New to Cycling - Must lose Weight! Please Help

[lanierb]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Onetrade .

Does this mean that I have to lose weight in order to bike ride?

Maybe that came out wrong. What I meant was that saddle choice and position are important for comfort, and that they most likely interact with your current weight. I.e., someone who weighs 240 might want a heftier saddle than someone who weighs 150.

I think comfort is one of the keys to the whole weight loss thing, because in order to lose weight what you really need is lots of hours on the bike (intensity is less important), and you won't want to sit for hours on the bike if you're not comfortable.

Let me add one more thing about what you are trying to achieve: chaffing etc and your hands hurting are NOT a necessary part of cycling. With the right setup none of this should happen, so keep working at it until you get it right. E.g., many of us can sit on a bike for 8 hrs without any more discomfort than you would get sitting in a car for that long (maybe less actually). The right setup includes seat position and bar position, type of saddle, some good bike shorts and gloves, and you might want also some "chamois cream" to help with the chaffing. The biggest help in all this is going to be someone really knowledgeable who can look at your setup and figure out what you're doing wrong. Unfortunately not every shop even has a single person like this but hopefully you can find someone helpful. Remember also that everyone is built differently so for example the bike saddle that I love might be really painful for you. The only way to figure out what works is to borrow and try various things.

 

[swampy1970]

Originally Posted by Onetrade .

lol @swampy. I do ride everyday and I try to wash them everyday but sometimes I forget and ride every other day. I don't want to invest into more shorts now knowing that I will lose weight and they will become useless fairly quickly.

I need to eat clean, if I don't eat clean food and try keeping my cal count down then I won't lose weight. I have to find the right balance. Drinking Gatordade during my rides helped quite a bit. I was forced to take a 2 day break, so now I have to hit the bike twice as hard.

Shorts - once you find a pair you really like, go buy them whereever they're cheapest. Think "Tour de France" online sale at Mikes Bikes or whatever big online retailer there is that'll be coming up soon.

In the grand scheme of things, people will shell out thousands to save 2.5lbs off a bike but for some reason they won't pony up $100 for an extra pair of shorts that'll serve them well for a limited time while they lose 10lbs during said useful life of the shorts. I'm not specifically talking about you there, it's just something that I find odd in general. It seems like a false economy.

I don't know why but it bugs the heck out of me when people always say they need to eat "clean". Go visit your little chicken friend in its coop and see it wallowing around in its own filth whilst being fed 'enhanced' chicken feed and bits of its own feces. Niether the chicken feed or the pee 'n **** that it spends half of it's life in is clean, yet when you eat the filth wallowing bird free of high calorie fixin's it's a "clean" food.

A calorie is a calorie, carbs are carbs, protien is protien...

... which is why you drink what I think is probably the worst "sports drink" out there. Gatorade. The powdered, mix it yourself, original version isn't too bad but the pre-made bottled stuff is, as far as most sports drinks go, junk. I think I could get less high fructose corn syrup by eating Mars bars during rides.

From a performace standpoint it doesn't really matter where it came from as long as you get enough of what you need but your choice is to make it as tasty and as "fun" as possible... After a ride, I personally much prefer something like a chicken burrito with freshly cooked chicken, rice, pico de gallo or a nice steak etc etc over a bag of carb and protien powder mix but when eating immediately after a training ride isn't an option then a recovery drink from powder is always consumed.

Hitting the bike harder because you missed a day implies you have no training plan. First secret to sucess - have a goal. Second - develop a plan with methodolagies that are known to work. Third - stick to it and don't change it on a whim or when you don't see progress for a week or so or a magazine posts "Ride like Lance - how to lose 132lbs in 3 weeks" like Bicycling always does just before the Tour. It's not really a secret - more something that people always seem to forget... and then after a month or two it all becomes like too much hard work because they're mentally and physically tired and they quit.

I'm not new to cycling or the need to lose weight, so in some ways I'm in a similar boat to yourself - it's just that I row a little differently. 4 sessions a week, 2.5 to 3 hours each during the week and 3+ hours on the weekend. Nothing glamorous or fancy - just good ol' ride hard, well paced sessions that 'burn' masses of calories while getting in a productive aerobic session. I personally find that combining short, anaerobic sprint intervals into these sessions makes for much harder recovery and a greater likelyhood of "failing" on the snacking front when I get back home, so I don't do them right now - but I will when the weight gets to where it needs to be. I figure on losing about 1.5 to 2lbs a week and progress proves that to be sustainable. I could throw in another session in during the week to up that a little but that impinges on family time and for now that's not what I want to, or need to do.

 

[Onetrade]

@Swampy

I will take your advice and invest in some new shorts, this is a must, you are absolutely right. I was procrastinating this, thinking when i lose weight I can buy new shorts, I have to live in the "now" and right now i am in need of new shorts.

I don't have a plan unfortunately. What I have been doing is riding as much as I can pedaling as fast as I can. As much as I can meaning making it in time for work and/or a meeting that can pop up at anytime. In the evning something ALWAYS comes up so I cannot ride after work.

When I said I have to ride extra hard was just me trying to say that I had a 2 day break and my legs are well rested, now I can hit this bike harder than I have in the passed few weeks because I will have more energy. Even though I was at a bachelor party for the weekend I still ate as clean as possible, this excludes the drinking that I did which I kept to a minimum. I came out this weekend on top as I know I kept my eating clean.

I don't like to drink Gatorade because to me they are just sugar calories but when I am on my ride and I am pooped at 1 hour into it and I need a boost of energy, all I can find is Gatorade. Should I get some protein bars instead? Bring with me an extra bottle with a protein drink mix?

I know that I should just stop posting here until a month has passed because "I am experiencing too much too fast" but I want to get as much out of riding as possible without learning myself along the way and wasting time and thus far I have learned quite a bit.

I also like posting my progress because if someone is in a similar situation and they look at my first post and then on my 200th post and they see me writing something like: today I weighed in at 180 that's a 60 pound loss, I would motivate a lot of people and it will be thanks to everyone here. Right now I lost about 5 pounds and friends have noticed it and that is a BIG thank you to everyone here!

 

[swampy1970]

If you eat enough carbohydrates during the day then you'll be good for about 90 minutes or so on the bike and water will suffice. If you need to drink something for added carbs then something like Hammer HEED would be better than pre-made/bottled Gatorade. For rides longer than 2 hours Hammer does a drink called Perpetuem that incorporates protein. I aim for about 1.5 scoops of this per hour or, as I use the big 24oz bottles - about 1 bottle with 2 scoops in about 1hr 20 minutes. That's just enough to keep the "tank" full enough to where my engine has enough fuel to usually last the distance. I say usually because there's always once or twice per month where I end up running out of gas with about 30 minutes left because I didn't eat enough during the day. As they say, s*&t happens. In the grand scheme of things it makes for a ride that's more taxing that it should be and will probably leave you feeling more tired afterwards but no biggie. If it happens use it as a learning experience. Think back to what you did and what you ate and try and figure out why it happened. If it never happens then cut back a little until it does...

You mention that there's always something that comes up in the evenings. There's a mystical two letter word that noone likes to use anymore, I'm not sure why but it works a treat - that word is, no. When I started back on the bike a few years ago there were always things that cropped up, always on nights that I'd told everyone that I'd be training on. Funny how that works... and then one day I thought "fark this for a game of soldiers" and it'd now take something either extremely important/urgent or special to get me to miss planned training.

There's no need to stop posting. There's always questions and out there somewhere, are answers.

 

[limerickman]

The majority of the advice thus far has been good.

The only thing that I can add is that weight loss is the most difficult thing to advise upon. In my own case I'm 6'2" and if I was normal I'd weigh at 14stone or thereabouts.
Back in the day in order to race, I had to maintain my weight at around 170 lbs.
If my weight went over 175 lbs I would be struggling in terms of being able climb, water carry, roll along the flatter parts of the course and work for my team mates.

It took a lot of trial and error to unlock how my body responded to food/exercise/energy output.
I ended up doing a lot of aerobic stuff because I found it helped burn off excess weight more quickly.
Running/sprinting helped as did indoor soccer and the like.
That was my solution.

I think the OP needs to keep an open mind and try to experiment in order to find what works for them.

My two cents worth