Fitness

Hi,

I'm new to this forum. I ride close to 200 miles a week and try to keep my calories under 1300 during the week. On the weekends I eat more. I can't lose weight, it keeps going up. I'm so discouraged.

Last year I maintained my weight riding and eating this way. Then my thyroid went wacko and I'm on medication now, but have gained 10 lbs! My thryroid is under control now, but can't take the weight off.

Any suggestions? I need help, I feel so fat!!

I would guess that your thyroid condition is mostly to blame but you are not eating enough.  For me personally riding 200 miles a week burns about 1500 calories each day plus the other 1500 I burn off the bike so I need to eat 3000 a day just to maintain.  I can't imagine having the energy to ride that much while eating only 1300 cals a day.

I'm with him -^ you aren't feeding your body the energy it needs to burn fat efficiently; and you're pushing way, way past the sustainable deficit limit.

 Very common problem, really - when the intake<expenditure formula stops working it's either because the intake is higher than you think or the expenditure part got changed on you when your back was turned.
 
 Your thyroid condition affects the expenditure part, which explains the previous weight gain. The medication helps with this but can't overcome the effect of the downregulation of your body's metabolism that happens as a response to an energy expenditure that exceeds your body's capacity to mobilize fat for fuel. essentially, your body's turned the thermostat down to save energy, and it will keep on doing that until you give it enough fuel to work with.

 Try using Phord's calculator to see what your maximum sustainable deficit is; stay within those limits and your body will 'turn up the furnace' again. 

I used the Phord calculator and it says to eat 1500 calories and burn 950 calories with exercise to lose 1.5 pounds a week.  When I was eating more than 1300 calories a day, I gained weight, so I naturally thought I needed to eat less.  Thanks for your response!

Keep in mind that your thyroid condition does distort the picture and you probably need to tweak things a bit from the standard formula. It's really only valid for the "average" person, and you're probably not it.

 But it's a starting point for tweaking your diet that's more in line with how your body "should" react, and assuming that your medication brings your metabolism back towards normal it's better to start with that as a baseline and tweak a bit.

 Oh, yes - keep in mind that after undereating for a substantial period you may see some initial weight gain as your body normalises. Obesity at 700 calories a day shows how prolonged undereating with occacional slipups can mean maintaining your body weight at a ridiculously low calorie intake. 

== everyone else

You are not eating enough. Provided your thyroid condition is under control, then plugging in "sedentary" and then feeding in your biking on top of that, then deduct 500-1000 calories per day, will result in 1-2 pounds per week of weight loss.

I will caution that this site overestimates bicycling calorie burn by 30-40%, so figure that in. One quick hack is to choose the intensity level two levels lower than what you did, and put in the same time. If it was exceptionally windy, or you did a lot of hills, maybe only go one level down.

FORGET diet calculators and schedules. They are distorting your view of how much you should eat. You can project based upon 1-2 pounds per week where you will be at such-and-such date, but realize that the occasional slip and/or plateau may make you miss that date. Don't worry about it--as long as you're trending downward at a reasonable rate, you're good.

200 miles per week is about 30 miles per day. For me, that's about two hours, or 1000-1200 calories burned (on a road bike. Figure 50% more for a mountain bike, due to the increased weight and wind resistance.). Combined with my sedentary burn, that gives me 3000-3200 calories to play with each day, so I would aim to eat 2200-2700 calories on such a regimen to lose 1-2 pounds per week, by comparison to your current numbers. I'm a 5'8" man, though, with a sedentary burn rate of about 2300 calories per day. Adjust your numbers accordingly.

As contradictory as it may sound to you, you have to eat to lose weight.

What happened was I figured out I burned 2000 calories a day without exercise and I figured I needed to eat 1500 a day to lose a lb a week.  I didn't think to adjust those figures when I started biking and burning more calories.  So, if I burn 3200-3500 calories a day, I should eat a lot more.  That seems scary to me!  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE to eat!!  If it works, I'll be in heaven.  Thanks everyone for your responses!!