Weight / Fat loss

Obvs

Wow, only 1700-1800? :)

Do you eat back your cycling calories?

Congrats on the results, seems to work very well for you.

I'm eating more on those days, but within the right limits, and sticking to the same level of carbs. Previously I was eating them all back!

Thanks, it's the first thing I have found which I find sustainable and enjoyable, it doesn't feel like dieting.

If I was weight training or ultra-running i would probably have a different view on it, and unlike Hippy I'm not racing so performance wise I don't need to worry about it in the same way.

What do you eat for breakfast? Mine is usually scrambled egg, avocado, nuts/seeds or full fat yoghurt in various combinations and I struggle to come up with other things.

Omlette is your friend

Omlette

Is just "scrambled egg" someone has done the jigsaw of.

In the main
Omelettes with spinach,
mackerel with boiled eggs, asparagus and avocado,
bacon with eggs, mushrooms, avocado and a few cherry tomatoes and some spinach (only once or twice a week).
Scrambled eggs with salmon

Breakfast on the TCR?

Not too different from what I have as lunch salads in various guises. I don't miss museli or at cereals at all but eggs do get a bit repetitive in the morning.

Exercise, anywhere from 30 -125 mile rides so far, I would describe my riding style as long and average, I've completed a 200k since I made the change and was fine, but have yet to test it on the longer stuff which I will no doubt need to consume some carbs, but will try to do this through non refined stuff.

My goal with this was lose weight, get quicker, fitter and change my habits. I have been yo-yoing doing calorie counting for a few years, two club mates have changed to this in the last year or so and both seen big losses 15kg+ and have been stronger on the bike rather than the opposite.

In terms of intake, most days I'm hitting 10% carb, 25% Protein and 65% Fat.

Flipping heck. That must take a lot of thought when starting out. Carbs are hidden everywhere!

Being as your doing relatively low effort exercise with the longer distance rides, any loss in outright performance from going keto will have been offset by loosing the large amount of weight. So long as you don't end up in a race situation with a longer sprint finish which would probably be tough going.

Yeah exactly if I was racing it wouldn't work.

I had been building up to making the switch for a while, so lots of research working out foods and recipes. A few periods of trial, then went for it proper after Christmas.

Who knows long term, I may reintroduce pulses and things, but stay off anything refined, it is early days yet, but I feel like I can sustain it.

I've not posted on this thread before but have followed it for a while. I've had a bit of a breakthrough since xmas and thought others may possibly benefit from my experience.
I'm a chef and have always had a terrible diet mainly consisting of sugars and bread. I've always seemed to levetate around the 13-14st mark.
I was working in a busy steak/grill house and consuming a crazy amount of red meat and carbs everyday for about a year and felt horrendous as a result.
Change was needed so i decided to give up
meat and refined sugar. It worked pretty well for about a year and a half with the expected weak moments (mainly holidays, xmas and treating myself after exercise).
Anyway after this xmas just gone i decided it was time to properly take control of what i was eating. I gave up dairy alongside meat and sugar about 6 weeks ago and the results have been fantastic. I've lost weight and as a result my back (sciatica) has got much better. I'm sleeping fantastically and generally seem to have double the energy than before.
I think the root of the benefits has come from being militant about sugar. Unfortunately it is in pretty much all processed foods available, even in things you wouldn't expect. The whole 'fruit it healthy' thing has been one of the main eye opener's for me too. Just acknowledging that sugar is sugar, be it fructose or sucrose, in fruit or chocolate etc has helped me no end. I'm only eating low fructose fruits like blueberries, raspberries and honeydew melon, and fruit juice of a big no.
Another contributor to it all i believe has been the increase in capsaicin in my diet. I've started adding chilli to pretty much everything and i'm seeing positive effects digestion wise. I read an article of the effect of capsaicin on metabolism and it's ani-inflammatory properties. I have noticed positive effects in both areas. The general rule i've applied it the hotter the better. It takes a while to get used to but i'm convinced it's helping.
One last rule i follow is bread for breakfast only. Only rye or sourdough, or even better rye sourdough.

Well it does go into Germany this year.

Hmm... reroutes

@LeChef well done :D

I take fish oil against inflammation and some spices like Turmeric are good too if you want to add those.

@user69121 you will be pleased to know I upped my carbs and dropped some fat in my macros :P

Mostly because I was getting grumpy.

I have had great success with low carb diets but when I did those I didn't count calories or also did weights/kettlebells during the week. Fat is a fine fuel, but it's slow and a mixed diet also doesn't give my body the chance to burn ketones only. So I guess keeping the carbs too low in a mixed diet means sometimes there are none left, the result is a very grumpy brain.

Tesco stocks venison stuff atm very lean and a great alternative to turkey etc. I can't eat turkey/chicken breast too often, blegh... :):)

So long as your still in an overall calorie deficit, your still going to be burning some body fat. Hopefully you can find a balance where your not getting grumpy then you could be a lot more consistent.

For me, a tipping point is around -500 calories. I can happily do 200 to 400 deficit, but -500 leaves me too hungry. Last week I had a few long runs and ate quite a lot but still ended up with two days of -550 and -680 back to back.... the next day was rubbish and ended up +312 and then -56 which was hard work to avoid the chocolate cupboard.

Venison sausages make for a very tasty Toad in the hole 😁

On that note Lyle McDonald pod casts are interesting.

500 is 125 grams of carbs, perhaps that's the level where your carbs are gone completely?

Walked past kebab shops, no cravings...

But I have set myself a goal of 10 weeks max then back to maintenance. I guess that helps. Endless dieting would annoy me greatly :)

No cravings is good. Even with good willpower and motivation they get the better of us sooner or later. Then, for me there's empty sweetie wrappers strewn everywhere!

Is 10 weeks going to be you at your goal weight or looks if your recomping, or just a break?

For anyone who is on a restricted calorie diet, with a goal weight in mind. Bear in mind three things when you reach your goal:-

1. Firstly and most importantly, nobody will ever be exactly xx.xKg day in day out. Somedays you may be .5kg under and some .5kg over. Dont worry about it unless somedays starts to turn into always one way or the other.

2. When you stop a restricted diet, your bodys glycogen store will fully replenish over a couple of days. Plus your salt balance may increase. Both of these will add some extra weight as both naturally carry extra water content.

3. Being lighter your body will be burning less daily calories than it used to. So if you go back to your previous pre diet maintenance food intake you will start to regain weight.

Because we are all different, it's almost impossible to get a definite figure for what would be maintenance/steady weight calories. So, if you've been tracking your calories and your approaching your goal weight, it's probably worth while adding 100-150cal per day for a week or two. You will probably still be loosing some weight but at a slower rate... add in some more untill you find the happy medium where your AVERAGE weight is on target.
Doing that gives you a few weeks with extra treats/portions to look forward to and it should save the traps of 2 and 3

https://www.facebook.com/primalfooddelivery/videos/1287535944656047/

Cool, I can stop counting calories!

Everyone has a Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR) a certain energy requirement for staying alive and functional. Add to that a active lifestyle/job and excercise calories to give a Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

So long as your calories consumed is less than your TDEE your going to loose weight. Either that or you are the free energy experiment that all scientists are trying to find.

So, your tracking calories and failing.

1. Your supposed deficit isn't as big as you think! You've got plenty of energy, don't feel hungry and you miss logging wee treats here and there. Or an hour in the gym whilst mostly chatting to your friend doesn't equal the 500 calories you think it should.

2. The other extreme is your deficit is too big and your often hungry or crave stuff whilst smashing out loads of cardio. If you have the willpower to tough it out, your going to loose weight fast to begin with. That is untill your body intervenes and protects itself from your self induced famine. It slows down its metabolism which lowers your BMR. That leaves you not loosing any more weight but still eating fuck all and it's either a downward spiral of eating even less or your probably going to put weight back on as your intake becomes greater than your TDEE.

Somewhere in the middle there's a window off 100 to ~600 calorie deficit that will work. So 100 calories isn't much, but it's still progress of 11grams per day. 400-500 is comfortable for me.

Basic stuff, but yes that's the plan, add more carbs in (as protein/fat are essential not carbs but they give energy) and that means I can also have the occasional cookie and cheese. Hmmmmmmm...

"So long as your calories consumed is less than your TDEE your going to loose weight. Either that or you are the free energy experiment that all scientists are trying to find"

The body is however very much wired towards preventing famine. Theories like that don't explain why I am the same weight on a calorie band of 300...

TDEE can go up, unnoticed (most likely cause for a lot of people)
My body put calories in growth, instead of basic repairs of tissue only
Hormones change, leptin goes down, ghrelin goes up.

Granted, the effect is probably not as big as people think, but some people store all extra food as fat, some burn fat like mad and some of that is due to genetics. All you can do to know it is set up your data (calories, macros) and track exercise.

The body is however very much wired towards preventing famine. Theories like that don't explain why I am the same weight on a calorie band of 300...

TDEE can go up, unnoticed (most likely cause for a lot of people)
My body put calories in growth, instead of basic repairs of tissue only
Hormones change, leptin goes down, ghrelin goes up.

Absolutely. The body must be very adaptable in how it uses/stores/wastes the energy we feed it. There must be billions of people who have never even thought about calories, let alone weighed out or measured quantities of food. Yet they nicely live in a window where their body is a steady weight as the various hormones triggered by food intake or lack of it, get to work self regulating metabolism and influencing hunger/ satiety.

@JWestland. Did you watch the Primalfood video that Hippy posted? Thoughts?

I gave up after 4 minutes.

He's not wrong that food choices make a huge difference. Overeating on white bread is super easy, on chicken breast it's impossible.

A bit of instincts is good too, if you eat healthy stuff and take vitamins but you feel flat as a pancake all the time you may need a diet break.

Calories are also an imperfect tool as 250 Cal's of oatmeal has fewer net calls than those in white bread. So tracking "junk" also matters but that's basically details as most ppl don't even measure portions.

But fitness models count calories to get to a very lean body you have to be obsessive about it. As you said cutting calories too low messes up metabolism.

But we don't know anything about the people he mentioned and their stats so it's too vague for me to draw conclusions.

But not counting and eating instinctively on only non processed foods works very well for some people.

I'd just stay where I am body fat wise but my last powerlifting cycle I had to stop counting I simply didn't eat enough to bulk up more. There calorie counting actually didn't work for me.

(Rice cakes after training are my bulking friend :)