Re: At what point do you have to start eating to maintain weight?


"Just zis Guy, you know?" <guy.chapman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:9bov85pfqnjj3jeumekobm8eqdi5lp597c@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:13:05 +0100, "David WE Roberts"
<nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Being overweight acccording to BMI and getting back into cycling as one
strategy to get my weight down a bit, I was wondering about how much mileage
a week you need to do to get from trying not to eat too much to trying to
eat enough. :-)

I was doing around 200 per week at one point and did not have to take
any special measures. Riding flat out for more than an hour will
leave me feeling a bit depleted these days, so I have worked out how
to spot early signs of the dreaded "bonk", but do be aware that BMI is
largely bollocks - according to the BMI charts I am overweight, at
just over 6' tall with a 33" waist. When I was really fit I came up
as borderline obese, my measured body fat was under 12%.

The main thing is to make sure that what you do eat has plenty of
carbohydrate. I switched from eating sugary breakfast cereals to
home-made wholegrain muesli, for example. Also I try to avoid grazing
but instead if I get hungry I eat properly, even if the time of day is
wrong. I often eat my lunch at 11am or earlier.

The human body is a strange kind of machine, though - what works for
one person won't work for another. Sometimes it's worth seeing a
dietician, though rarely a nutritionist unless you can validate that
they have proper qualifications (anyone can set up shop and call
themselves a nutritionist, and they can buy valueless qualifications
without apparent penalty, as we saw with "Dr" Gillian McKeith).

Guy

Guy,

thanks again to you and the other helpful posters.

I am aware that BMI is only an approximate measure and that other indicators such as body fat, waist measurement etc. are more likely to indicate good or bad condition in the individual. BMI is unlikely to be a reliable indicator for trained athletes, for example, because they tend to have a higher than average amount of muscle, which weighs more than fat.
Thinking of Geoff Capes, who was huge and immensley strong, I assume he was more or less off the BMI scale.
It was only added to the original post as a throw away aside.

However in my case I suspect that it is on the money as I have a 38" waist and I can pinch quite a bit of body fat.
I was 14 stone 7 lbs (6' tall) but then lost several pounds very rapidly and went straight in for a check up and was diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic.

I am currently managing to stay off the drugs by a combination of diet and exercise and am aiming to work at cycling and running to increase my fitness and decrease my weight because these are two disciplines that I enjoy.

My original question was prompted by an awareness that long distance touring cyclists, triatheletes and similar can find themselves struggling to eat enough to maintain a healthy weight whilst us lesser mortals sometimes struggle to eat less to achieve the same aim.

I was trying to get some indication as to where the 'tipping point' is between living to eat and eating to live :-)

[Ironically, your advice on eating loads of carbs would be treated as attempted murder on some diabetic discussion groups - despite it being the advice currently being supported by the medical establishment and the major diabetic charities. Of course, you didn't know I was diabetic but it made me chuckle a bit.]

I am looking for an idea of how much exercise I will have to commit to.
I already suspect that to get to the stage of eating to maintain weight I would have to commit to an exercise regime which would take over my life and be difficult to sustain long term.
However reducing my weight by a stone (most of which came off my waistline) has improved my blood sugar readings enough to satisfy the rather lax targets set by the medical establishment and I am keen to get another half stone off and get my muscle mass up to see if that gets me further back towards the norm.

From posts so far 4 * 50 miles per week will certainly be good for my
fitness but may not reduce me to a pale, thin shadow.
Touring cyclists doing up to 100 miles per day with everything but the kitchen sink loaded onto their bikes will be burning far more energy than I would just cruising around on a touring bike, and I am not sure I could face loading my bike up to the 65Kg mark just to up the exercise level!
http://www.josiedew.co.uk/faq.htm

Cheers

Dave R

.

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