What I've Learned About Weight Loss, So Far

Trying to return to cycling after my ordeal

I'd like to take you through what I've done over the past year, well 11 months anyway, to get back to my old weight, and what I am doing currently to continue getting leaner.  I don't share this for pats on the back and atta-boys.  In fact, I'm pretty embarrassed about it.  It's not something I'm proud of, not at all.  I share this because it might help someone.

At one point in my life I weighed over 300 pounds.  That was about seven years ago.  I suffered from chronic back pain, had already had a surgery to repair three ruptured discs, and was suffering some serious stomach issues due to over use of anti-inflammatory medications.  Without hyperbole, I felt horrible.

In that year when I decided to lose the weight and get healthy. I dropped to 200 pounds and stayed around 200 to 210 for the next few years.  Then, in 2014, I my old back injury progressed and put me in bad shape. (It sucks that even when you realize the error in your ways and correct it that sometimes you still have to pay the price!)  I ended up needing a fusion from S1 - L5 and L5 - L4. During this time period I was not able to exercise and I struggled with depression, over-eating and drinking too much beer.  I ballooned up to 272 pounds on March 31st of 2016!

Other than the following, I will omit anything dealing with the specific nature of my recovery as it pertained to my weight loss and return to cycling.  My recovery was very gradual and slow.  It may seem quick, but that's in hindsight.  I had to retrain my brain to use neuropathways and chains of muscles in sequences that it had forgotten to do.  It was painful and I was weak, both physically and emotionally.

Now, I didn't set out and say, "Hey, I want to win some bike races."  I set out and said, "I want to see if I can ride."  Once it was apparent that I could ride, which took about 9 months after surgery, I then said, "Let's see if I can race."  I'm still learning how much recovery I need and still struggling with balancing time spent specifically training for bike racing and general health (general health work takes away from training time, but without it I'm probably not riding for long).  I mention this because I kept my expectations simple and I believe that is key!  Be patient!

Specifics of nutrition and weight loss are so individualized and contentious that I will try and keep my statements and recommendations limited to things that pass these two check-points:  Did it work for me and is it probably generally true for most people?  (No matter what advice you follow, you'll have to test and tweak to make it work best for you, and that formula will vary from everybody else!)

So, here's what I've done and what I'd also advise others that wish to lose weight to do.  I'l start from the biggest bang for the buck, which is also easiest, and progressively move to trickier things that produce marginal gains.

Tip Number 1:  Get Organized and Keep Track

It's said that the majority of weight loss, especially long-term, comes from the kitchen, not the gym. Because of this, I'd suggest taking a week or two and just tracking EVERYTHING you consume ... coffee creamer, alcohol, all of it.

Don't estimate how much you're eating, measure it.  This little sacrifice for a short period of time will inform you, and that information will allow you to properly change things.  I invested in a food scale, and lots can be found on Amazon for less than $20.

Cookies or salad?  

I cannot stress enough the importance of the accuracy of your calorie counting during this phase!  And just eat what you normally eat, don't worry about it...you're collecting data from which you will develop a plan.

Now, for tracking the calories I prefer MyFitnessPal.  It's simple, easy to use and customize and the app is fantastic.

After a week, or maybe even two, you can look for trends.  If you can cut 200-300 calories a day, without changing your exercise habits, you'll drop two pounds a month.  That might not seem like much, but that's just trimming a touch from dinner alone and you're 24 pounds lighter in a year from a change you'll likely NOT notice at all.

Play around with cutting calories that you won't miss, especially empty calories!  They add up, fast!  Exchange potatoes and gravy for zucchini and mushrooms, bread in sandwiches for a lower calorie bread ... things like that.

Tip Number 2:  Change Your Body Composition

You don't need body fat calipers or a scale to make what I'm going to say here work for you.  However, I like to track data and found this scale by Tanita to be awesome.  I heard about it from TrainerRoad's podcast, give them a listen if you haven't yet.  Well worth the money!  Now the body fat measurements fluctuate daily, but over time you can track significant trends.

The idea here is that while muscle weighs more than fat (yes, we are talking about losing weight), muscle mass requires more calories to maintain than fat.  If you can build some lean muscle mass, you'll burn more calories when at rest than you did without that lean muscle mass.  Plus, you'll feel better and be healthier.

I'm a cyclist, but I do go to the gym.  I also do pushups and pullups and many other such exercises.  A simple Google search says that replacing one pound of fat with a pound of muscle requires you to burn an additional 50 calories a day.  That means, sitting on your duff all day with one more pound of muscle requires 50 more calories to be burned.  That's free weight-loss right there.

If you can gain 5 pounds of muscle (which will likely mean you'll drop a lot of fat in the meantime), you'll be burning 250 calories more per day, than if you did not build the muscle.  That 250 calories is about 2 pounds a month, which is another 24 pounds in a year!

I am suggesting that adding some strength training to your routine and cutting out 200 - 300 calories a day should yield some pretty significant changes in weight and body composition over the course of a year, and we're not including the calories you'd use while doing the strength training.

If you're interested in lifting weights, I'd suggest complex moves that use multiple muscles simultaneously.  I tried StrongLift's 5x5 program to be amazing.  It won't make you bulky but will make you a lot stronger.  If a gym just isn't your thing, body weight exercises are amazing!

Tip Number 3:  Quality, Quantity and Timing

The first two are easy to act upon and require minimal understanding.  Eat a little less, do a little more.

The general idea with tip three is a bit more nuanced...but to avoid embarrassing myself by exposing my vast ignorance, I'll try to keep it as simple as I understand it!  (Nutrition is anything but simple.)

Timing and Quantity:  The time of the day we have the most ahead of us is at the beginning of the day.  The time of day when we have the least ahead of us is at the end of the day.  Yet, it's typical that dinner is the largest meal of the day and breakfast is often the smallest, lowest quality, and that's if it is consumed at all!

Beef Wellington with Roasted Veggies ... treat yourself!

Do what you can to reverse that trend.  Make breakfast big, hearty and healthy.  Make dinner smaller and smaller over time.  See, breakfast will provide you with fuel for the tasks of the day.  What do you need energy for after dinner, watching TV, brushing your teeth, sleeping?  All of the calories you're not using get stored as fat!  That's the wrong way to go!

As for quantity, you can use MyFitnessPal, or any one of many online calculators to determine how many calories you need to maintain your weight given your activity level, gender and age.  A word of warning here, and this will take some trial and error, and careful monitoring on your part ... these calculators often over-estimate, often grossly, how many calories are burned by given exercises.  The sad part of it is that it often doesn't matter how hard you're trying ... certain activities burn basically the same amount of calories.

For example, running is roughly 100 calories per mile.  Whether that's a 12 minute mile of a 5 minute mile, it's still about 100 calories (a little more, but you get the idea). Now with cycling, if you have a power meter, you can more accurately know the calories burned by looking at the kilojoules.  Basically the number of kilojoules done is the same as the number of calories burned.

This was a sad revelation to me when I first returned to the bike because I'd work so hard, be so tired that I swore I could, justifiably, eat 4 burritos and a bunch of guacamole.  But the truth was, I wasn't very strong and I just didn't burn many calories on my workout.  Now, because I'm a lot stronger, a moderate intensity ride for an hour usually burns 850 to 900 calories for me.  A smaller rider with less power will burn 600 calories with the same level of effort and duration.

So, here's the wrap-up.  Big breakfast and lunch, small dinner.  With dinner, carbohydrates aren't really needed.  With increased exercise you will need to increase your consumption of fuel.  However, timing is important.  If you have a big workout planning for the afternoon, eat a big lunch.  When trying to lose weight, avoid post-workout meals/supplements.  Often it's the case that you don't really need them (if you're eating a healthy meal later), and often you don't burn as many calories as you feel like you did!

Quality:  Specific foods to recommend are tricky.  Some are pretty easy, like steel cut oats instead of the other varieties, but organic eggs versus regular eggs ... ???  Then, when you get into the food types, it's even worse because everybody has slightly different genetic responses to the food they consume.  Some people burn it all off immediately (can't gain weight) while others ... well, you know how that goes if you're still reading!

A general notion I believe is worth following is that you should train your body to become for fat adapted.  That is, the more efficient your body is at processing fats instead of relying on sugars, the healthier you'll be.  So, sugar bad, fat good.  Does that mean you can't have a cookie?  Definitely not... in fact, changes you make need to be sustainable for the duration of your life, if you're following my advice.  That said, here we go...

A few general guidelines I can offer:

• Avoid added sugars!  Everybody knows soda is bad because of the sugar, about 39 grams...which happens to be how many grams of sugar are in your average store-bought muffin!  Read the labels!
• Have a menu of items from which you can eat when you're in a pinch and starving like
• Apples
• Nuts 
• Carrots
• Green Beans
• Peanut Butter 
• Jerky
• The less packaging the better
• The fewer ingredients the better
• The closer to natural the better
• Cook it at home from whole ingredients whenever possible
• Familiarize yourself with the glycemic index.  The slower burning foods will help you lose weight more than the faster burning foods.  

Tasso Ham, Poached Egg and Salsa ... delicious!

Now with sweeping statements like, "The less (or more) of this, the better," it is easy to come up with the counter-examples, but they're general guidelines, not hard rules.  For example, one of my favorite things, peanut butter.  Yes, it's calorically dense, but it's satiating and has good fats.  If you turn the jars of peanut butter around at the store and examine the ingredient lists, you'll soon see that natural peanut butters have far fewer ingredients, especially added sugars.  These are best.  Now, maybe you like your Jiff ... but you can compromise and settle for something close that's WAY better for you.  Chances are, you prefer one brand to another because you're comfortable and used to it, not because it actually tastes better.

This has been a long post and I've tried to keep things as general as possible.  Nearly each item could be chapters in a book.  But, I just wanted to share what it is I've done, generally, and what works for me.  I hope you've found something you can take with you and use yourself and I hope that you reach a healthier lifestyle.