I am a 40 something guy and was about 20 pounds overweight (5’10", 190 lbs) when I started exercising at the beginning of June. Prior to June 1st, I almost never exercised but I did eat a pretty healthy diet; mostly vegetarian, not much dairy, no junk food or sugary foods/drinks, and very limited refined starches. I do probably drink a bit too much alcohol, typically 2-3 drinks (wine) per day.
Anyway, realizing that this is not really a healthy way to live and wanting to be in better shape, I decided that I would start to exercise regularly. Hating the gym and thinking most exercise activities are boring, I decided I could live with mountain biking. Since June 1st I have mountain biked 4 times a week for 1-2 hours each ride. These rides are typically 8-12 miles long with 800-1500 feet of elevation gain and MapMyRide says I burn around 900-1200 calories each time.
I really don’t believe my eating habits have changed much, but since June 1 I have gained 10 pounds. My body has changed for the better (the weight has moved around a bit); I am in much better shape and the rides are getting easier and easier, but I would like to lose some weight too. Assuming that I am not in denial about my diet not changing, when will I start losing weight? What am I doing wrong? Is this typical?
My wife claims that it is typical to gain muscle weight and not lose fat when changing activity levels and that after a few weeks it will be like a light switch and the weight will roll off. I am coming here because I have found that yelling “cite?” to my wife doesn’t always end well…
I’d say you’re doing it right. Instead of watching the scale, why not use a tape measure on your chest, gut, and thighs to check your progress? Muscle is denser and heavier than fat, and mountain biking is hard work. A true fitness guru (IOW, not me) would tsk tsk the wine, but the health and well-being benefits of a couple glasses probably outweigh the calories. That’s totally your call.
I looked at loseit.com, it looks like it has much the same functionality as mapmyride.com. I have not really been that interested in tracking my eating, it is not that high a priority to me.
Weight loss is mainly due to diet, not exercise. If you want to loss weight, cut out the 1 or 2 drinks per day. That will show results quicker than the mountain biking.
It is not possible to gain 10 lbs. of muscle in two-ish months, however you could be retaining water as part of muscle repair. That might account for a couple of pounds. How are you hydrating?
I’d take a look at your food consumption. You may not think your eating habits have changed, but I am often much more hungry after hard efforts like your rides and will overcompensate with food calories, essentially negating any calorie burn (but not the other benefits, obviously). As an example from my own experience, I burn between 800 and 2400 calories through rides and runs on some days. I started out wanting to lose weight so tracked my food. After a couple of months (and a loss of about 15 pounds) I quit tracking my food, figuring I had it figured out. I spent two months at the exact same weight, even though I was still exercising and eating the same (or so I thought). All it took was a couple of days of food tracking again to see that I was absolutely exceeding my ‘weight loss’ daily calories and was usually right around maintenance.
Moral is, it’s probably what you’re eating. Try tracking for a week using something like My Fitness Pal and you can pinpoint the problem.
Not arguing Telemark, just clarifying; burning an extra 4000-5000 calories a week won’t make me lose much weight?
Full disclosure, I have always been pretty cynical about dieting; I know plenty of people who track their calorie intake religiously that are overweight. Meanwhile, everybody I know that exercises regularly, without exception, is thin and fit regardless of what they eat. In fact, these people seem to eat whatever they want and never gain a pound.
I second the tape measure idea - here is what I use - it is cheap - and allows you to easily measure yourself.
900-1200 calories is a lot. I’m not familiar with MapMyRide, but many tools are known to Wiley exaggerate number of calories burned.
You should try to record the calories you eat - just for one day. It is very unlikely you will be able to lose weight with just exercise. Despite what people will tell you - exercise makes you MORE hungry. I can eat the same things on two different days - and be ravenous one day, but not the other. When I go back and look at my logs - on days I exercise more - I eat more.
A body fat scale might be helpful too.
However, if you are not recording your calories for at least one day - you are pretty much living in denial.
Your chances of losing weight - and keeping it off - by exercise alone are almost non existent. Yes it is possible in theory, but it just doesn’t happen. Of people that have successfully lost weight and kept it off - only 1% have done it from exercise alone.
To me, the simple answer is that you’re going to lose weight when your body wants to. The trick is to make it want to lose the weight. It’s great that you’re exercising, and looking and feeling better, but your body doesn’t really care how you look and feel. So long as it’s easier for the body to hang onto the fat, it’ll do it, because it’s the best long-term fuel storage system the body has.
Another way of putting it is the old axiom: it took you a bunch of years to put the weight on, it’s going to take more than a couple months to take it off.
This was more or less my first reaction to the OP. You say you’re 20 lbs overweight, but going off of just your height and weight isn’t going to give you the best results. Particularly if you’ve had almost no physical activity for a long time, and depending on your body type, you could easily put on a decent amount of lean muscle mass fairly quickly and actually gain weight. This isn’t a bad thing, as really your goal shouldn’t be a given weight, but rather a lower body, higher lean mass.
Setting an ideal weight isn’t as simple as going by BMI, in fact, it can lead people to think their health is much better or much worse than it actually is. You would really need to see a specialist to get a better indicator. Instead, I suggest more tangible goals like some body measurements, chest, neck, arms, waist, hips, thighs; progression goals, like covering the same distance in less time or a greater distance in the same amount of time 2-4 weeks from now; or more subjective ones like your energy level, alertness, mood, etc. Particularly with stuff like body measurements and progression, keeping a journal will help you keep track of your progress.
As far as diet goes, you may want to consider keeping a closer eye on it. Most people have a tendency to underestimate just how much they’re eating. Maybe you have a fairly healthy salad, but thouse croutons or the salad dressing adds several hundred calories you’re not considering. And, of course, a glass of wine has almost as many calories as a soda, so drinking 2-3 glasses a night is a lot calories. If you say one glass has roughly 125 (from a quick google), then cutting just one glass a night for a month will save you 3750 calories, which isn’t far off from the estimate for calories in a pound of fat, and it’s as many calories as you burn in almost a week of exercise. So even a small change in diet can have a large impact on your results.
Agreed, I don’t think you’re burning nearly as much as you think you are. And the added hunger (and sense of “earning it”) after a ride may make you eat more. It’s really easy to eat more than you can exercise off.
He said the rides were 1 to 2 hours long. I think 900 calories for a one hour ride sounds high, but 1500 for a vigorous 2 hour ride is pretty acceptable.
I would keep a very honest food diary and lowball your exercise calorie estimates. I don’t agree that exercise makes little difference, but it’s a lot easier to lose weight watching what you shove in your piehole. I’m 5’11" and about 175 lbs. I used to be 205 about four or five years ago. About half that weight loss I attribute to exercise (running 4-6 miles on average per day) and half to limiting my calorie intake to about 2000 calories per day. At that rate, I lost about 2 lb/week. Cutting the alcohol (my main dietary vice) made a huge difference.
Also, I second the advice about watching more how your clothes fit than paying too much attention to the scale. Personally, my weight can vary by about ± 5 pounds depending on how hydrated I am and how much water I’m retaining (if I eat a very salty meal, the water weight sticks to me for a couple days.)
All that weight loss/gain is is a simple calories in vs calories out equation. Diet vs exercise really comes down to what seems easier to you, to most people the effort of not eating a few hundred calories is much lower than the effort it takes to burn them.
**I. Diet modulates weight.
II. Exercise modulates body composition.
Nutrition quality will improve how fast you lose or gain weight.
Exercise intensity will improve how fast your body composition changes.**
The people you see who can eat what they want don’t have special magic genes, and unless they are elite athletes they aren’t burning 5000 calories a day; what they have is a metabolism geared by overall fitness to continuously burn calories at an elevated rate (not just during the exercise duration) and not convert surplus sugars to body fat. Unless you are young and working out continuously you need to moderate your diet, especially in the beginning of a fitness program in order to maximize gain of muscle tissue.
And while biking is far from the worst exercise activity you can do, especially if you are doing some uphill sprints, realize that it predominately develops leg and pelvic strength, but does relatively little for the core and almost nothing on the upper body. It is also repetitive with the progressive reduction in gains unless you really focus on verying intensity and duration. Adding some kind of core and upper body strength training or plyometics would substantially increase both progress in general fitness and fat loss, and also helps to protect from repetitive stress injury.
Thanks all for the input… I am going to track what and eat and see how the equation balances.
Regarding the map my ride app calorie calculation, I have no idea how accurate it is. If I do a simple calculation on the potential energy (mgh) of the 1000 foot climb, it only looks like 60 calories. Whatever, I am not too worried about it. I will assume it is wrong from now on and see how much I am eating.