris S]

In 2002, when I was 42, I stopped a 25 year long smoking habit. I was 4st overweight and sedentary. My doc famously said "I hope you aren't making too many plans for your retirement."
In 2004, when I was 44, I started cycling. I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without puffing and panting like an old steam train.
In 2006, when I was 46, I did my first Audax.
Last year, when I was 49, I did my second SR and rode nearly 12,000km.
This morning, I recorded a PB on a rowing machine for rowing 10,000m - a distance I now row three times a week, and eight years ago would have been incomprehensible.

It is a long and winding road, but every journey starts with a first step.

Best Wishes for your journey.

[Rich753]

Wish you all the best - lots of us have been there (or somewhere that looks a lot like it), and the trick seems to be slow and steady.  Don't expect miracles in you first few months, don't beat yourself up too much if you have a "bad" day (or week), keep you eyes on the horizon and go for it.

First step is the hardest, hope you have support around you?

BTW I notice the past tense in "hated" - has that element gone away?

[MSeries]

Change things around. When the weather gets better go cycling and or walking. Eat less. Set a goal. Maybe ride 100 miles in the summer, perhaps on an organised event of some sort with some friends or family to give you some sort of commitment.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The best way to lose weight is to up your metabolism.

You'll need to exercise for over 1 hour 3 times a week to see a real shift.  Then the weight will shift itself.

I don't think 36% body fat sounds very very high. I can remember being whippet thin at 19 and measured at over 20%.

[border-rider]

I also don't think 36% is that bad.

Long and steady does it, as others said.  Just take a bit more care about what you eat, cut right down on booze and sugary drinks and junk food and as Mr Charly says, wind up the exercise. 

There are some good threads on here on weight loss and on fat-burning strategies and I'm sure that those of us who've been there ourselves in the past will be very happy to try to help

We have a weight loss thread, and whilst it is a bit of a challenge to bring oneself to post a starting weight, you've already done that on this thread.  Why not join that ? I find that the need to post your weight every Wednesday really helps keep you on track.

I think that within a week or two you'd start to see improvements in fitness and a decrease in weight, and by the summer you could be fighting fit

But don't delay - start today !

[urban_biker]

I was 33 and I hit 16 stone and my weight was still increasing. It made me realise I had to take some action.

I started cycling to work and haven't looked back really.  Now down to just 14 stone which is still slightly overweight for someone of 6 foot but not bad. Targetting to be 13 stone ish before PBP next year

The advantage of being heavy is that it feels so great when you lose it.

The point is that you need the exercise to help you manage the weight but you can only really lose it by dieting combined with the exercise. I find that if I let go of the diet and slip back into eating food that is too fatty, the exercise helps prevent me from putting it back on so fast. 

The exercise also helps combat stress. How about setting yourself some audax targets. Maybe plan to try a 100k this year and a 200k next year or later this year. Audax is great in that the speeds and endurance  required helps to teach your body how to burn fat more efficiently.

Anyway - best of luck!

[hellymedic]

You are quite tall (I worked out your height from the figures you gave) and BMI is a tad misleading for tall people. Relating weight to the square of height only works for a small range of adult heights.
You are overweight though and ought to lose some fat. Others have suggested upping your metabolic rate by exercising, which is good.
Avoid having food to hand when at the TV or computer. I'm not going to say 'don't eat between meals' because this isn't always right when doing endurance activities.
It it endurance activity which potentially can burn off most fat. Walking, cycling and swimming are good. I would suggest avoiding running until you are much lighter - the chances of injury are higher in taller heavyweights.
Enjoy your food but don't let it dominate your life; I found making some rules for myself quite helpful. (No more than 6 mince pies per festive season; they're not special or enjoyable after that, just 200kcal...)
Enjoy you activities. Cycling is fun, meeting regulars in the pool is enjoyable, walking with friends is good - just don't overdo the chips in the pub at lunch. (Actually, never overdo chips - like mince pies, they're not nice after a few. Don't cut them out, cos you may binge on a chip fest.)

It's going to be a long road but 'every little helps'. Get started, keep going, don't let minor hiccups deter you.

GOOD LUCK!

[Butterfly]

Good luck:)
My advice (as someone of fluctuating weight) is:
Don't get hungry.
Never leave it more than a couple of hours between meals - have an apple at 9, a banana or a cereal bar at 11.15, lunch at 12.30 and so on. If you are hungry you are more likely to eat anything you can get and it's likely to be the bad stuff. Don't deprive yourself but: Avoid food you can't resist - for me this means buying cake in a cafe not chocolate - cake I will eat one portion, chocolate I will eat far more and then get a craving and eat again.

Build up exercise slowly but persistently - you don't have to run a marathon tomorrow - just do 3 minutes more walking than you did today. (or 1 minute more than you did today - that's 10 minutes more by next Friday . Get a pedometer and work your way up to the recommended 10000 steps a day. That's nearly 3 miles for me. Then do a bit more.

Do exercise that you like. If you hate aerobics, for example, you won't do it. Walk somewhere nice, ride your bike round the park (when you can), learn to horse ride, waterski, roller blade, jive, swim, play football, play tennis - whatever YOU enjoy, or fancy. Do something FUN .

J

[Manotea]

If you're feelin too lardy to run or ride then if there is a pool near you, try and develop a 'before work' swim habit. Especially beneficial at this 'orrible time of the year. swimming is just about the gentlest fatburning/muscle building form of exercise there is (and you get to do it in the warm and dry(ish!).

Works for me.

Physician, heal thyself...

[MSeries]

If you can build exercise into you day it'll really help. Like riding to work. It's free exercise it'll cost maybe a little bit of time but serves to get you there and get you fitter. Even when you don't feel like it you'll have to ride home and thus exercise.

[hellymedic]

As Manotea says, an hour's swim before work is good (if available in your area and if you like swimming).
There is often good camaraderie amongst early morning 'regulars'.

If you buy a season ticket or multi-tickets for your pool, you may feel obliged to extract maximum value for money from your purchase...

[Phixie]

Some great advice here.  One more thing: when you get on the scales after a week when you've been really good, don't be dispirited if they don't recognise your sacrifices.  They will, but it may take a week or so more.

Good luck.

[hellymedic]

Some great advice here.  One more thing: when you get on the scales after a week when you've been really good, don't be dispirited if they don't recognise your sacrifices.  They will, but it may take a week or so more.

Good luck.

Remember, Audax rides can cause massive fluid and weight shifts. I gained and lost about 4kg  the week after a 300km randonnée.

[simonp]

Exercise will help.  I have found calorie counting effective (see separate thread) to avoid eating too much and ruining the good work at the gym/pool/on the bike.  I gained a stone in 3 months before I started, and I've lost it again in about the same period.  I find that rate easy to sustain, whereas regularly being -1000 calories (4x the rate I am aiming for) leaves me feeling hungry all the time and not recovering properly from exercise.

One particular benefit of this is if you have say a lump of cheese grated over pasta, you soon see how many calories (especially FAT calories) it adds to your daily intake.  Maybe my natural tendency to mild OCD helps with weighing everything though.  It gets a bit tricky IME if you are not preparing food yourself as a lot more guesswork is required.  I actually started losing weight a lot more rapidly than intended between Christmas and New Year due to overestimating portion sizes when I was at my parents'.

Whatever approach you decide to take, best of luck with it, and don't lose heart if it doesn't seem to be working at first.  I've logged my weight virtually every day for the past 3 months, and I've noticed some significant noise and plateaus (and I've not done any Audax rides at all during that period - but I have been training a lot), and there were times when day after day there seemed to be no drop.  However, the big picture is nonetheless obvious: I've lost 7kg, about 10% of my body weight.  You could plot a really nice best-fit straight line through these data, apart from the deviation around Christmas.  This hasn't been upset by the occasional over-indulgence.

[Torslanda]

Great replies here. Thanks for all the encouragement. I'll give a comprehensive reply to specifics tomorrow evening, after my next gym sesh.

Cheers guys. Really encouraging.

J