@eloy you're probably right. I do ride a lot and that combined with healthy eating should do the trick. I really just need to get back into the habit of eating whole foods, fresh veggies, lean meats, etc. I appreciate all the advice and pointers. All very helpful.  

eloy said:

Do what works for you.

I am sure that a ton of cool learnings and takeaways can come from Keto, but personally I always worry about "did it for a month." 

Finding sustainable forever routines is much more attractive to me.

This. Also, sleep like a madman.

There is mounting evidence that people metabolize the same foods differently; your "get skinny" diet may be significantly different from someone else's. 

Have to second Jules on this one. While I'm definitely lucky in the metabolism department. About 4 years ago before I started taking endurance sports "seriously" I was 15 lbs heavier than I am at the moment. I dropped most of that weight in about 6 months and would have to say that sleeping as much as I could was probably the most important thing as I wasn't working full time and could get on a consistent schedule. While I definitely ate a bit healthier I didn't significantly change my diet at all. 

Salt makes you hungry?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effects.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/health&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

mugwump said:

Salt makes you hungry?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effects.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/health&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

From what I understood, it makes you hungry because you are actually burning through stored fat reserves in order to provide the right salt/water balance. 

These pretzels are making me thirsty

Please allow me to share one of the dumber ideas I've had.

all the sugar and ice cream forever. omg. yes.

Amen

pro tip: snoballs are a natural epo

I am at my fattiest (not heaviest) since I began cycling as an adult 10 years ago. Looked down recently and realized I had a spare tire wrapped around my waist.

Back then it only took about a solid month of riding and moderately restrained pizza and pasta intake to get the body fat percentage below double digits . Let's see how the old metabolism has held up since then.

After easing back into the workouts, my ftp has noticeably gone up, but the gut is still hanging out over my waist band. Body fat % is holding steady according to the scale (I don't necessarily think it's accurate, but it has been consistent for the last 2 years).

oh it's accurate cause...wait for it.........................

Well I'm knocking on the door of the 50+ crowd so I thought I'd share my experience as a guy who used to eat everything that wasn't nailed down who now has to pay attention.

My racing best racing weight was something like 154-158 

Sometime in the last 10 years of parenting, moving, living far from friends, and what I call "boredom eating" it got up to the high 160's.

Years ago I'd asked Adam Myerson what the best method he'd seen for weight loss and his reply was "log everything you eat" which I thought was totally unmanageable.

About a month ago I started (gasp) keeping track of calories with the Myfitnesspal app. The app is pretty good - you can add recipes, scan barcodes, and it's relatively easy to recall things you eat regularly.

I've been trying to run a 500-1000 calorie deficit per day, with a few "net zero" days thrown in.

Things seem to be working - I'm down (slowly) to 160 about six weeks later with a couple of caveats:

First, my RMR is a complete guess. I'm using 2k
Second - I seem to have a pretty hard floor of 2k calories consumed. I cannot go under that without some serious discomfort, so I'm not trying.

That is all, hope this helps/inspires someone (I'm looking at you D Yang )

#ymmv

Logged everything into MyFitnessPal for 12 weeks with Namrita -- I had used it before, but it was so much better with Namrita's guidance. Basically, if it went in my mouth, it was logged.

Whenever I feel I am gaining too much, I start doing it again. Even for a few days. 

The app is kinda crappy, but their database is enormous. It includes every food out there, integration with Training Peaks is also quite strong.

It all resulted in a loss of over 10 lbs.

My biggest grip is with the integrations - from Garmin device to garmin connect to MFP never seems to work for more than 2 days. I've just taken to manually logging a 1 minute "correction" with the calories burned in MFP.

do you use strava or TP? connecting those might work better than Garmin

Yes. I think I went Garmin connect => mfp I didn’t know I could do tp => mfp but l try

tks