# I've stopped eating meat and lost weight



## Accy cyclist (7 Jun 2016)

I stopped eating meat about 9 months ago. Ok when i say i've stopped eating meat i mean i've cut my intake down to about 15% of what i used to have. My intention was to phase it out my diet altogether gradually. The thing is i've lost a stone in weight over the last 6 months. I don't want to lose weight, i want to gain weight! Should i start to eat red meat again to put the weight back on?


----------



## ColinJ (7 Jun 2016)

I think THIS is probably the main reason for your weight loss! 

Assuming that you don't want to reduce the amount of cycling that you do, then you will have to increase the amount of food that you eat to fuel those miles.


----------



## Accy cyclist (8 Jun 2016)

ColinJ said:


> I think THIS is probably the main reason for your weight loss!
> 
> Assuming that you don't want to reduce the amount of cycling that you do, then you will have to increase the amount of food that you eat to fuel those miles.




Yes but what about the meat? I take in the calories, maybe not enough fat though? I'm thinking along the line of meat equals protein. My skin seems to be more wrinkled all of a sudden . Age, or lack of proper protein? I eat loads of nuts which are supposed to be high in protein and fat, but is vegi' protein as good as "the real thing"?


----------



## Accy cyclist (8 Jun 2016)

[QUOTE 4313079, member: 9609"]if you are doing a lot of cycling then it can be difficult to keep it on, see this time of the year when I'm probably knocking out 150mile a week, no matter how much I eat I just loose weight; with me I think there is a threshold with exercise where my body decides its not going to bother turning anything to fat. I've just dropped below 13 and don't want to go much lower, last year I went down to 12st 8 and people were starting to ask me if I was well "you're looking very thin, are you OK ???)

Out of curiosity what is your height and waist size (completely relaxed belly when you measure it)[/QUOTE]

My weight is my worry! I'm down to ten and a half stone. My waist is 31 inches, i don't have a belly like i had ten years ago. I'm a little over six foot in height. According to a chart i saw in the health centre if i drop below ten stone i'll be classed as underweight.


----------



## ColinJ (8 Jun 2016)

Accy cyclist said:


> Yes but what about the meat? I take in the calories, maybe not enough fat though? I'm thinking along the line of meat equals protein. My skin seems to be more wrinkled all of a sudden . Age, or lack of proper protein? I eat loads of nuts which are supposed to be high in protein and fat, but is vegi' protein as good as "the real thing"?


Well, I haven't eaten meat since 1983 and I don't have problems putting weight on! 

Are you SURE that you take in enough calories though? You could easily be burning 5,000+ calories on a 100 mile hilly bike ride.


----------



## Accy cyclist (8 Jun 2016)

ColinJ said:


> Well, I haven't eaten meat since 1983 and I don't have problems putting weight on!
> 
> Are you SURE that you take in enough calories though? You could easily be burning 5,000+ calories on a 100 mile hilly bike ride.



Maybe i don't take in enough calories but i'm thinking that my loose skin is because my muscles are wondering where the flesh protein had gone? When i weight trained before the cancer stuff, i got up to nearly 14 stone, but i ate 3 tins of tuna a day.


----------



## swee'pea99 (8 Jun 2016)

I would've thought that if you've dropped that much weight at the same time as you've cut your meat consumption by 85% (but nothing else apparently significant has changed) then it would seem reasonable to suspect a connection. I guess the only way to test properly would be to go back to eating meat like you did before and see whether the weight loss is reversed. If that doesn't appeal, for whatever reason, you might consider eating lots of pasta - I believe it's a good way to pile on the calories, and although it sounds boring, there's any number of ways you can cook it.


----------



## slowmotion (8 Jun 2016)

The answer to your problem is....bacon rolls. They have the advantage of being a highly palatable, tasty, and enjoyable form of medicine. Go for it.


^^^^^^^^ Never even consider pasta. What's the attraction of eating flour???????


----------



## Accy cyclist (8 Jun 2016)

slowmotion said:


> The answer to your problem is....bacon rolls. They have the advantage of being a highly palatable, tasty, and enjoyable form of medicine. Go for it.
> 
> 
> ^^^^^^^^ Never even consider pasta. What's the attraction of eating flour???????




By coincidence i fancied a bacon butty last night. I went to the already opened packet of bacon in the fridge only to find it had fungus spores on it! That bacon must've been sat there opened for a month at least.


----------



## PeteXXX (8 Jun 2016)

Are spores meat or veg?


----------



## k_green (8 Jun 2016)

You can get plenty of protein without meat and there's also no need to worry about combining. Even vegetables contain protein.
i think the best vegetarian source of protein is beans (which also have a good amount of fibre and iron so triple whammy). I try to eat at least one serving a day, usually two. That can be beans on toast for breakfast (1/2 can beans has more protein than an egg), hummus or falafel in my sandwich for lunch or beans in my evening meal (kidney beans in bolognaise, kidney/black beans in Mexican dishes, chickpeas in curries, bean salad etc.)
Also, make sure you're getting enough calories. Meat is calorie-dense so you need to eat a lot more without it as well as including things like nuts and avocado.
Might be worth tracking a couple of days using something like my fitness pal. Would give you a good idea of what you're really getting or not getting.


----------



## subaqua (8 Jun 2016)

Protein is protein. You could try lots of beer to put weight on. Works for me !


----------



## mustang1 (8 Jun 2016)

ColinJ said:


> I think THIS is probably the main reason for your weight loss!
> 
> Assuming that you don't want to reduce the amount of cycling that you do, then you will have to increase the amount of food that you eat to fuel those miles.


----------



## srw (8 Jun 2016)

Calories are calories. If you're losing more weight than you want (I should be so lucky) you'll need to eat more stuff, in a balanced way - but it doesn't matter much what, as long as your overall diet is reasonably balanced and you're getting enough micro-nutrients. Since you're knocking out 100-milers you are. Just eat a bit more - oils and nuts are pretty calorie-dense and easy to eat.


----------



## mjr (8 Jun 2016)

Accy cyclist said:


> Maybe i don't take in enough calories but i'm thinking that my loose skin is because my muscles are wondering where the flesh protein had gone?


Unlikely. If you're eating a reasonable mix of nuts, seeds, beans, mushrooms and so on, spread throughout the day, there should be more protein available than your body can absorb.

Ask your doctor to refer you to a dietician. I suspect they'll tell you to eat more olive oil.

I'm not a vegetarian but I don't eat much meat. My weight has been low but tends to be steady just over the "underweight" limit. I don't usually ride quite as far as you but do some weeks and eat more, not lose weight.


----------



## Tin Pot (8 Jun 2016)

srw said:


> Calories are calories.



Calories are not all the same. Calories are a pointless measure born of idiocy (edit: ignorance) Thinking that setting fire to food to heat water is relavent to how the body metabolises food is nearly 200 years out of date.



ColinJ said:


> You could *easily* be burning 5,000+ calories on a 100 mile hilly bike ride.



Accy would have to be working extremely hard to burn 5,000 calories. Extremely.


----------



## srw (8 Jun 2016)

Tin Pot said:


> Calories are not all the same. Calories are a pointless measure born of idiocy. Thinking that setting fire to food to heat water is relavent to how the body metabolises food is nearly 200 years out of date.


I look forward to your Nobel-prize-winning paper that overturns the law of the conservation of energy. 

If the body needs energy it gets it from somewhere - either by metabolising food or by metabolising energy already stored in the body. Yes, the routes to metabolisation can be complex, and the psychology of food consuption is even more complex, but the physics is simple. If you're losing weight, then the body is metabolising stored energy. If you don't want to lose weight, then you need to provide more fuel.


----------



## Tin Pot (8 Jun 2016)

srw said:


> I look forward to your Nobel-prize-winning paper that overturns the *law of the conservation of energy. *
> 
> If the body needs energy it gets it from somewhere - either by metabolising food or by metabolising energy already stored in the body. Yes, the routes to metabolisation can be complex, and the psychology of food consuption is even more complex, but *the physics is simple*. If you're losing weight, then the body is metabolising stored energy. If you don't want to lose weight, then you need to provide more fuel.



I look forward to you understanding my post.

And "the physics".


----------



## srw (8 Jun 2016)

Tin Pot said:


> I look forward to you understanding my post.
> 
> And "the physics".


You could start by understanding my post....

The OP is obsessing about kinds of food. That's irrelevant. He's eating less stuff than he needs to maintain his weight. If it were me I'd be delighted, but he's not. He needs to eat more stuff. Which means more calories. Calories are an imperfect measure of the amount of energy stored in food, but it's the one we've got. If you're the OP, obsessing about whether you need to eat meat, or more protein, or more skyblue pink micronutrients - the answer is no. You need to eat more food.


----------



## Accy cyclist (8 Jun 2016)

subaqua said:


> Protein is protein. You could try lots of beer to put weight on. Works for me !



I have around 4 pints of beer a night,


srw said:


> Calories are calories. If you're losing more weight than you want (I should be so lucky) you'll need to eat more stuff, in a balanced way - but it doesn't matter much what, as long as your overall diet is reasonably balanced and you're getting enough micro-nutrients. Since you're knocking out 100-milers you are. Just eat a bit more - oils and nuts are pretty calorie-dense and easy to eat.



I must have a 100g packet of nuts a night. I also have a small glass of extra virgin olive oil nearly every day. I've been taking olive oil now for around 10 years.


----------



## Haitch (8 Jun 2016)

As an aside, I was at a talk earlier this week given by a professor of chemistry and a nutritionist, both of Wageningen University (highly renowned for its food scientists). They both agreed that the source of calories was very important to weight gain/loss, metabolism, etc., although neither knew why. Perhaps there really is a Nobel prize waiting.


----------



## Elybazza61 (8 Jun 2016)

User13710 said:


> Any sudden weight loss with no obvious cause should mean an appointment with your doctor.



Wouldn't have thought a stone in 6 months is sudden weight loss.

Might be an idea to have acheck up with your GP,should give a better idea what's going on.I have one evry year now(my GP reccomended i did it when i got over 50) and since I've been cycling all my levels for diabetes,prostate etc have all come down;she did say that my weight should'nt go down any more though(I'm around 11 stone at 5'11",was over 12 two years ago).

I would deffo cut down the alcohol too.


----------



## Fab Foodie (8 Jun 2016)

Alan H said:


> As an aside, I was at a talk earlier this week given by a professor of chemistry and a nutritionist, both of Wageningen University (highly renowned for its food scientists). They both agreed that the source of calories was very important to weight gain/loss, metabolism, etc., although neither knew why. Perhaps there really is a Nobel prize waiting.


As said upstream, Calories (as measured by a Bomb Calorimeter) are a bit of a crude measurement of energy input into the system. What we don't always fully understand is how that food and its Calories are assimilated by the body. A simple example would be a high fibre food. The undigestable fibre will score as Calories in the Bomb Calorimiter but will not be taken up by the gut, but expelled in faeces. It's also true that not all fat ingested is absorbed into the body either and much can leave via the faeces too.
My understanding (and my friendly Nutritionist does not always keep me fully informed), is that we're only just beginning to fully understand calorific uptake from the gut under different dietary regimes. However, I currently believe that once the Calories are in the body (not the hollow tube that runs through it) then the Physics is likely to kick in as an absolute.


----------



## ColinJ (8 Jun 2016)

Tin Pot said:


> Calories are not all the same. Calories are a pointless measure born of idiocy (edit: ignorance) Thinking that setting fire to food to heat water is relavent to how the body metabolises food is nearly 200 years out of date.
> 
> Accy would have to be working extremely hard to burn 5,000 calories. Extremely.


It is extremely hilly round here. Extremely! 

Accy would need 2,000+ calories a day to maintain his weight even if he was just sitting round in an armchair. It would not be surprising for a 100 mile hilly bike ride to burn a further 3,000-odd calories.

Anyway, relating it to my own experience ... I lose about a pound of weight for every 100 miles cycled. That is a pound of body tissue. At the end of the ride it would often be 4 or 5 pounds due to fluid losses but once I have completely rehydrated that pound loss remains. I have observed this on over 50 rides. 1 pound for 100 miles, 1.25 pounds for a '200' (km - 125 miles).

As for the loose skin - losing nearly 3 stone in weight is going to leave its mark. Very young skin might be elastic enough to shrink back after that loss but ageing skin generally isn't. I have stretch marks and loose skin all over from my similar weight loss.


----------



## ColinJ (8 Jun 2016)

At the rate he is going he is potentially going to cycle *7,500-10,000* hilly northern miles this year. Without stuffing his face of course he is going to lose weight!


----------



## ColinJ (8 Jun 2016)

Actually ... @Accy cyclist - it would probably be helpful if you listed everything that you eat and drink in a typical day on top of your nuts, olive oil and beer!


----------



## swee'pea99 (8 Jun 2016)

k_green said:


> i think the best vegetarian source of protein is beans (which also have a good amount of fibre and iron so triple whammy). I try to eat at least one serving a day, usually two. That can be beans on toast for breakfast (1/2 can beans has more protein than an egg), hummus or falafel in my sandwich for lunch or beans in my evening meal (kidney beans in bolognaise, kidney/black beans in Mexican dishes, chickpeas in curries, bean salad etc.)


You're careful around naked flames, I hope...


----------

