I'd like some diet advice please......

[Arch]

I did count spaghetti strands once, when I reckoned I'd got a proper portion, but I forget the number now!

 

[Stonepark]

I am similar and have been struggling and using the excuse of a new bike to get started again on the weight loss.

Diet is the most important part (not dieting) and avoiding starchy foods and sugars (which we are not historically designed to eat in anything other than token amounts) is where I start.

Atkins takes it too far in a meat only direction, but eating non starchy veg and meat. milk and cheese sees me lose weight every time without appearing to restrict the portion size (i.e. I still always feel full).

For example last night was fillet steak (60z) with asparagus ( 125g) (grilled) and stir fried mushroom (75g), onion(1 large red), garlic (4 cloves) and sweet pepper(1 medium).

The veg bulks out your stomach and provides vitamin and minerals and the steak provides the protein, fat and flavour.

Excessive weight gain was never a problem for human society until starchy foods came along in effectively unlimited quantities (rice, pasta, potato, wheat etc). You only have to look at the native tribes (American indians, inuit, aborigines etc to see what happens when a healthy - and relatively long lived - society is introduced to Western commercial food).

 

[AnythingButVanilla]

I tend to be of the opinion that you can eat anything you want but it's all about portion control. I had almost zero control in this area which is how I ended up so big. I can still remember the horror of finding out just how small a portion really was. I still struggle now but the two things I would recommend you do is get smaller plates and weigh/measure everything until you can recognise the correct amounts.

God, yes! I've been on and off Weight Watchers for most of my adult life and when I moved to London three and a half years ago I was at my heaviest ever at 19 stone something. I've lost three stone since then by using WW sporadically but got the shock of my life when the Pro Points plan came out and I was suddenly restricted with the amount of carbs I could consume as I'm a bit of a salad dodger and tend to live on bread and pasta and rice. Measuring it out I was like 'seriously, wtf is this?' as I'd been eating portions big enough for three people, hence why I was/am fat. It's quite hard to get your head around what is and isn't a normal portion size and it takes a lot of getting used to. Unfortunately I'm another naturally chunky, big boned person so I'm never going to be teeny tiny but at least I know how to get half way there and I didn't get fat overnight so I won't lost weight overnight either.

 

[Sittingduck]

• Record your food (and drink) in a log.
• Weigh or Measure stuff that's measurable - don't guess (you will be wrong, at least in the beginning).
• If you consume beer - cut right back
• Incorporate other activity - not the same old, same old cycling distances and speeds.
• Do some kind of resistance training / weights / strength training (this will help boost metabolism and retain lean mass, while you are in a calorie deficit).
• Eat frequently - snack on healthy stuff and eat more protein.

I chose to fight the war on both the food and exercise fronts. I am much better at working hard, than I am at eating cleanly. I could probably count the number of days in the past 8 months that I have consumed less than 2000 calories, on my fingers and still have fingers to spare. Nevertheless, must have done something right and I would say that learning about portion control, cutting out virtually all booze and no takeaways have been the hattrick of winners, on the food front.

 

[yello]

The solution was to have my evening meal as soon as i got home from work.

This is a remarkably practical solution! Sometimes we overlook the obvious in our search for answers.

Avoiding over-eating can be a matter of eating before you get hungry. Personally, I think hunger is your biggest foe if you want to loose weight. Blimey, it sounds as though I'm advocating 'little and often'.... maybe I am??

 

[ASC1951]

Blimey, it sounds as though I'm advocating 'little and often'.... maybe I am??

I can manage the 'often'....

 

[yello]

yep, me too... for me, eating's just something to do....

 

[Nihal]

Dieting with lots of weight training helps,biking too...........but doing too many things in a very short time period will kill you...........on a less severe note,you would easily pile on what you lost

 

[Nihal]

'counting rice'?

Its easy,you start
"1,2,3.............."

 

[RaRa]

'counting rice'?

I have a slight tendancy towards OCD. Counting things becomes a bit of a compulsion that I have to stop as soon as I realise I've started.

 

[VamP]

There are also claims that you should NEVER consume Orange Juice, Artificial Sweeteners, Wholemeal bread, fake butters and soy products. What happened to everything in moderation?

Sounds like bollocks to me.

Best thing I have ever done is read Matt Fitzgerald's Racing Weight*. Full of useful insights, and specifically useful for cyclists. I don't think there are any quick fixes, and there is definitely no substitute to understanding in some depth nutrition and body fuelling at exercise. I went from 16 stone to 13 and a half on common sense and willpower, but could not get lower than that to save my life. I have before never truly understood how to harness appetite - Fitzgerald is awesome at describing this.

After reading Racing Weight in February, I have steadily reduced to 12 and a half, and looking at realistically plateauing out at around 12 by September, which would be around 10% body fat composition for me. This despite a knee injury that has kept me off the bike for the last three months.

* - other books are available

Edit - Oh yeah, forgot to say - no calorie counting needed if you learn to harness your appetite properly. If you are (like me) incapable of the organisational feat that calorie counting represents then you'll know what I'm talking about.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Dieting with lots of weight training helps,biking too...........but doing too many things in a very short time period will kill you...........on a less severe note,you would easily pile on what you lost

Exactly right! I've this a few times myself

 

[Nihal]

Exactly right! I've this a few times myself

I did it a month ago,so i thought it would be good to share it.But after that,everything i've lost has not come back(till now that is)

 

[lulubel]

That said, many people tend to underestimate the amount of carbohydrate they eat and it could well be in that area that you need to look.... not just chocolate bars etc but also between meals snacks of toast, sandwiches, whatever

Carbohydrate is not the problem. Chocolate bars contain a lot of fat, as does the butter that you put on your toast and in your sandwiches. If you add what most people would consider a "reasonable" amount of butter on a slice of toast, there are more calories in the butter than in the toast.

Excessive weight gain was never a problem for human society until starchy foods came along in effectively unlimited quantities (rice, pasta, potato, wheat etc). You only have to look at the native tribes (American indians, inuit, aborigines etc to see what happens when a healthy - and relatively long lived - society is introduced to Western commercial food).

While I agree that people tend to badly judge portion sizes of rice and pasta, starchy food isn't really the problem. There's been a deliberate effort by the food industry (particularly in the US, and this has then spread to the UK) to get people to eat more so the industry can increase sales. Strategies to do this have included increasing portion sizes in take away food and the introduction of "meal deals", introducing snacking between meals as a normal thing, and the addition of high frustose corn syrup to processed food in preference to fat (which causes sugar highs and dips and increases hunger). The result of all this is that attitudes towards food have changed and our idea of what is a "normal" amount of food is much more than it was 50 years ago. We just eat more than we need.

The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to prepare your own food from fresh, raw ingredients (so you know exactly what's in it), weigh everything, and count calories until you're used to recognising what a normal amount of food looks like. There's no need to do any special "diets". Just try to eat as many different foods as possible, in sensible quanities.

 

[yello]

Carbohydrate is not the problem. .

Oh sorry. I must have missed the bit where smokey posted what he ate!