You cannot out exercise a bad diet
You cannot out exercise a bad diet
You cannot out exercise a bad diet
You cannot out exercise a bad diet
You cannot out exercise a bad diet
You cannot out exercise a bad diet .... in the long term
Hope I've made my point.
Me 5'11 16.5 stone now floating around 12 stone. Main exercise cycling. What you are doing will definately work an hour of cycling should see your weight drop off provided your nutrition is dialled. The more you dial your nutrition the more you will get the body shape you want. Speak to any bodybuilder/fitness model I am sure most will tell you that diet is just as imporant if not slightly more so than the exercise they do. I learnt all this the hard way.
Step 1. Work out your basal Metabolic rate good explanation here
http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html
This will give what calories you need to consume to exist each day. Extremely roughly speaking 12-13 calories per pound of body fat to lose weight. This goes on to explain energy expenditure requirements dependent on your lifestyle.
Basically yes Calories expended more than calories taken in you will lose weight, however you could get all your calories froms Mars bars, Monster Munch and mince pies; which is not really a good sustainable plan.
Macro nutrients become your friend:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/nutrient_calculator.htm
Best of all some sites will track all this for you, you set up a food diary, track your macro nutrients and it will show you your protein carb fat ratios that you can tweak over time.
http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/
Obviously this is in the extreme and do not worry to much to start with. Most of us know what we should and shouldn't eat and what you need to cut out so start there. If you stick to clean, unprocessed complex carbs with a low GI Wholewheat Pata, bread, noodles (you can get a GI diet book from your library which gives really good examples) whack in protein, Chicken, eggs, tuna. Throw in lots of veg (virtually unlimited 50 calories a cupful basically), and some fruit - You will also need some fat Omega 3, Olive Oil, Flaxseed.
If you start cycling further distances carb up a bit the night and morning of your runs porridge or oatmeal becomes your friend.
As an idea this is what I ate today
Breakfast skimmed milk, banana (green ish) oatmeal and whey protein smoothy sounds awful but is actually quite nice.
AM Snack rice cake and apple.
Lunch Chicken wholewheat noodles, bean sprouts, mange tout, with bit of lettuce on the side. A medium Orange
Snack nuts and raisins
I feel pleasantly full right now at 18.03 pm
Dinner about 8pm for me will probably be something like more chicken a very small amount of carbs such as rice and loads of veg perhaps a yoghurt afterwards
Notice no bread....
Just a very simple example I try to eat like that around 90% of the time and for the other 10% I do pretty much as I please now. I must admit that the diet I am following is a bit anal and compared to where I was 3 years ago poles apart but I still feel I have a way to go yet.
It is a long game however just start with short little steps, cut out the empty calories here and there.You probably know what you should really cut out, eat little and often and stick to the cleaner food and you will be amazed at what happens. There is some food now that I cannot stomach. I used to love the odd McD's but truly I cannot eat it anymore, same if I have too much chocolate or sweet stuff (actually the portion as I used to eat) I really do feel sick afterwards.
If you are worrying about feeling hungry don't once you eventually wean yourself over to clean food and you get to the point where you have to consume more to meet your energy requirements for the extra activty you do you will really, really, really struggle to consume your calorie requirements in clean unprocessed foods.
Hope this helps and good luck with it all, look forward to hearing you are now 12.5 stone at the end of the year!
