Weight / Fat loss

Basically, yes

Damn! Despite cycling 500 miles, I put on 9lbs while in the USA. All I have to do is breathe the air there, it seems, to grow lardy.

might be 'good weight' ?

Want to lose weight - stop boozing.

I've lost seven pounds in two weeks.

Admittedly I've been off the bread too and cycling every day. I'm going to put myself through a bit of misery for the next three months to get the weight off and then it will be off.

Two stone minimum is the plan.

season is coming to make hearty vegetable soups

3 weeks of not losing or gaining, plateauville, to be fair I have lost almost 5 stone in 5 months but it's easy to forget the wins when you have a target - boring.

I got to my lowest last Monday week 170.2.

By Friday it had gone up a lb. By Monday it went up a further 5lb even though I did more cycling and a bit of graft felling trees.

It might have been the post graft pints of ale.

Weirdly enough, I also hit my lowest the other day - 170.2 and then I leapt to 178!

There was a hefty cheat meal in between however. A few days off the training and some extra calories left me feeling pretty strong today though, so not so fussed.

Weekend of beers, haggis, burgers and no exercise for a week...FFS.

So following 3 weeks of holiday eating drinking and not doing much in the way of exercise I've shot up to 79kg on sunday.

My weight has been steadily increasing from februaury when I hit my lowest weight but had stabilised at 75kg untill about 4 weeks ago! Hopefully some of that is holiday weight that will dissappear fairly quicky but I've implemented no booze october, and will try to eat healthily and do more exercise.

Aim is to back at 75 by 1st novemeber and back to 71 by christmas.

A quick check this morning had me at 78 so on track so far.

Just applied for a charity place in the london marathon following my 4th successive rejection, will chase it up as this will hopefully

77.3kg this morning for me Ed, I'll race you to 75.

You're on.

Go on guys.
Dammit, Ed's a bit of a machine with weight loss.
I still owe him a burger.
Somewhere around 70kg after a lackadaisical approach the past few weeks.
Need to focus this month and push to 68.
Then 65 by 9 Dec. (never going to happen!)

Haven't written my plan yet- planning to write it this evening. Will try a week out, and then post it up with efficacy and comments.

77.6 this morning, bit less after the ride.

I looked in the mirror yesterday, and for the first time in my life, a pot-belly stared back at me. I'm 25 in two weeks and I've got middle-aged spread already.

The last time I weighed myself was about three summers ago, and I was 68kg, 186cm. I don't own any scales, but I'll buy some tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just go on gut-circumference.

The plan is: normal sensible diet (fresh fruit and veg, healthy carbs, little meat or fat (this will help my bank balance as well as my gut)), 50 mile rides thrice a week (as well as the short 1-mile blast to work).

According to Stuart Sutherland, the most effective way to complete a goal is to tell as many people as you can about it - which includes you guys.

Your diet plan may leave you with a figure you are not happy with. If you consume less calories than you expend, you will lose weight of course. But reducing meat & fat intake, especially at the same time you become calorie restricted is likely to cause a lot of muscle loss.

So you are likely to end up with the same figure you have now, only less of it. Skinner arms and a belly just as round by comparison.

A more sensible approach would be to restrict calories whilst giving leeway for high nutrition/value items like meat, eggs or oily fish. Totally ditch sugar, and sweet treats you have. And only carb up when you need to, only have fruit/pasta/beer etc after long bike rides. Other days fish/meat/eggs and vegetables, greens etc...

Eating more intelligently can help you improve your figure, lose the gut, have more energy, fight off diabetes, maintain or even increase muscle and feel healthier overall.

With fat intake, ditch all the unhealthy fats like cheap refined veg/sunflower/corn oil, instead use olive oil, butter or make use of the fat from meat & fish. Saturated fat is good for your testosterone production, which will help you be more lean, muscular and athletic. It is also stable when used for frying unlike vegetable oils which breakdown and become harmful. They are also associated with heart disease. As long as the animals the fat came from were grass fed, then the fat will be very very good for you. Just like fish oil.

If you want to avoid fat altogether for fear of calories, then eat leaner meat. Many cheap options like chicken liver which is practically free.

Ive been cutting out carbs like pasta, bread, potatoes, especially during the week and replacing with protein and good fats like the post above. I have read quite a few posts about eating carbs after excercise but I always have a few extra before a game of football or hard excersise. Would it be better to have them after?

Yeah better after for a few reasons;

1; eating carbs makes you sleepy, so your performance in football maybe subpar

1. after strenous exercise your muscle & liver glycogen are at least partially depleted. So when you you eat your carbs, it can just refill this empty capacity. When you "overfill" it gets turned into fat.

2. After strenuous exercise, your body enters a special state where it can use this raw simple energy much more efficiently, and for desireable purposes. It is more sensitive to insulin (which is secreted when you eat carbs) which drives the nutrients into your muscles. There are also some mechanisms of absorbtion I dont really understand, but they happen only after exercise. So you need less insulin to mop up these carbs, and they are used for feeding your muscles instead of making you fat.

Why is it bad to eat carbs without activity and allow your body to excrete large amounts of insulin you ask? Because it leads you to losing sensitivity to this insulin, which means you need to excrete more and more of it. This is a disease which goes by the name of Type II diabetes and is extremely common in countries where people eat a lot of carbs and do not do very much.

Some googling will give you more details and countless research 'proving" it such as this;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10683091

Also look up "carb backloading"

If you feel you lack energy before you game of football, it might be better to carb up the night before. So the carbs help you get a good nights sleep, but at the same time you are not groggy from the carb induced drowsiness. This will not help with the weight loss however, unless you did exercise the day before also.

Ive been cutting out carbs like pasta, bread, potatoes, especially during the week and replacing with protein and good fats like the post above. I have read quite a few posts about eating carbs after excercise but I always have a few extra before a game of football or hard excersise. Would it be better to have them after?

How much football do you play? One game a week shouldn't require anything special but if you are playing multiple games and/or doing multiple training sessions you should be fuelling up properly. Low muscle glycogen due to not putting enough carbs in will hamper your endurance and speed during games. Some theories also suggest that low glycogen levels hamper mental performance so being a skill-based game this could be an issue. Put back in carbs and fluids straight after a game. You could be getting carbs in during the game in the form of sugary drink. Hydrate and fuel in one. Not sure why you're cutting carbs and replacing with protein and fats.

Because he wants to stop being a lardy bum bum, and perhaps stay healthier.

We've no idea what else he's eating though. The eight pints and kebab every Friday, Saturday, Sunday might be better off being replaced with quality carbs for pre-match fuelling.

We've no idea what else he's eating though. The eight pints and kebab every Friday, Saturday, Sunday might be better off being replaced with quality carbs for pre-match fuelling.

It is to lose weight. Weekdays I eat mainly eggs, vegetables, cheese, meat, nuts and a bit of pasta and a banana if im playing footy which I play 2 or 3 times a week for an hour. On top of that a few gym sessions and cycling which I dont eat carbs before. Weekends my diet really depends on whether I am hungover or not. I've cut down a lot on my drinking post summer so I tend to only have 1 unhealthy type meal a week, something probably involving chips etc.

The reason I eat carbs before footy is because I tend to feel like im going to pass out if I rely on the carb limited diet, this is probably from the many years of eating loads of carbs and my body hasn't adjusted to it yet after 3 weeks.

3 weeks is not much time at all, you will indeed get used to it. No need to rush things. Cheese & chips both have a helluva lot calories if you wanna get strict. I deal with my potato cravings by eating good old fashioned mashed potatoes after training. These are also more easily digestible than grain based carbs (not including booze) which also contain substances which raise eyebrows. Like wheat germ agglutinin, gluten and phyates...

Wiki;

Wheat germ agglutinin or WGA is a lectin that protects wheat (Triticum vulgaris) from insects, yeast and bacteria. An agglutinin protein, it binds to N-acetyl-D-glucosamine and Sialic acid. N-acetyl-D-glucosamine in the natural environment of wheat is found in the chitin of insects, and the cell membrane of yeast & bacteria. WGA is found abundantly—but not exclusively—in the wheat kernel, where it got the 'germ' name from. In mammals the N-acetyl-D-glucosamine that WGA binds to is found in cartilage[1] and cornea[2] among other places. In those animals sialic acid is found in mucous membranes, e.g. the lining of the inner nose, and digestive tract.

Lectins binding to stuff in our bodies is believed to be one of the causes for common ailments like rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel sydrome, leaky gut, multiple sclerosis, alzheimers disease etc

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280237

While on the subject of Alzheimer's disease, it has also been strongly linked to diet induced diabetes.

http://alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=1741

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bittman-is-alzheimers-type-3-diabetes/

Your diet plan may leave you with a figure you are not happy with...

Sound advice, DFP.

Last week I pre-emptively bought a lot of oily fish. I always say that I should eat more of it. A bit o' smoked mackerel, some salad, a couple of boiled eggs = delicious dinner. Could only be improved by the addition of some very thin hot salty chips. I don't eat a lot of meat to begin with, to be honest - perhaps I'll eat a small salami over the course of a couple of weeks, and once in a blue moon I'll roast something.

With regards to fats, I'm way ahead of you! I keep a tub of my own salami grease (oo er) and either use that, or olive oil, for cooking. Always butter in sandwiches, can't eat margarine, it just tastes/feels like emulsified vegetable oil (which, of course, it is). That's not to say that I eat a lot of fat; far from it.

I can't stand sweet things, so no worries there (always order the cheeseboard at restaurants). I don't think I've ever bought crisps or biscuits or chocolate in my life. This is a good start I suppose; no particularly unhealthy habits to break.

My downfall comes from carbs. Bloody love 'em. Being raised by the dirt-poor Italian daughter of dirt-poor Italian grandparents in a dirt-poor household means that pasta was the staple, which has rubbed off on me in adulthood. I could (and sometimes do) eat a big bowl of pasta every day of the week. And if it's not pasta, it's gnocchi, or minestrone, or risotto, or polenta. All this is good for my wallet, but not so much for my gut. Breakfast is no better - a big boy-sized bowl of porridge with skimmed milk. I'll aim for small bowl of porridge with full milk plus fruit. More expensive, though.

I probably also don't eat enough protein. An increase in fish should help this. And avocados. I'll keep posting updates. I'm not going to go all 'low carb'; using the 'segments of a plate' analogy I'll probably aim for 50% fruit and veg, 25% carbs, 25% proteins.

Tonight's dinner was a bit of a balls-up. I'm visiting my parents and roasted a chicken, followed by quite a few biscuits (they were particularly un-sweet). Diet starts tomorrow. Long post; narcissism - apologies.

This thread confuses me. Would love to know more about nutrition but it all sounds so confusing. I practically live on pasta... Was down to 82.2kg this morning after a half marathon yesterday, which is 1-2kg off normal, but I don't feel dehydrated. Will see if it levels out in a day or two.

1-2kg at 83kg isn't a large amount of dehydration. They used to reckon 2% weight less due to dehydration hampers performance but there's lots of cases where it doesn't. http://sweatscience.com/asker-jeukendrup-on-gatorade-and-geb/