Weight Loss help

wbmorrison

I don't think we are THAT far apart on this. Totally agree about low sugar consumption and I also agree that as cyclists (or any other athlete for that matter), good carbs are key for the body to perform.

But the arguement is really about someone who is 260 pounds needing to get in shape. As long as an abundance of carbohydrates are available, he won't get traction on burning fat. He still needs carbs...and ONLY good ones...but the ratio for a time can shift toward protein and allow him to accelerate the process of weight loss and still not do harm to his vital processes. No question, there's a reason why they recommend supplements...so you can make sure your body gets the necessary minerals/vitamins, etc. that you would otherwise not get on such a high dose of protein and fat.

Lastly, if a low fat diet is so unequivocably right, why is it that Americans obesity has skyrocketed in the last 30 years? Sure, we could excercise more. But if you simply look at foods that are "low fat" what you see is a significant increase in carbs (sugars).

To your point about your reading ATkins book...I do believe he has made some significant updates to the appraoch (and thus his book) in the last 2-3 years. Still the same core approach but a bit more moderated in some areas and more 'balanced'.

ric_stern/RST

Originally posted by wbmorrison, i repsonded with >>

I don't think we are THAT far apart on this. Totally agree about low sugar consumption and I also agree that as cyclists (or any other athlete for that matter), good carbs are key for the body to perform.

>>but atkins doesn't allow good carbs (e.g. pasta) in any of the phases according to their website

But the arguement is really about someone who is 260 pounds needing to get in shape. As long as an abundance of carbohydrates are available, he won't get traction on burning fat. He still needs carbs...and ONLY good ones...but the ratio for a time can shift toward protein and allow him to accelerate the process of weight loss and still not do harm to his vital processes.

>>whilst i'm not 100 % certain what you mean, i will state that to loose weight you only need a negative energy balance (burn more energy than you take in). in the research that has compared normal diets (restricted energy intake) with atkins there's been no difference in weight loss between groups



No question, there's a reason why they recommend supplements...so you can make sure your body gets the necessary minerals/vitamins, etc. that you would otherwise not get on such a high dose of protein and fat.

>>so surely you must agree that atkins is 'bad'?


Lastly, if a low fat diet is so unequivocably right, why is it that Americans obesity has skyrocketed in the last 30 years?

>>surely, that's because a) americans (and a lot of other places, i'm not singling out the usa) don't eat low fat, b) total energy intake is too high


Sure, we could excercise more. But if you simply look at foods that are "low fat" what you see is a significant increase in carbs (sugars).

>>you mean like vegetables.... :-) also, i haven't said we should all eat 'low fat' candy bars (although good when cycling) etc


To your point about your reading ATkins book...I do believe he has made some significant updates to the appraoch (and thus his book) in the last 2-3 years. Still the same core approach but a bit more moderated in some areas and more 'balanced'. [/QUOTE]

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gntlmn

NUMBERS DON'T JIBE!
This is a lot of wonderful information sparked by someone who may be putting us all on. Pardon me if you're not. I see rsalazar as the user name. Is this the former world record holder for the marathon, Roberto Salazar? If that's not you, and you really are serious, then you may get encouragement to realize that your weight in kilograms is only 142.3 kg corresponding to 313 lbs. If you were really 241 kg, trying to convert to lbs, you wouldn't have been able to ride an hour comfortably: no way! I'm surprised all you sophisticated readers out there didn't notice that. I'll bet most of you are used to using kilograms too.

mhubbert

Well, I am a Ph.D. in nutrition and their is truth in all of this. Evolutionary ecology gives different strategies for survival. We all don't have the same genetic pool to work with. The Atkins diet does work, and initial weight loss is tremendous. However, glycogen stores are reduced and the associated water is lost. Their is a ratio of glycogen to water that is held by the body (1-4), when you burn glycogen this metabolic water is lost and weight loss is great.

Long term weight loss is the key, 1 -2 lbs per week unless you are lossing more by energy expenditure. Remember that the basal metabolic rate (BMR) is related to weight, so as you loose weight what you require to maintain weight goes down. I believe that a prudent method is to figure out what you want to have as a target weight and consume that caloric intake, loose weight with exercise. When you have achieved your target weight you will be adjusted to the proper caloric intake.

If you look at the Atkins, Zone, Sugar busters, they all have good points that may work for some people. But remember it is simle math. A lb of fat is 3500 calories, caloric expenditure is 350-900 per hour depending on rate and BMR is 1200-2000 depending on weight. So if you eat over the BMR and don't exercise you gain weight.

This is my favorite plan: eat BMR, then exercise 7000 calories/week. You will loose 2 lbs. Now if your very overweight and select a BMR at your target you will loose more and your body will adjust to the new intake. If you don't do this you will be reducing your caloric intake downward as you loose weight, if you don't weight loss will subside.

In respect to athletic performance, glycogen stores are the key. Trained atheletes have higher stores, as their cells are "trained" to do this. Dietary factors also play a key, the "recovery period" after expenditure is vital, since the enzymes are in place for glycogen production.

Appetite and glycemic index is also in play here. Like chinese food your hungry again in an hour, a steak lasts a long time. Sugar subsides immediate hunger attacks, so don't get hungry. Eat designed "planned" snacks throughout the day, these should have protein and carbs, but little or no simple sugar.

The body has several "pools" of energy, some are more mobile than others and used under different oxygen states. We have compounds that may spare glycogen (caffeine, ascorbic acid) and others than may enhance glycogen uptake and storage. These are the key to performance. We do not want to confuse elite athletic performance and weight loss in this discussion. To the cyclist burning 5000-7000 calories a day in a 120 mile race, carbs and fat may be critical, but for weight loss we don't need to eat like Lance Armstrong.

Best wishes

Randal Lovelace

I have read most of the post here regarding your weight loss, my Wife and I have lost a lot of weight over the last three years, she lost 70lbs, and I went from 256lbs to 178lbs.

We totally changed our diet....no fried foods (this includes chips), high carb low calorie foods were added into our diet.

We worked out on an excercise machine (We started this with a SoloFlex but financed forced the sell of it) we now have a Weider Multi-Gym....(available at any Walmart).

I rode then and ride now (the Wife however is not an avid rider as she has yet to find a seat that doesn't hurt her.)

And most importantly, WE DRANK A LOT OF WATER. 2 TO 3 GALLONS A DAY.

This kept our systems flushed and kept us hydrated while working out...

Good luck with your weight loss, and take it easy on that 150m ride.

Randy

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DurangoKid

A few posts back I was raving about the virtues of Atkins. I have changed my opinion somewhat based on my experience with the near thousand miles I’ve ridden since.

First, the first stages of Atkins are a treatment more than a diet. Atkins is designed to treat pre-diabetics and type II diabetics. The associated weight loss started out as a side effect. Now it has grabbed the center stage, so to speak. I have no argument there. Being overweight has associated risks and it restricts one’s activities.

Second, Atkins works for losing the weight and keeping it off. If one reads his books, you find that he recommends exercise along with the diet. The forth, or maintenance, stage of Atkins is not that far from the mainstream. The problem with the mainstream is that it allows too much sugar and other refined carbs in the diet. At no time in human history has any population had such easy access to simple carbohydrate. All calories are NOT created equal. A simple tallying of the calories can be very misleading when one considers the different metabolic paths required for different nutrients. I just read an article about how fructose, derived from corn, is inferior to other sugars because of its unavailability during exercise. It tends to wind up as fat rather than fuel. The assumption that it goes the way of all sugars is apparently wrong.

Thirdly, there’s a big but. The Atkins diet will keep a pre-diabetic and type II diabetic out of the woods. This is good. Diabetes ages the body at nearly twice the normal rate. The associated vascular problems are killers. The big but is that the Atkins diet’s carbohydrate intake is not sufficient for a training cyclist to have the required energy reserves for workouts and recovery. I now take various forms of carbohydrate just before, during, and immediately after a workout. Protein can’t deliver the carbs to the muscles fast enough to ward off stiffness and cramps.

In conclusion, outside the context of cycling I eat the high protein/fat foods with low glycemic fruits and vegetables as Atkins recommends. This seems to be my evolutionary legacy from the hunter/gatherer days. For cycling, I add in some extra carbs for the necessary boost. I’m still losing weight, too. I’m now hovering around 180 lbs down from 185-ish when I last posted. At 6’1”, this gives me a pretty good BMI for 47 years old. Today I rode a half century in good form and felt great afterwards.

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Sidi

Expend more than you consume will help as well but make sure you are getting enough nutrition.

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patch70

Many nutritional guidelines are based on fairly dubious evidence. Just like the Atkins website will promote stuff that backs up its beliefs, so will the Wheat Farmers Federation promote stuff that it agrees with. Recently a group comprising of sugar cane growers and soft drink manufacturers threatened to bring the WHO down when they were about to put out new WHO Guidelines suggesting a lower amount of refined carbohydrates in a "healthy diet". The WHO have thus increased the amount of recommended daily refined carbs to avoid the threatened action.

Just because the BMA says this, doesn't mean there are not ulterior motives behind them doing so.

There is not great evidence for any particular type of diet so it is pretty difficult for anyone to say one is "better based on the evidence".

2LAP

I do disagree with most of your post, however it is difficult for all of us (i.e. consumers) to understand the conflicting evidence provided a variety of sources!

DurangoKid

When some one provides "evidence" one should ask, ‘who paid for it and what are they selling?’ We live in an age when the chartered corporation, which started out as a creature of the state, is now the master of the state. Hence, the profit motives of the corporations outweigh science and tradition when it comes to matters of public policy and education. Even the institutions of higher learning have been co-opted and rendered just another profit center. Research is now driven more by market analysis and patent law than the needs of the people corporations claim to serve.

Ask yourself, what is the biggest change in the human diet in industrial countries in the last century? By far, it has to be the industrial quantities of sugars and other refined carbohydrates. What kinds of fats did people consume in the 19th century? Lard and butter were the cooking media of choice. No one ate hydrogenated oils or seed oils because they didn’t exist for the most part. Combine that with the corporate grip on the mass media and it should be obvious that diet related diseases are largely the fault of the new industrial cuisine. Advertising works by slowly affecting one’s attitudes and choices. It works best in a vacuum where contradictory views are suppressed or ridiculed. Is it in the corporate interest to educate a population about the dangers of industrial cuisine? Or, would it be more likely that some corporation would try to sell you a cure for the problem?

The simple fact of the matter is that evolution has tuned our bodies over thousands of generations to eat the food we found in pre-agricultural times. Sugars and fats were never removed from their natural context. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds supplemented a diet of hunting and scavenging. All of the vegetable matter was seasonal and never available in quantity over extended periods.

As cyclists, we are a self-selecting minority. We regularly engage in a level of activity that is no longer the norm. The closest thing I can compare it to would be running down a wounded animal for a couple of hours just before dinner. I doubt whether our Pleistocene ancestors worked as hard as often. Therefore, a little extra carb around work out time is no big deal to me. I still believe that any cyclist can be a healthier cyclist if they eat more whole, natural foods and eschew processed trash.

Let us not lose sight of the bigger picture. People who don’t participate in some sport or exercise program are jeopardizing their health. Eating industrial cuisine only makes their behavior more prone to risk. The beneficiaries of industrial cuisine are the owners of the corporations that produce it. Those who consume it are subsidizing the profits with their health. It’s no coincidence that as we approach a fascist state our diet is deteriorating. To paraphrase John Muir, when one considers one thing, you’ll find it’s connected to everything else.

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2LAP

I agree, but just want to comment (this is a soap box issue for me).

This has been one of my problems for the Atkins diet; its now such a comercial venture that its books outsell Harry Potter books in the UK!!! In the Higher Ed instiute that I work in in the UK isn't driven by the same motivation, much of the funding is provided by health promoting charities and there are very few links with private companies. Obviously this isn't the same for all institutions.

Fat consumption has also increased particularly with fast food consumption, people eat bigger meals, etc. Refined sugars are bad, but they are not the only story. I think refined foods are the biggest problem as they are calorie dense and low in nutrients. People do need to be educated against this refined/industrialised food. Due to changing working practice people are also far less active, tis is a major problem.

I agree, but think that everyone should eat more whole, natural foods and eschew processed trash (both high fat and high simple carbs). This in essence is a balanced diet.

Agree (not sure on the poitical bit though), but they jeopardise their health from eating a crap diet (high fat or high simple sugars). I always recomend eating a balanced healthy diet (with adjustments for individual needs) and I am vegetarian myself (its very easy to avoid processed foods when being vegetarian. Such a normal healthy balanced diet stands up to most atacks and is suitable for both active and inactive people.

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DurangoKid

Pardon my rant, but the political situation here in the US is
·Bush and his cronies stole the presidential election.
·They lied about Afghanistan.
·They lied about Iraq.
·They’re stalling the investigation of 9/11.
·They’re giving the richest the most tax relief.
·They’re gutting environmental standards at the behest of industry.
·The Bill of Rights is under an unprecedented attack.
·The limits on search and seizure are eroding.
·Habeas Corpus is under is under threat.
·They want ever more money for the military.
·They are working toward the establishment of a police state.
·They want to try civilians in military tribunals.
·They want to allow secret evidence.
·They want to intrude on lawyer-client communications.
·They want to be able to strip a citizen of his citizenship.
·They’re expanding the number of offences considered terrorism.
·They’re adding more offences punishable by death.
·Bush is possibly the only US president to strut around in military garb.
·The list goes on.

Everyone in the US thinks it can’t happen here and because there are no swastikas or jackboots, they assume it hasn’t. Bush wants to hand over everything to the corporations and the “free” market. We’re moving from a government of laws to governance by corporate fiat. Democracy is dying here. This, according to Benito Mussolini, is fascism.

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patch70

DurangoKid, this is off the topic but it is always reassuring to me when I read from Americans messages such as that. At least some people in America realise what George W. is doing! Often here we get the message in the media that all Americans are with him.

less'go

Hey there,
Just wanted to point out that you don't weigh (yikes!) 241 kilos, but about 141 kilos. 241 kilos = 470 pounds, so when I read your pot my eyes bugged out!

Good luck,
Sara