@Jules. muscle is denser than fat. by a lot (0.8 vs. 1.4 g/cm**3)

The nice thing about this discussion is that now the ladies of Kissena can see that obsessing over weight can be a guy thing, too.  Our inner cheerleaders have been unmasked.

Brendan

For through college I worked at a granola bakery, and learned many special tricks for making granola. There are a few lessons I would like to share is to make for awesome granola prevent grossness. 

Don't add raisins until after the granola is out of the oven. Raisins do not handle dry heat very well, and are very likely to burn if you've not hydrated them beforehand (which can also be risky because they'll release water and can potentially slow the drying and malliard reactions and leave your granola soggy). 

The other thing is heating your honey before adding to the dry mixture, so that it is thinner and spreads throughout the dry ingredients faster. This really matters a lot when you're using 20 gallons of honey in a batch rather than 1.5oz but still helps get the honey distributed throughout the dry ingredients.   

Another great ingredient for making a tasty/extra crunchy granola. Use rice krispies or store brand crisp rice cereal. 

Finally one trick we used for making great granola that didn't have sugar (plenty of sweetener but not sugar), was pureeing dates with hot water. a 2:1 ratio by weight of whole dates to water, creates a super sweetener slurry that beats sugar or honey for being awesomely tasty date flavor to your granola.

I love you, Dan.

@Gwynna there is so much advice on the interwebs already I'm a little hesitant to post but I'd say that unless you are getting paid to drop weight the best strategy is one you can sustain.  This thread is littered with people who lost a lot of weight in a "surge" of sorts for a race but found it wasn't a way they could live.

Jules has a good point. Now is the time to start examining nutrition to slowly lose weight and worry less about it as you increase volume in the early season. Thus with a slightly reduced caloric intake as a new norm you will take advantage of the greater early season expenditure.

A long process is a great way to make long term changes. IMHO.

The other option is to ride 300 miles per week for a bunch of weeks in a row.

I'm going to assume that everyone's priority on our club is strength, fitness and skills training. Power to weight ratio is important and easy to calculate, but at our level, your performance in most races has more to do with your fitness, skills and smarts than it does if you have a few extra lbs hanging around.

I don't know everyone on the club, especially our new members, and I'm probably overreacting a bit on this, but I especially want to make it clear to everyone on this club that we want everyone to enjoy this sport in a healthy way. And that is what we encourage.

Wait! My binging and purging isn't helping me?

@Gwynna - We're on page 10 of this thread. Start on page 1. We've got ALL KINDS of viewpoints on here, including my own. The only one that's missing is Keith's. Take it all in. I think you'll have a pretty good idea of which of our harebrained weight-loss schemes makes sense for you.

If you're looking for too-absurd-to-be-fake then I'm a fan of the "only purple food diet"

I've been using the myfitnesspal app quite successfully. It's basically an automated calorie counter, that crunches the numbers based on your weight goals, daily calories burned via exercise, and food intake. It integrates with other toys, like withings and fitbit.

I don't really have a specific diet, other than to stay within the calorie limit given by the app while still getting some quality protein and veggies. And beer.

Among all the views expressed in this thread, I think the most persuasive is the concept of calorie deficit. How (and how fast) you get there is a matter of taste, but I don't see food choices alone as the answer. The myfitnesspal app is a great way to make that happen.

Joaquin said:

Among all the views expressed in this thread, I think the most persuasive is the concept of calorie deficit. How (and how fast) you get there is a matter of taste, but I don't see food choices alone as the answer. The myfitnesspal app is a great way to make that happen.

I'm skeptical on the calorie deficit to be honest.  "Good Calories Bad Calories" is a convincing read.  I highly recommend it.

Hire can consuming less than you output possibly not lead to weight loss?

one possible way to not lose weight is to convert fat to muscle. muscle is protein rich tissue and protein is 40% heavier than fat by volume.

two points here.
 losing weight is not the only way to get faster (power to weight ratio is key)
 if you eat less but manage to convert fat to muscle, you might get heavier.

but Ragot has no fat and way to much muscle, so this is not an issue for him.

Let me add a real world example here...anyone ever ride with Owens? He loves to complain about being fat (which he is not, far from it and if any of my >16% body fat brothers are riding with him when he starts such talk, you have my permission to dope slap him), but when the road tilts up he dusts plenty of lighter riders. PLENTY.

Jules, I agree that food choice is important, but in my personal experience a deficit is absolutely surefire.  The size of the deficit on a daily basis is a matter of taste and goals.  I certainly wouldn't advocate for a deficit bordering on starvation, or which would end up producing a yo-yo famine effect in the long run.  And Stokes, I agree that power to weight is the bottom line.  Again, in my personal experience, a decent training regimen run in parallel with a moderate deficit and intelligent food choice will actually have the result of increasing power, while still dropping weight overall.

I started using the Lose It app on my iphone. I've only been using it for a few weeks and i've increased my riding a lot at the same time so i'm teetering around the same weight so far (which i hope means i've built muscle, as opposed to just staying the same). It sounds like this is similar to other apps you guys have mentioned...I like this one because it was free and an easy way to visualize how many calories a day you're consuming/burning without keeping a handwritten journal (which I've done in the past with personal trainers etc). You set it based on goal (i.e. lose 1.5 lbs per week) and it'll automatically create the correct calorie deficit for you that adjusts as you update it with whatever exercise you've done that day. I also like that it keeps tabs on your weekly decifict (or if you go over your calorie limits) because realistically, sometimes when i'm out i have a beer i wasn't planning on and there's 150 unexpected calories that'll set me over my daily goal so i can make it up the next day and try to balance my week back out.

Also, i was moving my scale this morning to get it out of the way in my (very small) bathroom and it shattered in the process. @Jules is the Withings scale really worth the price? $150 is pretty pricey for my unexpected 'buy a new scale' budget but if you'd strongly recommend i might splurge on it since i more or less hated my previous scale and still spent somewhere between $75-$100 on it (can't remember at this point since it's been a while).

Paige, that app sounds very similar.  MyFitnessPal is also free.  I ended up choosing it because it seemed to have a huge database of foods (with a large base of users entering constantly entering more), good integration with other apps/devices, and because it provides a complete nutritional breakdown of each day in addition to calorie counting.  As a sci-fi bonus, you can also take pictures of barcodes on packaging, and it will instantly recognize and enter that food into your log.

eragot said:

Hire can consuming less than you output possibly not lead to weight loss?

The rationale is backed up by experimental results.  Basically calorie reduction can result in a change in metabolic rate, so you eat less and as a result burn less.

Book or article. Can I borrow yours?

eBook if I recall.  I think there is a way to loan them but #aintnobodygottimeforthat

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dstokes said:

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we've upset stokes so much with our wildly unscientific ideas of how the body works that he's resorted to morse code.

i just ate two delicious, rather large, chocolate croissants for breakfast.  will they help me lose weight?