Has anyone had success losing 25+ lbs, and how did you get there?

I'm currently working towards losing 27lbs this year. Mainly for health reasons, but also for my bike riding. I suffer from G.E.R.D, or Acid Reflux, and my doctor directly associates it with my level of body fat. So my goal is to go from 187 to 160 and maintain a weight between 160-165 lbs. I'm currently down 6 lbs in the last 4 weeks, and figure by mid to end of summer I'll be at my goal weight.At 1.5-2 lbs a week of weight loss, I am on track to maintain as much muscle as I can.

So to those who have had success what did you do to get there, or what did you change? My biggest changes so far have been that I only drink water besides 1 small coffee and make sure to be consistent with my meals and snacking. I also make an effort to not eat after sundown if I can, and I have pretty much cut out all fried food, and with the exception of one cheat meal a week for my sanity. Once school is over next week, I plan to start riding in the early morning as well.

Did you use any supplements to aid in the weight loss, or did you just make changes to your diet? Did you find one thing worked better than the other?

I've lost a lot of weight by eliminating carbs and starches. As in, don't even eat whole grains. Fat, protein, and vegetables really fill you up and keep you even throughout the day. As a cyclist you'll need to consume some carbs, but only very strategically with respect to training/racing. Read The Paleo Diet.

Hi Mike. I've lost about 55 lbs. since 2009. It started with diet - cutting out obvious garbage calories like soda, chips, cookies. As for the good stuff I do eat - portion control helped a lot. And what did I eat? Lots of fresh veggies, lean meat, some grains but always whole and I mostly avoided anything super processed (not a fan of the Paleo stuff, though I know Norm and Jeff swear by it - I just can't do it). So - brown rice, quinoa, 9 grain breads, granola........

But also, I didn't deny myself certain cravings completely because I knew if I did, I'd lose it and then go batshit crazy and demolish a pint of ben and jerry's in 5 minutes. I have a sweet tooth - can't help it - but I found some low cal stuff that helped satisfy it w/not too much sugar/calories. So - Stonyfield Farms Frozen Yogurt, which is like 100 calories for a serving, and I usually only have 1/2 of a serving and a few nuts or dark chocolate bits on top and I'm good.

Of course, lots of miles on the bike - that goes without saying. Once I started training in earnest, the pounds started to fall pretty quickly. The first winter after I decided to shed the weight, before I had a trainer/discovered the Kissena computrainer sessions, I also started a very regular (4x/week) gym training regimen combining light weight/strength training, spin bikes, plyometrics, and core strengthening (supermans, planks, power bridges, scissor kicks, crunches, etc...).

I was 225 - now I've been holding steady at about 170. I'd like to lose another 10 lbs...but that seems to be the hardest 10 to lose for me. I occasionally dip down to 167, 168, but tend to float around 170. Maybe that's just what my body wants, because if anything I'm riding a LOT more than in previous seasons.

Hope that helps - good luck.

I feel like a cheerleader sometimes, but this makes me love Kissena even more. I bet Josh C has some wisdom to add.

When we get the new website up and running, I'd love to get some public blogs rolling with some before / after stories.

@ Jeff, Thanks for the input, I downloaded the book to my reader, and am going to get into the book today since I have time.

@ Dave, That is amazing and congratulations. I too cut out soda completely from my diet, as well as potato chips, though I luckily don't have that sweet tooth you have, I do crave salty things. I've decided that on Sundays I am allowed to have a nice cheat meal, maybe lunch or dinner, or even a nice pizza and beer or two. I've also made major changes to my portion sizes, and find it laughable at how full I get from the smallest of meals now, or that I can't finish meals I used to dominate. I agree that balance is the key or you will throw yourself off track very easily. I also think your body tells you when enough is enough as well, I had a buddy, a very strong and active cyclist fought his way down into the upper 150's and he was getting sick too often, he is now 170 and feels its his best weight.

@ Mike, Please be a cheerleader, I need it. It's something I've talked about for years and never really acted on. With the wife and I talking about the "K" word in a year or so, it makes me really want to make sure I'm doing everything to get to a really healthy weight and reduce risk of future issues. Josh is down 70lbs, I rode with him a few weeks ago and I couldn't recognize him, I was stunned, impressed, and jealous of his ability to be so committed.

Its a combination of so many things, and at first, I wasn't trying, it was just biking for hours (and LOVING it), and that started the calorie burn. Soon after I started paying attention to my weight (I had a "oh shit, I can lose weight moment") .

In terms of food, I want to echo what Dave wrote. I have a similar diet.

Things I cut out either completly or 98% for a while, then eased back into as occasional guilty pleasures once I learned portion control:
soda, beer, hard liquor, french fries, post dinner snacks (socialize over a late night burger ? not anymore).
Soda wasn't horrible, I went periods of YEARS without a sip earlier in life - but pretzels, fries, etc, tough. If I open a bag of pretzels, its often gone real quick.

Initially my weight loss was about cutting out stuff, then it shifted over to healthy portion sizes. Recognizing what a proper sized breakfast was, and downsizing it a couple of calories. I was eating those tiny little activa yogurts for a while, I finally moved up to a slightly larger sized greek yogurt. Moved on to lunch, learning to lay out a plate with 50% fruits and vegetables, 25% grain, 25% protein . A really good item for me was the "deck of cards" protein serving size , ie the right amount of protein is about the size of a deck of cards (or your palm). If I was still hungry and needed extra food, I took another helping of salad.

I saw that every 10-15 pounds or so, the serving size my body was looking for went down a bit, I was re-programming myself to make due with less calories gradually .

I tried going part time vegeterian for a while (1 to 3 days a week) - I found it helped with the weight loss but hurt me in terms of energy . I tried to balance it with vegetable based protein but maybe I wasn't doing it right, or maybe my body just said no. I have heard of some people where being vegetarian works wonders for weight loss, others not so much.

I am a big fan of the once a week indulgence for your sanity - but try to keep limits on it (a SMALL piece of choc cake, etc). You can also try some other items as new indulgences (yogurt + fresh fruit) to subsitute out the old ones.

other items that help me
- healthy snacking (fruits or vegetables) - spice it up, try different items every few days, you can get pea pods, cut up peppers,soy beans, etc in the produce section
- LOTS of water, I often have a water bottle or two nearby (one so I drink, and two, a reminder of the fact that I want to ride , it keeps me in check).
- snacking alternatives (chew gum, drink some black coffee, etc)

outside of the food and cycling arenas:
Address whatever aches and pains you can . My back often hurt, I started seeing a chiro . I think they helped me lose a lot of weight via chain reaction - when I started seeing them, pain started going away, I was able to ride more and enjoy that, and my weight dropped about 20 pounds in 3 months.

About a year ago, I started working with a personal trainer to address some strength issues (weaknesses and disparities - my left leg was HUGE as compared to my right) - getting things in line there helped me add some muscle AND lose 10 pounds and another pants size. I also see the chiro less often now, the pain comes back much slower than it used to.

biggest item - do what you did - look for the help and advice of others. Report back what is working for you and what obstacles you run into, and lets see how we can help. GOOD LUCK.

@ Josh - i think there's a nickname in the making here. lefty?

Josh,

Thanks for sharing your experience. This journey for me has begun already and I will continue to update the thread with questions, comments and loss/gain updates.

Josh,

Yours is an inspiring story. Chapeau doesn't cover it!

j

nice work dudes

i know i'll be seeing this thread again in a few years when my dad's genes kick in

I love what Josh once told me. That it was helpful when his employer provided a free lunch.

Huh!?

It seems counter intuitive, but I guess he didn't feel like he needed to get his money's worth if it was free Along those lines, it always annoys me when my wife leaves half her dinner on her plate, but this is part of the deck-of-cards mentality.

This is a really interesting article about why it is difficult to lose weight and even more difficult to keep it off. It's not all mental, your body is actually working against you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html

David,

Is there any way to view that link without having an account?

I am of the lucky that lunch is free for me as well, which makes eating smaller portions and making smarter, most of the time more expensive eating choices easier.

If your primary goal is health, definitely research the Paleolithic/Caveman Diet and judge for yourself. Of course, the weight loss potential is impressive too.

I liked this book by Geoff Bond: http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Harvest-Intimate-Relationship-Between/dp/0757001424

And Mark Sisson has a good blog for those --like me-- who prefer a slightly softer cave (but still concentrated on overall health and well-being): www.marksdailyapple.com

Good luck!

I keep a tub of turkey hill black cherry ice cream in my freezer, a bag full of french cheeses in my fridge and a stack of wine on my shelf (not all french) and it's not because my genes are french...because they're not; although i speak the language.
it's just a matter of listening to your body and when u are in garfield mode, not overdoing it.
riding a lot helps too. exercise promotes glucogenesis and therefore will reduce appetite after a hard workout, however as anyone will mention, it's important to recover and eat after a workout.
what i find important is not overeating at night before sleep and following the craving in the morning with good hearty morning food: cereal, toast w/ butter and jam, 1% yogurt, fruit, and coffee evidently. If you are going to eat pasta, and god knows i eat a lot of it, try to keep the portions to a reason, and not cooking w/ leftovers in mind, because if it's cooked you'll be tempted to go back. For rice, because it is a pain in the ass to make i make 2 portions and stuff one in the fridge. Since talking to Norm, I've been trying to get my carbs other ways as well, yams and potatoes are a great source. As for protein, it depends on how much you train but every meal does not require a piece of meat or fish so keep that in mind. an easy way to get veggies in: salad after a meal and frozen spinach. mushrooms with steak is an easy one too. As for fruits, they're good for snacking, i usually keep a bowl of grapes and kiwis in the fridge, and almonds to pick at during the day. oh yea, and also crucial: eat slowly, chew and let the signal of 'being full' enough time to get to your brain, it usually takes 10-15mins.
I'm 25 pounds lighter since i took my first board exam less than 2 year ago. i'm no nutritionist but i hope this is helpful.

First off, huge props to all you guys who have or are losing the major weight. Excellent decision.

I'm cavemanning it with Norm, have been since last summer.

A few cheats (beer being the biggest) but I'm 95% paleo.

But 3.5 years ago I lost about 40 pounds in about 3 months by basically starving myself and exercising 5 days a week. It TOTALLY sucked but I got through it.

Now I'm not the slimmest guy in the pack but my weight hasn't varied more than 3-4 pounds (160 now which is the heaviest I've been since last summer when I was also 160 - got down to 156 over the winter a couple times).

Since going paleo I pay NO attention to portions. I eat as much as I damn well please and whenever I want. I eat when I'm hungry. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and don't feel like eating so I don't until lunch. Sometimes I eat a big bowl of frozen berries with thick coconut milk at 11:00 at night. I am never struggling through the day hungry.

Oh, and I second the rec for Mark Sisson's blog. It's not all about food - it tackles many aspects of life including sleep, play, exercise, relationships, family, etc.... all from an ancestral/paleo/caveman point of view. Interesting stuff.

So, this is going to sound stupid and super simple and there's WAY more to it than this. But, every year I need to shed about 5-6 pounds to get to ideal race weight.

I eat nutritious foods anyway, so I don't really have to worry about that.

But for the loss, I just try to be hungry a lot, and when I eat I try to never feel full.

And it sucks, but you can get kind of zen about feeling hungry. Like "this is just my body losing weight - nothing is actually wrong"

I'm not saying deprive yourself of nutrition. Don't get STARVING. But let yourself be slightly hungry, fairly often, and make friends with it.

i agree with you Ryan: Never feeling completely full is key.

can't find it now, but Neil Bezdek wrote a great Bicycling Magazine article about dropping weight leading up to his first pro season

look for it

for me, alcohol is the #1 fucker-upper: i eat like a pig when i drink, and of course, the beer/wine/booze is calorie-rich itself.

Eating when you booze is real; the sugar in the booze promotes an insulin spike which then leave you starving, or some such.

I'm with Ryan on the trying to stay a little hungry but not starving; and when I'm training I do NOT spare the whip - i eat as much as I want because bonking sucks dead donkey balls.

Have to agree with Jules here. Off season, lower the calorie intake (desserts, cheeses as an add on, butter - use olive oil instead in cooking - stuff like that), two veggies and a protein for dinner. Now that the season is in, I add starches back to dinner. Not overdoing it on any one thing - moderation. Water instead of caloried drinks. I can't say that I dropped lots of weight this winter because... I was pretty steadily racing until the end of November and by January was riding three hard days on the trainer.

If you're training hard, your body needs food. Even still keeping the diet steady from the winter, I find that the uptick in riding just slowly leans one out. But by this point, I am not looking to drop weight so much as I want to be recovered and not starving myself. Maybe that's why I'm not a climber.

"persistent low level hunger" is what a nutritionist I heard speak called this. It's mentally hard to do. Luckily, I'm ridiculously busy these days so eating myself into submission rarely happens, but on a weekend it certainly can. I don't have the discipline to get to lower weight right now... I'm hovering around 165. I've raced at 155-157 before, but that will be a stretch to get to.

One other thing to keep in mind is the large fluctuations one can/should expect from hydration. It is easy to be +/- 5 or more percent of your body weight from hydration. This can be very frustrating if you are looking at each pound, so the way to cope best is to weight yourself very consistently; same time every day, pre-or post pee.

One very salty meal and it can take up to 4 days for the excess salts (and the water they help store) to clear your system. So if I have my beloved MomoFuku Ramen on a monday, I'll be a few pounds (of water) heaver till thursday usually.

Maybe just eat more dust, fatties!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iie69fW10ms

Yeah, the persistent low-level hunger thing does come into play, but for me that's an advanced technique. It usually takes me about three days to get myself into "lockdown." This is my mental mindset when I'm losing weight. The first three or four days are hardest, but once I've gotten them strung together, I feel a huge incentive not to backslide. There's no "I'll start tomorrow," because I'm already deep in the shit.

After I've stuck those first few days, I keep that "lockdown" mindset. NOTHING passes my lips if it doesn't have a specific purpose for that day's nutritional requirement. No sugar, no flour, no rice, no oatmeal, no honey, no potatoes, no yams, no quinoa, no sprouted wheat berries, no evaporated agave syrup, none of that poison. I SCOUR nutritional info labels before eating what's inside. (Did you know non-dairy creamer has corn syrup solids? OUT.) Frankly, it's best to eat foods without such labeling. Even with fruit, I emphasize citrus and berries over modern apples/bananas/tropical fruits for their lower glycemic index. I do not eat reduced-fat dairy, as removing the fat diminishes its inducement of satiety. (I also eat grass-fed dairy. That's a paleo thing.)

When I'm on total lockdown, I eat whole meats, vegetables, eggs, oils, butter, nuts, seeds, and low-glycemic-index fruits. I do not "snack." If I eat between meals, it is planned, specific food intake for a workout coming later. But as a rule, I eat meals large enough -- and with enough fat, protein, and bulk -- to keep me feeling full for hours on end. Big salads work really well. I'm certainly not alone in this (read Taubes), but I've come to find that avoiding fat in my diet sets me up for failure, because it is fat that really makes me feel full.

BIG CAVEAT: I always eat carbs in preparation for, during, and immediately following intense training and racing.

Oh, one more thing. I've always found that getting dumped by a girl helps me get things started. Don't let a perfectly good breakup go to waste.

yeah right jeff

you ate my entire box of Samoas when i got up to pee

That's right sucker.

This is a lot to take in!

When I talked with Chad Butts about losing the weight, the one thing he said was really important to being successful is to write down what you eat, he said what studies have found was people will stop eating bad foods if they have to write it down, it's one of the mental things that really helps.

I try and weigh myself everyday after I walk my dogs and first bathroom. I know that by the end of the day I can go up anywhere from 3-5lbs, so I always am consistent when I weight myself, if I don't step on in the morning, I don't step on at all.

My biggest thing right now that is different from a lot of you is that I am specifically training for weight loss, where cycling gains are secondary and are going to be somewhat natural progression. As much as I want to be a strong cyclist, I know if I don't focus on the diet end of it, I won't get to where I want to be. Though I do understand that doing interval workouts have shown great results for losing weight.

One edge I do have is that I rarely drink alcohol, and usually it is only a glass of wine, or the occasional beer. It's rare I ever have more than 2 drinks, I've never been much of a drinker, though probably 1 or 2 times a year I do let loose. With that being said, I LOVE pasta, and this has probably been and will continue to be my biggest hurdle. This part will be all about the portioning, I have to read more about the paleo diet, but I have a feeling I am going to modify it, at the end of the day I still want to enjoy food, just smarter.

Jeff, the breakup thing is so very true. Luckily my wife is completely on board with this lifestyle change and we've both seen results already!

Mike,

Writing down goals is huge: anything you are mindful of, you will do better. I have a scale that keeps track for me. (It also links directly to Training Peaks for the numbers geeks out there)

http://www.amazon.com/Withings-WiFi-Body-Scale-Black/dp/B002JE2PSA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336145897&sr=8-1

The thing I like about it is that I just step on it, and my weight is recorded. Even though I am mindful about what I eat during the day (but not to the "lockdown" extent or even close that jeff describes) my memory is as fallible as the next guy.

It is very easy to deceive myself based on the measurements I *remember* and people remember bad things better than they remember the good.

Here is my chart for the year.

regarding Food Tracking: Livestrong.com's MyPlate program (and mobile app) is a great calorie counter - it has a huge database of foods and the interface is pretty good imho. they also have "target weight" plans that give you your calorie intake per day depending on your size, activity level and rate of desired weight loss.

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/

"A moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips"

is a phrase I like to whisper to myself as I stand over the sink eating Cherry Garcia at 3 AM.

At times, I sob as I say it (just a little).

Posted By: WilliamDCregarding Food Tracking: Livestrong.com's MyPlate program (and mobile app) is a great calorie counter - it has a huge database of foods and the interface is pretty good imho. they also have "target weight" plans that give you your calorie intake per day depending on your size, activity level and rate of desired weight loss.

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/

Is this the for profit side of his charity?