Love the bathtub analogy. I don’t think any of us can explain it better than that. I understand the OP is frustrated, but the constant changing of the story and attacking of others who are trying to help has me moving on. I hope you solve it FBS. Best wishes for success!
Ok, then I’m not sure what the point of all your screen shots was.
CICO is the current science IMO. It should work for you if you are measuring correctly. That said, you may be walking around hungry frequently if CI is less than CO on a consistent basis.
Hire a pro to help you.
You need silly analogies or dad jokes, I’m your guy ![]()
Just FYI, based on that same calculator, your BMR is more like 1,780.
Unless you are actually a metric person and misconverted to imperial when providing your height and weight earlier, you’re off by over an inch and a kilogram, respectively. You should also be using the more precise equation based on body fat percentage, which I estimate to be the mid 30s, unless you are very muscular.
You are also taking a frankly silly number of supplements that you probably do not need.
There was no way you would be weight stable if you maintained these sorts of deficits for weeks at a time.
I am not necessarily even suggesting that you do calorie-counting / CICO (or IIFM, If It Fits Your Macros). Given how much weight you have to lose, and how active you are, simply pursuing satiety per calorie would probably be enough. The most weight I ever lost was without any tracking whatever, just with thorough carb restriction. It’s always the last 20-30 that are the hardest. Well, technically the last few are the hardest, but I’ve never gotten that close…
I’m not familiar with them. I dont think you’d get any particularly useful information honestly. What are you going to do differently? I’d just use the best guess at bmr, then track every single calorie injested, and continue to reduce intake by 500 calories every couple weeks until you’re losing weight, not gaining it.
IMO you’re still overthinking it. Do the simple shit first before turning yourself into a science experiment.
Inbody is just a fancy impedance scale. It will tell you your approximate body fat percentage and lean mass, but any RMR number will be based on a formula.
If you want have the cash and want to know how fat you actually are, get a DEXA scan or water displacement / BodPod test.
Reeveu sounds like direct measurement, so it would probably provide useful data.
If you want to save your money, track everything (religiously) to the calorie (with a scale and a smartwatch) and aim for a 1000 calorie a day deficit for a month. Use the amount of weight you (WILL) lose (based on weekly averages of daily weighing) to back-calculate your actual RMR.
You need a scale. Weigh yourself every morning. Good enough estimates of calories in and calories out. Eat enough carbs and protein. The scale is your boss. Follow trends. It’s that simple. Don’t get your brain wrapped around the axle.
And for all things holy try and reduce your stress because as the saying goes, stress kills. You post like someone with cortisol levels off the charts. Chill. Peace.
Broadly speaking…I dont think there are a lot of people who gain, or fail to lose weight because their estimation of their BMR is off 5 or 10%. I know for me…it’s the 10 beers and 4 giant bowls of ice cream a week.
Jeezus…this thread.
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You really don’t. All of your provided tracking data is either incomplete or during a very specific period of extremely high activity, outside of your normal pattern.
I’d like to reiterate what others have said. You need to keep an accurate food journal, if possible weighing everything you consume, for around a week. This will help you dial in the CI part of the equation in your NORMAL life, not during a huge ride.
You don’t need to do this indefinitely (as I and others do), but you really need to do it to set a baseline. You can do this yourself without an expensive tests. Buy a $10 food scale on Amazon and weigh everything you eat
…and you’d be wise to make separate columns to track your daily calories burned on the bike and the calories you took in specifically to fuel the bike ride (gels & drink mix type calories that you took in specifically because you knew you burned x calories while on the bike that day).
I’ve found that it helps (me) to have my base diet consisting of my typical meals that satisfies my BMR (calories and macros) and has a built in caloric deficiency, and then specifically and purposefully add calories (by specific macros) to fuel the ride, and I like to add extra deficit to the day by some amount that is relevant to the intensity and duration (for a high intensity ride the deficit will be small 100-200, but a z2 ride might be half up to 500 calories because I can take advantage of the fat burn). Coincidentally, my calorie tracker app similarly itemizes the daily exercise calories. If I feel bad I may eat more and reduce that deficit…it’s gravy on top of the base 500 calorie deficit I have built into every day.
@FatBoySlim Sounds like you’re open to a lot of the suggestions people made here, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen that happen on the internet, you are in rare company. Good luck on your journey and keep us posted if you do decide to make some of the changes people have suggested here.
If you’re into podcasts, I’d highly recommend the stronger by science podcast. It’s hosted by a couple PhDs who do very deep dives into weight lifting and nutrition and explain things very clearly. They are mostly focused on weightlifting/bodybuilding, but lots of it applies to cyclists. There are a couple episodes about a lot of the stuff discussed here, accuracy of wearables and online calculators, your bodies response to running calorie deficits (if you add 100cal of activities, usually you can only add~75cals of food because your body compensates for the deficit for example).
I wrote YMMV = “Your mileage may vary”. i.e. this is just my experience, and I’m sure it works differently for others. There are gender differences in the efficacy of fasted rides - as well as intermittent fasting, both seem to have better results for men.
I guess I’m thinking of the broader picture in my replies.
We all ate like shit back then (those of us who were alive at the time) - due to what was available/popularized. There have been better options around for quite some time now.
Anyway, I hope things get better for you, sincerely.
CICO and intense food tracking is nice, we all know it works, that’s not in doubt.
I think we could add to the nuance by discussing how modern foods with hyper-palatability contribute to disordered and over consumption. I live in a place with an incredible restaurant scene, and although I cook a lot at home, it’s so easy for me to drop 1500-2000 calories down my gullet in one meal. Obviously it’s very difficult to lose or maintain weight when there are these overly tasty foods available and they can seduce even the most restrictive eater.
A few years back I read Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, and it was very interesting to see how foods have changed and been designed by food scientists to be hyper-palatable. My #1 vice is Dr. Pepper, and its sugar content is literally referred to as the ‘bliss point’ to maximize sugar and its addictive effects.
Man, I nominate this for best post of the thread.
I have soooo many very strong views on this. I wont delve too deep…because I fear it will just result in a 3 day internet fight. But my intentionally vague response is all of this is an expected, sadly inevitable result of our political and socio-economic system.
How to combat it then? Just don’t engage. It’s a losing battle. Avoid whenever possible anything produced and “marketed.” Dont buy food, buy “ingredients.” Even ingredients have changed due to marketing/profit concerns…but it’s way better option. Buy chicken…broccoli, etc. Not packaged food, or even food prepared in a restaurant. It’s so important to understand IMO that in 99% of cases, the goal is to make money, not to feed you in a healthy way.
Woof, talk about taking a lot of joy out of my life. Food has so many emotional, physically, and social elements intertwined, it’s incredibly hard to disentangle. I used to be extremely conscious of my eating habits due to financial reasons, so I made all of my own food (I start from scratch for most of my cooking) and allowed myself to dine out once a week for lunch with coworkers. I had so much pleasure from the social interactions as well as the food itself.
Anyway, I cook a lot of meals at home that are some combination of protein + green stuff + starch + sauce. I’ve found the happy medium by taking out some of the “gourmet” elements when I am trying to lose weight, like skipping the pan sauce or choosing a vinegar/salt flavor enhancers vs. oils.
Please ignore all the addictive junk food I ate on my vacation last week, lol.
These do not need to be mutually exclusive and often aren’t.
It’s not that overt, but obviously I’m not the only one who finds that they’re dismissive to questions regarding weight loss, it’s not malicious, they just don’t have the perspective.
If I came from money and someone struggling financially asked me what I thought they could do the make more money. If I said “buy low sell high”, it’s not technically wrong, but I don’t have the understanding of what it’s like in their position and should probably not give them the same advice I’d give to someone who’s more affluent.
Anyway, you have your opinion i have mine….and mine happens to be correct ![]()
You’ve heard Ivy speak about her past struggles in her relationship to food, right?