Training for weight loss



biker-linz said:
I just thought you guys might be interested in these studies:

Tremblay, A., J. A. Simoneau, and C. Bouchard. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism. 43:814-818, 1994.
Yoshioka, M., E. Doucet, S. St-Pierre, N. Almeras, D. Richard, A. Labrie, J. P. Despres, C. Bouchard, and A. Tremblay. Impact of high-intensity exercise on energy expenditure, lipid oxidation and body fatness. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 25:332-339, 2001.

Basically high-intensity training is more effective for reducing fat mass than is low intensity exercise which uses the same number of calories. Just another nail in the ol' 'fat-burning' intensity myth:).

L.
I am finding this to be the truth. At least for me.

In the past I always used low intensity over a long period of time to retain muscle mass preparing for competition, but getting into cycling and training at higher intensity I am leaning out quickly and still maintaining my lean mass. And the best part I am enjoying the intense road cycling compared to boring hours on a stationary piece of equipement. I wished I had known this years ago rather than sticking to the older mentality of low intensity.
 
Felt_Rider said:
.. but getting into cycling and training at higher intensity I am leaning out quickly and still maintaining my lean mass. And the best part I am enjoying the intense road cycling compared to boring hours on a stationary piece of equipement. I wished I had known this years ago rather than sticking to the older mentality of low intensity.
Yup, me too. It's amazing how much more I can eat during race season and not seem to put on any weight. Even when, calorie for calorie, I'm supposedly doing a bit less work.

L.
 
Heres a good tip I picked up from the guy who helped Oprah Winfrey lose weight: EXERCISE EARLY IN THE DAY

It has to do with metabolism. Once you lie down to go to sleep, your metabolism immediately slows down and gets to its lowest point. So the idea is to exercise in the morning rather than the evening. If you exercise in the morning, your metabolism will get to its highest point early in the day (during the workout), and stays higher throughout the day (than if you didn't exercise). If you exercise in the evening, it is only high for a few hours until you go to bed.

Increased metabolism = increased weight loss (and increased hunger!)
 
Felt_Rider said:
JungleBiker, just to clarify my post was not a response to Dominic. Rather it was my on-going thoughts from previous posts on this very thread. Glad you brought it up because perhaps others may have thought that I was also responding to Dominic

snip.....

I didn't think you were responding directly to my comments and I totally agree with your view that people think dieting is a quick fix to years of weight gain.

I actually put 5kg back on simply because I lost it fast. I modified my eating habits and now loose weight at a MUCH slower rate.

The South Beach Diet (I HATE THE NAME!) has 3 stages. Stage 1 (2 weeks only) probibits ALL carbs. The author claims this lessens carb craving (I found this to work). Stage 2 reintroduces complex carbs and some fats (Olive, canola oils) and you stay at this stage until you reach your target weight. Stage 3 is a maintainence programme and if you find yourself gaining weight go back to stage 1 or 2.

The SB Diet author (a cardiac surgeon) says that he developed the diet after seeing so many of his patients fail in their diets. The problem was not the diet. Most sensible diets work... the problem is sticking to them.

The way it works is quite simple. If you don't raise your blood sugar dramatically, it will not drop dramatically and make you feel hungry. I can eat anything as long as the GI is low (ish). I NEVER got hungry on this diet.

I had two problems. The use of sweeteners (Aspitame gave me palpitations) and lack of fibre in the first two weeks gave me .... well you can imagine.

I only need raw sugar in tea and coffee so I alowed myself this and I make sure I have enough fibre. It contines to work for me.
 
biker-linz said:
I don't know if it mentions it on that fact sheet, but it's worth bearing in mind that high GI carbohydrates, when combined with protein, become a low GI meal. Glycemic indices are only really relevant for that food eaten in isolation.

L.

Yes I heard that before somewhere. The fact sheet says: "Remember that combining foods and adding fat while cooking can change the glycemic index of foods – usually lowering the glycemic index."
 
JungleBiker said:
Yes I heard that before somewhere. The fact sheet says: "Remember that combining foods and adding fat while cooking can change the glycemic index of foods – usually lowering the glycemic index."

This is true. You can lower the GI of mashed potatoes by adding butter and french fries have a lower GI than baked potatoes because of the fat they are fried in. The GI of bacon and cheese is also low. This does not make them healthier or better for loosing weight.
 
Dominic Sansom said:
I didn't think you were responding directly to my comments and I totally agree with your view that people think dieting is a quick fix to years of weight gain.

I actually put 5kg back on simply because I lost it fast. I modified my eating habits and now loose weight at a MUCH slower rate.

The South Beach Diet (I HATE THE NAME!) has 3 stages. Stage 1 (2 weeks only) probibits ALL carbs. The author claims this lessens carb craving (I found this to work). Stage 2 reintroduces complex carbs and some fats (Olive, canola oils) and you stay at this stage until you reach your target weight. Stage 3 is a maintainence programme and if you find yourself gaining weight go back to stage 1 or 2.

The SB Diet author (a cardiac surgeon) says that he developed the diet after seeing so many of his patients fail in their diets. The problem was not the diet. Most sensible diets work... the problem is sticking to them.

The way it works is quite simple. If you don't raise your blood sugar dramatically, it will not drop dramatically and make you feel hungry. I can eat anything as long as the GI is low (ish). I NEVER got hungry on this diet.

I had two problems. The use of sweeteners (Aspitame gave me palpitations) and lack of fibre in the first two weeks gave me .... well you can imagine.

I only need raw sugar in tea and coffee so I alowed myself this and I make sure I have enough fibre. It contines to work for me.
Any diet which allows someone who is overfat to lose excess body fat and to keep it off is to be applauded (so long as that diet doesn't present other health risks). However, I must point out that anybody who is training to be a performance cyclist, rather than just to lose weight, will compromise their training if they restrict their intake of carbohydrates. The idea that simple sugars cause hyperglycemia and corresponding rebound hypoglycemia is absolutely true; however, when simple sugars are combined with other CHOs, fibre, fats or proteins this almost always results in a meal with a lower glycemic index than the sugar eaten in isolation. I'm not saying we should throw the baby out with the bath water here, GI is a useful concept to know.
This is not a dig at you at all Dominic, just a few observations. Also I am extremely wary of people dispensing advice beyond their field of expertise. A cardiac surgeon is as qualified to give nutritional advice as a dietician is to perform heart surgery. They probably both know more about each others' fields than a layperson, but they're not *necessarily* experts either.

L.
 
I love this discussion.
It is my favorite ongoing experiment on myself and my favorite study.

.....continuing with food absorbtion I would like to add to my example schedule that I posted above and describe my thoughts why I have this combination.

The protein/simple carb drink that I have immediately after weight training and interval training is a pure outright recovery drink. Both the isolated whey protein and gatorade mix have fast absorption rates. The two combined may cause a very slight lowering of the GI of the simple carbs. This to me is very important to have a very fast introduction of carbs immediately following training. This is more important than the idea of using glutamine for recovery and is backed by studies on recovery. Also I am a believer that the "window of opportunity" or the opportunity to recover is wide open after training and that window begins to close as time continues. Another reason why I like to train in the morning because if I trained in the evening I would only be able to eat one meal before bedtime and that is not enough nutrition for intense training recovery.

I showed protein drinks at various times of the day. I would rather eat solid protein foods, but my work schedule and meetings won't allow it. I would also rather change to a slower absorbing protein like a combination of whey, casienate and egg for the drinks later in the day, but again these products are expensive.

My solid meals are typically a lean meat source (typically chicken or steak), a vegetable (fiberous carb) and a carb source like pasta or rice to up the carbohydrate count for replenishment. The intention of the fiberous carbs are to purposely interfere with the absorption rate of the rice or pasta.

If I am recovery from a long intense road ride I do not add fiberous carbs so the that simple and complex carbs are absorbed at a faster rate with hopes that my recovery rate will also be enhanced by flooding my system with glucose. Generally speaking there is no harm in doing this for me because the intensity of training will keep my metabolism rate high for hours and as the "window of opportunity" closes I once again change the carb source back to a fiberous & complex carb mix to again slow the rate.

Also as a side note I use a lot of oils in all these mixes to do the same.
I try my best to reduce saturated fats and animal fats by trimming the meat and I add at various times flax seed, eat sunflower seeds, add virgin olive oil, flax oil and fish oil supplements into meals that are not post recovery meals. Again so that there is less interference to the absorption rates.

As you can tell I am a fanatic about this stuff and have been dedicated to my self experiments long before titles were on the NY best sellers list. To me this is all good fun and even if I am wrong about all this I am still enjoying the results that I get from it.
 
Dominic Sansom said:
Stage 1 (2 weeks only) probibits ALL carbs.

Actually I don't think that is quite correct - that's why I would not call the SBD a "keto diet" - I think the book says that during Stage 1 you can eat lots of vegetables (except for a few vegetables like potatoes and carrots that are very high in starch). The vegetables you can eat are a source of carbs but in a low glycemic index form due to all the fibre that comes with them. So Stage 1 does allow carbs, but not from the usual sources like potatoes, products made from flour, other cereal products, sugar, etc. Hope I'm not mistaken!
 
biker-linz said:
Any diet which allows someone who is overfat to lose excess body fat and to keep it off is to be applauded (so long as that diet doesn't present other health risks). However, I must point out that anybody who is training to be a performance cyclist, rather than just to lose weight, will compromise their training if they restrict their intake of carbohydrates.
Couldn't agree more.

The idea that simple sugars cause hyperglycemia and corresponding rebound hypoglycemia is absolutely true; however, when simple sugars are combined with other CHOs, fibre, fats or proteins this almost always results in a meal with a lower glycemic index than the sugar eaten in isolation. I'm not saying we should throw the baby out with the bath water here, GI is a useful concept to know.
This is not a dig at you at all Dominic, just a few observations. Also I am extremely wary of people dispensing advice beyond their field of expertise. A cardiac surgeon is as qualified to give nutritional advice as a dietician is to perform heart surgery. They probably both know more about each others' fields than a layperson, but they're not *necessarily* experts either.

L.

...and I didn't take as a dig. What you are saying is spot on. As far as the author of SB not being qualified... he actually admits that he was not. His main concern was seeing people that needed to loose weight FAST (because of serious heart problems) but could not maintain the weight loss for any length of time. I said in my first post that this diet "may not be for every one". It did work, and continues to work, for me.
 
ric_stern/RST said:
Good advice. Fig rolls are called Fig Newtons in the US (and maybe other places). I seem to recall that they were called something like fig a lu when i lived in France (my French isn't very good so apologies to the French people here and hopefully, they'll correct me). I've no idea what Jaffa Cakes are in any other country or whether you can even get them!??

ric

God.... I'd kill for a Jaffa Cake... I haven't had one for 15 years.
 
ric_stern/RST said:
where are you located, that they don't sell them? they do things like jaffa cakes sponge rolls now,

shut up ;)

and jaffa cakes yoghurts!

ric
SHUT UP!!!! ;) ;) ;)

I live in the Fiji Islands... 20,000km fromn the nearest Jaffa Cake... and Melton Mowbray pork pies... but living in Fiji has it's advantages... it's mid winter here and you can cycle with light summer gear at 5am.
 
Dominic Sansom said:
..but living in Fiji has it's advantages... it's mid winter here and you can cycle with light summer gear at 5am.
I would give up Jaffa cakes in a heartbeat. :)

L.
 
I see in the May edition of the Bicycling magazine (from USA) that Dr Agatston has a new book out: "The South Beach Diet - Good Fats/Good Carbs Guide"; and he is quoted as saying that:

"Even if you're trying to lose weight, high-sugar, simple carbohydrates such as sugary sports drinks or gels can be good to consume during and for a short period after vigorous exercise. If you don't have enough sugar, you'll deplete your glycogen stores and hit the wall".

"If you're a regular, vigorous cyclist, you don't even have to call it a diet, or go through the first and second phase of the South Beach Diet" he says. "Just modifying your food choices will yield results and help you reach your target weight".

Based on the above, and what I wrote earlier about the glycemic index approach of the diet, I don't think there is any good reason to regard the South Beach Diet in the same light as the Atkins Diet. They are totally different diets.
 
Andy/RST said:
...and on a serious note :)
If you cycle 20 miles at either 20mph or 10mph you will use the same amount of energy (kcals) except that if you cycle at 10mph you will take twice as long to do it (obviously).
Andy

That can't be correct, can it? My 20 mi. ride @ 10mph uses the same number of calories as 20 mi. @ 20mph? It requires much more power to ride at 20 than 10. Doesn't a higher power output require more calories to be burned, all things being equal?
 
neilie said:
That can't be correct, can it? My 20 mi. ride @ 10mph uses the same number of calories as 20 mi. @ 20mph? It requires much more power to ride at 20 than 10. Doesn't a higher power output require more calories to be burned, all things being equal?
all things aren't equal however, you get there twice as fast at 20mph
 
neilie said:
That can't be correct, can it? My 20 mi. ride @ 10mph uses the same number of calories as 20 mi. @ 20mph? It requires much more power to ride at 20 than 10. Doesn't a higher power output require more calories to be burned, all things being equal?
If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, it takes a gallon to go 20 miles. Doesn't really matter how fast or slow you drive those 20 miles.

The only difference would be any difference in motor efficiency from travelling at different speeds. I can't really speak from experience, but what I recall from other threads is that the human body's efficiency is constant enough that it's not a big effect.
 
neilie said:
That can't be correct, can it? My 20 mi. ride @ 10mph uses the same number of calories as 20 mi. @ 20mph? It requires much more power to ride at 20 than 10. Doesn't a higher power output require more calories to be burned, all things being equal?


Just wanted to say: YES!. When riding a bicycle you would need to start looking at the Watts that you are putting out. Ex:

Stationary bike 50 watts (light riding) = 200 calories/hr
Stationary bike 250 watts (very hard riding) = 850 calories/hr.

Using a powermeter during your winter training periods will give you an idea of the amount of energy you are expending
 
jbieryjr said:
Just wanted to say: YES!. When riding a bicycle you would need to start looking at the Watts that you are putting out. Ex:

Stationary bike 50 watts (light riding) = 200 calories/hr
Stationary bike 250 watts (very hard riding) = 850 calories/hr.

Using a powermeter during your winter training periods will give you an idea of the amount of energy you are expending
Right, if you're putting out more power, you'll put out more calories. The oxygen cost of riding at 50 watts is much much less than that of riding at 250 watts.

VO2 = 1.8 (work rate)/M + 7. So if you increase the work rate (i.e. produce more power), you will subsequently increase your VO2 for that workload, increasing O2 consumption because of the increased metabolic activity of the muscles, and increase the number of calories needed to support the muscular activity.
(*note, this equation is appropriate for work rates between 50 and 200 watts, or 300 - 1200 kg/m/min*)