Fat boy needs help

Help!! I returned to cycling about a year ago after 10 years of total inactivity and piling on the pounds. My question is - what is the best way to use my bike to help me lose weight [currently about 300lbs] and also generally improve my fitness. Am I best just grinding out plenty of miles and burning calories or should I put some hills/sprint work in? What about a heart rate monitor? [yeah, I know I need to diet as well! ]

First toss all refined sugars and unnecessary snack foods in the garbage. Replace with fruit and energy bars.

Then I think you should follow a modified perioditization schedule. Start with 16 weeks of base and then add intervals with the goal of improving overall fitness so you can ride faster, harder, longer.

Do conventional frames even support 300 lbs. of weight?

Sure does, I ride a Raleigh Milk Race, 20 year old steel frame - great bike!

My opinion is that it really doesn't matter what you eat so long as you burn more calories than you eat. And you're not going to know that unless you track your intake/expenditure using a tracker like FitDay.com (or some other free site like FitDay).

To burn a lot of calories you're going to need to be able to stay on the bike long enough to burn a lot of calories. Sounds dumb, right? But it means going nice and easy rather than fast and furious.

As tempted as you're going to be to try to drop 100 pounds in 100 days, the best chance you have to meet your long term fitness goals is to lose about 1 pound per week. That means an average daily caloric deficit of only 500 calories.

Having said that, I'll share with you what might be an unpopular opinion: the key to losing weight is NOT burning more calories. The key is consuming fewer calories. This forum and many other forums like it are filled with people who burn thousands and thousands of calories each week from exercise and still wish they could lose 5, 10, 15, or even 50 pounds.

--Steve

I once weighted 220 and found the need to lose weight because of medical reasons (diabetes). I found several websites that took into acount my current weight, goal weight, level of exercise, and listed the amount of calories that I need to intake to reach that weight, and how many calories I should take in to maintain the goal weight. I found that eating less calories was not really that hard and on days that I eat more then I should have I stayed on the bike a little longer to burn more calories. I know that this thread has moved away from your original question, but in 6 months I lost 50 pounds which has helped me become a better rider.<img>

Now about training, I found that If I had time to ride (1hr or more) then I would go at it easier and enjoy the ride. But, If I had less time (less then 1hr) I would push hard. Sometimes I would switch up the workouts just to keep me from getting burned out. The point being that I would burn about the same amount of calories. The hard workouts made me feel like I was building strength and the easy workouts helped with cardio.

The best thing is what works for you, make a plan and go with it.

Psychler,

Here are some things I would think about.

I would make an appointment with my doctor and ask her to take some baseline physiological measurements that would quantify my starting condition and allow me to gauge my progress after future checkups. I would ask her to suggest and teach me some body composition, body dimension, heart rate and blood pressure measurements that I could use to monitor my progress between checkups. Then I would make my next checkup appointment with her for 60 days later and tell her to be ready for a significant change.

I would take my bike to the shop and have it in top working order so things worked smoothly and I looked forward to riding it each day without enduring components that were out of adjustment. I bet you need new tires , tubes, handlebar tape and brake pads. Get your bike overhauled if you can. If you are still riding regularly after a few months and you think a new bike would help you get more miles in because it fit you better and rode more smoothly, become a student of bikes. Get the best bike you can possibly afford, one that fits you well, one that you can't wait to head out on.

I wouldn't even think about sprints and hills. The stress from this exertion may make you take days off from riding. You are going to be better off, I think, by not worrying about going faster. Try to go farther. Keep track of your mileage. Make a mental map of all the country roads and nearest towns and villages that you have visited on your bike and ride to extend and fill in that mental map for area that are farther and farther out from your home. Maybe at first you can only go 10-15 miles a day and 30 miles a week. Try to increase your distance by 10% a week. Try to set geographic goals like "I want to be able to ride to Village A and back by the end of the month." It's time on the bike and distance that is going to be the most fun and if you look forward to being on your bike that is what will help you burn the most calories.

You are trying to get hooked on riding which, IMO, isn't hard to do, especially this time of year. Find a friend or two that shares your goal and has a similar riding style. Get a group of your buddies riding together. You will get each other out on the road on days that you would have "bagged it" if it had been just up to you. Become a student of cold weather gear and learn how to be comfortable on your bike during the winter. There's lots of help and suggestions in the forums on this.

In my mind, riding for distance is a huge adventure. As you get in better shape, the pounds will come off and you will be able to go farther and farther from home. All of the wandering around you do, if you aren't pressed for time is just plain fun. Meanwhile, you are burning tons of calories.

Look up the local riding clubs and go with your riding buddies and ride their routes at your own pace. Seeing that you are stronger than others but that there are riders who are stronger than you, but not by much, is incredibly motivating.

In all of this I think the way I would view it would be to look at it as my attempt to become a rider, a cyclist rather than my effort to lose weight. I would hang out with friends that wanted to ride, buy cycling subscriptions and do the things that riders do. If you are going to become Psychler the rider, then you have to ride. This month you ride 200 miles. Next month 300 miles. Each month you see yourself and others begin to see you more and more as a rider. Just like a cowboy's weathered features reflects the challenges he has overcome in the world he inhabits, when you put in the miles on a bike your body too will change and reflect the distances you have overcome and the hills you have climbed. If you work at becoming Psychler the rider, then along the way I'm betting the weight will fall off pound by pound, mile by mile.

When I was about 230lbs I did alot of walking and rail trail riding the first couple years hills just blew out my knees. Get at least 500 miles of base before you think about intensity. With that weight rolling hills would be a challenge so choose your rides carefully.

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Thanks for the advice, I particularly like the philoslophy angle [cowboys' weathered features/Psychler the Cycler etc].

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My simpleton explination

The body starts to burn the fat after about 2 hrs of excercise, so just ride long.
Short rides will only burn sugars which your body will replace easily.

Gee, where did you get that idea? It's a complete rubbish. It's the intensity that determines the ratio of fat:sugar you burn from the workout. Lower the intensity is, the more fat you burn, and vice versa.

And you don't have to burn fat to lose weight. As others have already said, you just have to expend more energy than you eat.

That said, however, I find it easier to lose weight through low intensity workouts because you have to replenish muscle/liver glycogen by eating carbohydrate after high intensity training, and theoretically you can still lose weight that way, it's harder to eat just enough carbo to replenish the lost glycogen store so that you can maintain the intensity of your workout but you don't have excess carbo that is resynthesized and stored as body fat. IOW, I easily overeat.

So, if my main objective was to lose weight, I'd do by combining low intensity (L2-L3) rides with reduced caloric intake.

Idiot

simple way to lose weight - burn more calories than you take on in food. All this squabbling over fat burning zones and 2 hours + is over complicating the issue. The harder or lobger you train - the more energy you burn.

in order to ensure I stay below 70kg I eat all my carbs in the morning and afternoon - then train in the late arvo / early evening. I then eat lean fish or meat with vegetables (no pasta / rice / bread / potatoes) with a protein recovery shake. dessert is fat free yoghurt.

Most nights I go to bed slightly hungry but I got used to this.

Wow. I guess I'm an "idiot," too. I had the impression my body was pretty happy at interconverting between its various energy stores. Care to elaborate on your somewhat unorthodox theories about energy balance and metabolism?