nice one! 
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This is why people tend to say weight loss comes in the kitchen, not on the bike. If you’re eating healthy foods it actually is hard to overeat as a cyclist, no matter how much you burn. If you’re eating unhealthy foods then it is easy to overeat no matter what. Calorie dense foods will screw up your weight loss attempts no matter how much you train. You can’t out-train a bad diet
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I 100% agree. It is mind blowing when your plate feels like it weighs 5lbs and is filled with nothing but whole foods that consist of a ton of veggies, proteins, healthy fats and is only 400-500 calories when you track it.
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You can focus on diet, and plan your workout according to your fitness goals. I think there is no harm in experimenting different plan that can help you in loosing weight fast.
low carb diets cannot result in weight loss by themselves. The laws of thermodynamics require that weight loss is solely a function of fewer calories going in, than going out. So that is the only way to lose weight. Now, crappy carbs, high-sugar, etc, can encourage someone to eat high calorie dense foods, which might make them overeat, but there are plenty of HIGH carb diets with quality fruits and vegetables that are very low calorie dense that make you feel full and satisfied.
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Completely agree - calories in / calories out. Can thoroughly recommend watching videos by Greg Doucette on Youtube…not the ones about performance enhancing drugs though 
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It’s also true that “you can’t outwork a bad diet”, much though I wish it weren’t. My biggest difficulty is in cutting out the cookies and desserts.
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I guess it depends what you mean. From a weight loss perspective, you can definitely outwork a bad diet, just by burning more calories than you eat. But for overall health and longevity that’s not likely the case
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I used to be able to outwork a bad diet when I was in my twenties!
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Do you want to lose weight without harming your health? Then it helps when you know which types of fats there are. Because, as is known, one type of fat is not the other. An overview.
What are healthy fats?
Saturated fats
These are mainly of animal origin. They stay firm at room temperature or: solidified. You will find it in, among other things, whole milk (products), fatty meats, cocoa, sauces, biscuits, snacks and pretzels, but also in some vegetable products such as palm oil and coconut fat.
You get the saturated fats through your daily diet. Sometimes unnoticed and then it is also called ‘hidden fats’. Saturated fats are generally unhealthy. Because, they increase your bad cholesterol (LDL) and the chance of cardiovascular disease. Saturated fats are difficult to break down. The surpluses are stored as body fat. It is best to avoid these fats. Because, your body can make them yourself from fats and carbohydrates.
Unsaturated fats
These are fats that are mostly vegetable origin and liquid at room temperature. Often they also get the name oké-fats and usually have a clear function in your body. The best-known unsaturated fats are omega 3, 6 and 9 fatty acids. The omega 3 and 6 are covered by the polyunsaturated fats or essential fats. The reason is that your body can not produce it yourself. You have to get them out of your diet. Incidentally, you now get enough omega 6 - also known as linoleic acid - if you eat varied and healthy. Because, it is added to a lot of food products. Omega 9, on the other hand, is one of the simple fats. These are not essential, because your body can create it yourself. However, the condition is that you get enough essential fats.
Roughly you can say that you find the monounsaturated fats in seeds, nuts, olives and avocados. The multiple fatty acids can be found in seeds, linseed, sesame, safflower and wheat germ oil. But also in walnuts and all kinds of fatty fish. Sardines, tuna, herring, anchovies, mackerel and salmon.
Trans fats
These fats belong to the unsaturated fats, but are not good for your health. Trans fats are even more unhealthy than saturated fats. It is actually vegetable oil that is made artificially harder. You can find it in margarines, deep-frying fat, baking and frying fats, cookies, pastries and so on. You can recognize it on food labels by the name: hardened fat or partially hardened fat with special diet How Protein Helps You Burn More Fat — Real Weight Training .
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Working out often does not lead to loosing actual weight, but to transformation of fat into muscles. As muscles are more heavy than fat one might even gain actual weight, but still be in better shape, thinner and healthier. So dont just look at the number but what your body actually consists off: fat or muscles?
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Alchemy. The answer is Alchemy.
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Ok guys, sorry, maybe misunderstood.
What I meant is: the more one works out the more muscle is built up. And muscles are heavy, ergo: sometimes people dont loose actual weight but even gain weight with built up muscles, which is rather “healthy” weight.
English is not my first language and maybe some things are misunderstood.
No need for sarcasm or for making fun of it.
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Other than some of the more extreme supplements (i.e., those detrimental to overall health), I’m not sure there are any commercially available of proven efficacy.
You’ll probably hear anecdotes relating to carnosine and HMBs, but doubt they help.
Hi all,
Sorry if this isn’t in the right place or similar has been discussed already. I’m looking for a bit of advice on reducing some upper body fat/mass while keeping up the strength.
Here are my vital statics:
Height: 183cm (6ft)
Weight: 81kg (178lb)
FTP: 249 = W/kg 3.07
From consistent training over the past three years, my weight has dropped down from 94kg (207lb) this has happened organically. However, I’m now static at 81-82kgs.
My first 70.3 triathlon is in 16 weeks, and I’m looking to reduce my upper body mass, this has stemmed from being between a Large and Medium trisuit size, I picked the medium… of course:)
Ideally, I’d like to get my W/kg closer to 4 for the summer, so maybe 79kg (174lb) with an increased FTP of 316.
I think I’ve got a shot at getting the weight down with maybe a slight increase in FTP with a better focus on fuel and diet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
My main question is: as a triathlete, I have to maintain upper body strength, especially as all the pools are closed due to COVID. So, to reduce upper body fat/mass while keeping lean muscle, should I opt for low weight and high rep or high weight and low reps?
Any help and advice would be welcome.
Thanks all:)
I think you should rethink this plan. You don’t want to diet 16 weeks before your event. This is your peak training and preparation time. You’ll short circuit the training with a negative energy balance.
BTW, I’m also 6 ft tall. At 204, I wish I were 178. 
The lowest I ever got was 165 and that was in my 20s while riding 250+ miles per week and racing.
At 54, I’ve found it almost impossible to lose that last 15-20. Last winter I did 12-13 hours per week of base training while counting every calorie for two months and only lost 6-7 pounds, 4 of which came back immediately after I stopped counting.
If you have low hanging fruit (chips, soda, pizza, burgers, alcohol, etc) then cut those out and replace them with whole foods. Otherwise don’t diet.
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I’ve reduced my food intake and just eaten less junk, cut out fizzy drinks, do 10 mins of exercises a day. Dropped 10lbs in the last month and dropped 3inches off my stomach. Happier already.
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Depends on how much muscle mass you actually want to keep. All of it or grow some? Target 8-15 reps per set at 0-4RIR (reps in reserve… ie. reps from failure or form breakdown) for 3-6 sets per movement.
The two biggest drivers of hypertrophy are cumulative muscle damage, and time spent under high muscular tensions, specifically dynamic (moving) tension. Both of these far outweigh any contribution from metabolic disturbance. The very best way to accomplish a large degree of muscular damage and tension, in a repeatable way so that adaptations can be chronic and continuous is: high volume resistance training that involves progressive overload from week to week. (More training each week, followed eventually by a deload week).
Deload serves three purposes:
- Psychological recovery, for which a week of shorter workouts is a generally-accepted and reasonable time frame to allow for some much needed mental down-time. Not to mention catching up on life (or sleep!)
- Physiological recovery: This involves glycogen restoration in the muscles as well as hormonal recovery (reduction of chronically elevated stress hormones and a concomitant increase in testosterone). Generally, reducing training volume is the most important factor for this, and taking a week of lowered training volumes allows for good restoration.
- Physical/mechanical recovery: This is the physical repair of your tissues to prevent injury. Cumulative microtrauma, if added up for many phases without reducing the load on the bar, can lead to injury. This is why the second half of deload week can be so crazy-light.
But… I’d recommend letting just a wee bit of the muscle disappear if you’re mostly concerned about:
- Tri performance
- Cycling performance
- Longevity and orthopedic health
- Secondarily, aesthetics/muscularity
If you go with a lower volume approach like:
- 3-6 reps per set
- 2-4 sets per movement
- 1-7 RIR, most of the time
- 4-6 movements per session
- 1-2 sessions per week
…You can maintain the vast majority of muscle with less total work and actually slightly improve strength with the same or minimally less muscle mass. You’ll have less indiscriminate hypertrophy (non-productive muscle mass for swimming and everything else) and less total fatigue to dissipate/recover from before each endurance training session.
And including explosive movements and a bit more core work is probably a good idea for movement economy in all three disciplines. (well… explosive stuff isn’t going to benefit the tri swim… but everything else holds true).
That’s how I’ve written the Endurace Sport Lifting Templates
They’re just a good strength training program with better fatigue management for endurance athletes who don’t plan on taking time off of, or reducing, volume of endurance training while touching on and developing strength and power in the gym. If you’re a triathlete and that’s a primary goal, 2d/wk lifting is plenty, FYI. Feel free to ask questions.
Does anyone know if TR offers/sells strength training programs? If so, I’ll remove this post immediately because I don’t think that would be kosher! (I profit from the sales of those programs)
These 2 articles were all I could find:
PS. Target 0.7-1.0g of protein per pound of lean mass you have, if you’d like to hold lean muscle well during a hypocaloric diet phase. More on that and other muscle retention and training quality nutrition detail the my book listed here: Recommended Books / Reading Thread
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I think the red flashing warning sign on that post was somehow being able to specifically target ‘belly fat’. The lie continued to be perpetuated by many parts of the diet and fitness industry.
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Yeah, it’s easy to want to believe it though. I’m pretty lean: 181cm, 66-67kg, but still there’s still a bit of tummy fat. I will pray to the pagan gods to make sure my alchemy starts working on it.
Someone also mentioned supplements. I can recommend a really good one which works everytime - carrots. 
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