Do a food diary for a week and post it and I’ll take a look
I’m of the opinion that everyone should be eating as much of this as possible
If your complaints are about the quality of food in your diet (as you seem to be implying - fruit loops, margarine, etc.) being one of, if not the, primary contributors to weight problems then stop purchasing them!
You’re coming across as very combative in your posts, so I want to make sure I’m clear. I agree with you that the quality of food marketed to Americans is utter shit. However, I don’t agree with what I think you’re saying, which is that this absolves the individual of the capability to lose weight if they so desire. Just because fruit loops are available doesn’t preclude the option to buy oatmeal.
My point wasn’t that I actually think rising obesity rates are linked to low carb diets. My point was that t’s just as absurd to assume that low carb caused a rise in obesity as it is to assume that it’s caused by government food pyramid literature. You can’t prove either.
It’s a false dichotomy between Froot Loops and eggs and bacon. There are plenty of alternatives - cooked whole oats with mixed seeds, protein powder and berries, unsweetened greek yogurt with muesli, (Kite Hill makes an almond based one that’s delicious), or tofu scramble with veggies on Ezekiel bread. There are endless variations with a good macronutrient profile and healthy fats that are based around whole foods rather than saturated fat or refined sugars. Fiber adds bulk that helps with satiety and passes straight through, feeds a healthy gut microbiome, etc. A lot of body builders and people who track macros will subtract the fiber grams from the carbohydrate grams to arrive at the actual carb content. I agree that these sugary cereals being marketed as “whole grains” if f-ing ridiculous and really misleading.
As far as “don’t diet on the bike” advice is concerned - I have gotten this same advice from a couple of different nutritionists as well. I don’t interpret it to mean that you should consume 100g of carbs in the form of pure sugar on a 1 hour Z2 ride. They have mentioned on the podcast to eat a small carby snack before a morning workout, like a piece of toast with jam or a banana (25g carbs). Also, probably that sugar is going straight to your working muscles in the next hour or two, and is not a guaranteed insulin spike. Also I don’t take this advice to mean that you can’t occasionally do a fasted ride to boost fat burning, as long as it’s low intensity relatively short and you don’t do that 5 times a week. For me, a fasted ride means I have low energy and am ravenous afterward which doesn’t set up my day well. YMMV.
If you’re looking for specific nutrition advice, it’s worthwhile to hire a nutritionist or dietician for a few months rather than taking the advice of people who aren’t qualified to make specific individual recommendations (like podcast hosts, or forum posters like me).
Weight loss requires moderation and patience and sensible habits that you can sustain for the rest of your life, not ditch when you reach your goal weight. Diets have never worked for me. The truth is a lot of us may never be skinny, were never meant to be skinny, at least not sustainably, but we can get to a weight that is healthy for us. And yet some people will judge you unfairly no matter what. F them.
There are no silver bullets and if someone tells you there is a quick and sure way to weight loss they are trying to sell you something. The diet industry and the food industry deserve your rage - they are full of shite. Health > weight loss.
Here is an actual resource that I bought once upon a time. Kelli Jennings is a registered dietician who has some PDF-based plans that explain exactly how much to fuel based on ride length/intensity. It explains the separation between ride nutrition and daily nutrition really well and gives specific recommendations.
Check out her podcast episodes, too.
I just re-listened to this little nugget, and what I like is that the advice is actionable, practical and uncomplicated.
The Kevin Hall Biggest Loser studies are also very interesting in this area.
I think the Hadza study is interesting to compare with us amateur athletes riding 6 hours per week. The Hadza are on their feet all day working for their food yet their BMR is about the same as an office worker.
I read the strength training study on 50-65 year olds. 13 participants, 3x per week or heavy lifting (3 rep max). The strength gains were impressive (40%). Fat free mass improved but they did not lose any weight as a result of having more muscle. My take is that it would be a fantastic goal for any older (or younger) adult but it’s not a weight loss aid. If you are going to run a calorie deficit all the same obstacles will be there (decreasing RMR and hunger).
I agree with this. Personally, I think the whole low carb era was a red herring. This is around the time the population started getting fatter. The carbs weren’t the problem though. The problem is that foods were reformulated for taste and shelf life. They removed the fiber and added sugar and salt. We are genetically programed to seek out high energy food so these reformulations hit that right on the target.
Society also shifted to two working parents so there were much more frozen dinners, pizzas, and take out food eaten. When I was a kid in the 60s/70s, most moms were stay at home and probably putting chicken dinners and potroast on the table. People packed their lunch. These days, many people don’t know how to roast a chicken and they eat a burritto at lunch or whatever else they find.
If one lived through these decades and came out the other end fat then it will be a struggle forever more to be super thin. Probably the best most of us could do at this point is get reasonably thin, have healthy blood panels, exercise and eat healthy.
The hard part is that all the kind of eating we grew up on has to go out the window. You have to go to whole foods, veggies, salads, healthy grains, low sugar, tons of fiber, lean meats, tofu, seeds, nuts (not salted and roasted), etc. It’s a health food diet and cooking from scratch. And you can’t diet. You have to just eat this way forever. It’s a complete 180 for most Americans.
@AJS914 Agreed but there is also a hormonal component that some need to fight against as well. Unfortunately we are the only species that doesn’t know how to feed ourselves.
Yes, this is a really good point! Also, divorce rates skyrocketed so there were many working single parents (like my Mom). I remember having to cook meals for us from a young age, so they had to be simple (and cheap). Boxed mac & cheese, hot dogs, Steak-ums, TV dinners. If my Mom drove me to a violin lesson after work it was McD’s or Burger King. Weekday mornings were a tiny bowl of cereal or packet of sugary oatmeal. Sunday breakfasts were bacon or sausage and eggs. I drank tons of milk thanks to the dairy campaign ads on TV. No wonder I grew up fat, yet was hungry all the time.
My n=1 doesn’t really line up with that. I went through all of that and was a fat kid with twinkies and cokes and the worst imaginable diet. Weight bounced around up and down, but I kept it decent in high school and college. 20 years into the working world (and kids) and I was putting on a couple pounds per year and hit ~220lbs at 6’ by the time I was 40 with poor blood panels. That wasn’t a good 220 either, I wasn’t active and lived a very sedentary life. Diet was still pretty terrible. Got on the bike without changing my diet (probably ate more) and dropped about 35lbs in the first couple years and weight hovered in the low 180’s after that. I wasn’t a super serious rider, but had a power meter and rode at least 6k miles a year, got into group rides, etc… I eventually got pretty serious about training/racing and improved my diet a bit (but still not great) and now I race at 165-167 and I might hit 175lbs in the off season when my training volume drops and my diet is lazy. For me, the switch really flipped when I started doing competitive racing. Having an event on my calendar multiplies my motivation exponentially. Back in 2020 when I was really optimizing things, I was doing dexa scans, vo2/metabolic lab testing, and riding a bunch of volume and lifting weights. I was dropping weight, increasing lean muscle, and significantly boosting my FTP at the same time. That’s why I’ve got a personal bone to pick when someone says you can’t drop weight, add lean muscle, and increase metabolism at the same time. N=1 and all that, but it can be done under the right circumstances.
Thanks, that’s a really interesting study. But I’m not sure how to apply it to the the broader discussion of weight loss. The conclusion of the study is telling - “Our results indicate that daily physical activity may not predict TEE within traditional huntergatherer populations like the Hadza.” That’s a really unique population of very lean people who are active, but not doing anything that would approach training (certainly not intense training). I know in the US, people lump walking in with exercise (and technically it is), but for many populations it’s just being awake. Maybe we can say that standing is also exercise? Mean body weight of males is 112lbs with 13% body fat. Women were 95lb and 21%. And their activity is basically walking. They are trying to draw correlation (or lack of) between folks based on their activity levels and their activity levels looked very similar. If you are 100lbs and low body fat, you are likely very fit and walking a few Km’s more than the next guy isn’t going to be statistically relevant. It’s like a trained cyclist going for a 45 minute recovery spin (maybe burn 200 calories? and creates no stress). Again, it’s an interesting study and well done, but I don’t see how it applies to the overweight cyclist (or couch potato) trying to lose weight. Or a highly trained cyclist doing significant training for that matter.
And that’s when the macros you’re taking in are so critical. Protein is so important if you’re working out trying to train and improve muscle mass. You’ll need (some) carbs to fuel those workouts (the higher the intensity the more glycogen you’ll burn). You need healthy fats, but you’re burning fat at lower intensity/endurance, so don’t want to just replace them with more fat if you haven’t met your protein & carb needs for the day.
My n=1 is about opposite from yours. I was always a skinny kid but the weight creep started in college with the freshman 15. I lost that, raced bicycles a lot but then retired from that and was working desk jobs my whole life.
Weight went from 165 (lowest in college), 175 racing weight in the 90s to 185 (I’d call my normal weight) to peaking at 250-260. I’ve lost 50 of that and sit at 210 now. I worked really hard for years before covid and got to 190. Covid threw a wrench in our lifestyle and I got back up to 215.
I never though had a bad metabolic panel.
What I notice is that in my 20s, I could start riding in the spring, lose 5 pounds per month easy, and hit race weight by June. (without any intentional dieting)
I’m 57 now. I can eat healthy, ride my bike a ton, count calories, and I’ll loose a minuscule amount of weight. I just counted calories for a month, lost 5 pounds, gained 3 back within a couple of days of stopping counting. 2 pounds net is fine for a month but my loss is excruciatingly slow and gains seem rapid.
Also, we eat super healthy, whole foods. We hardly ever go out. We cook from scratch. I don’t drink soda. Drink little alcohol. There practically zero low hanging fruit in my diet to take out or change.
Sounds like are are ticking most of the boxes on the diet side. A couple books I enjoyed that helped me are “racing weight” by fitzgerald. and “fast after 50” by friel. Worth a look if you have not already read them. You probably won’t pick up too much you don’t already know in the racing weight book, but he’s got some some very pragmatic advice on nutritional timing and I like his “eat everything” approach. The friel book is also a lot of common sense, but he really beats one topic into the ground - intensity. Intensity (including heavy weight training) does a lot of good things that help us older guys. Intensity is basically like a legal drug that boosts testosterone (helps with metabolism and weight loss, energy, etc.) and also helps fight back declining v02max. Again, probably not anything you don’t already know here, but I find that the more I read this stuff, the more I’m motivated to take things a little further and be a little more disciplined.
I would actually be inclined to try the 16 week, 3 rep max type of protocol to build strength but it would have to wait until the off season. My son (12) and I have been thinking about joining the Y.
I’m doing my intervals. I’ve finally figured out that at 57, I need at least two easy days and/or a day off between interval sessions. Sometimes I go three days if the life schedule demands it. That works out to 1.5 to 2 interval sessions per week on average. This leads to a slower but more sustainable ramp rate.
I’m ok if I get back under 200 and stay there as my blood markers and Ha1C are all great. It was super frustrating to get within 10 pounds of goal weight just prior to covid only to lose the progress under lockdown. But nobody in our family died so it’s not the worst thing in the world.
Something I’ve aways thought, is age doesnt matter that much. I mean metabolism certainly does slow, but not dramatically. At the end of the day it’s still 200lbs or whatever of human flesh that needs to be kept up to temp and moving.
What DOES change significantly, I think, are energy and activity levels. Even if we remove proper exercise from the equation…if you’re in your teens or 20s, you just move more. Walking to friends houses, walking around campus, walking to class. Just generally being out and about more. Theres potentially a LOT of calories there.
Contrast that with being 40, tired from work and kids, you drive to work, sit at a desk for 8 hrs, drive home, make dinner, then sit on the couch.
I’m also in my mid-50s and right there with you. 2 hard workouts a week and the rest is Z1/2. I try to bump up the volume when I can, but even that can lead to me taking 2-3 consecutive days off every 4 or 5 weeks due to being tired all the time.
I’m slowly realizing I just prefer to get out and ride my bike and enjoy the wind in my face.
Have you noticed a difference with fitness gains? I’m considering doing something similar. One hard group ride, one weekday TR interval session, the rest just lots of zone 2.
True to a point, but the mix of that 200lbs tends to change over time. 200lbs at 50+ is typically a higher percentage of fat and that mass doesn’t burn calories like lean muscle does. As we age, we have to fight hard to avoid losing lean muscle mass. At some point, it’s inevitable, but there is good proof that we can dramatically slow the decline and even add lean muscle to a point. As much as we all love tapping out Z2 days, a couple days of intensity plus weight work is key. From what I’ve read, 2 days of intensity is a good target for masters athletes. It’s critical to make those intense days really intense rather than watering them down by trying to do too much the rest of the week. I do 2 structured days per week and then I do a long saturdays which include a group ride (some intensity, but not quality intensity). The 2 structured intensity days are non-negotiable. The rest of the week is ride as much as I can while being able to recover enough to nail those 2 non-negotiable days. That said, I’m a big volume advocate and focus on endurance events. You can get to a point where 5-6 hours of upper Z2 is a pretty easy day if you stay disciplined. The hard part is having the hours (and desire) to ride that much. My kids are out of the house and cycling is my thing, so I’m lucky enough to have the time and enjoy the big hours.
I think there is something too that though I love riding and do find the energy to ride 8 hours per week. I struggle to find the energy to trim hedges or work in the yard.
I know the studies say that metabolism only falls a little starting in the 60s. But when I was in my 20s I could ride weight off easily. I’d slack off in the winter Ullrich style, start riding in Feb/March, lose 5 pounds per month without trying and hit race weight by May/June. And that was on the see food diet of a 20 something year old.
I think the gains will come from being fresher and having less needed time off for rest. There’s a probably a diminishing amount of returns from more interval sessions. You probably get like 80% of the benefit from the first session, 15% more from the second session, and 5% from the third session. But if the 3rd session put you in the gutter and then you need to take time off all the time, then that 3rd session is a net negative.
