I mean eating before if you can (early rides don’t always allow) taking in carbohydrate during the ride to minimize a deficit, and making up at least the rest with your post ride meal.
But that just is not true. It is ALWAYS calories in vs calories out. There is no other consideration that effects non water weight loss.
That said…obviously there are other factors that can influence both calories in and calories out; hormones, changes in metabolism, etc. But if you have a true deficit of ~500 calories per day, you lose a pound a week - end of story.
The problem is it is just virtually impossible for the average person to measure calories in, but especially calories out.
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You may be right that I wasn’t in fact in a deficit. However, I counted religiously, all food was weighed I mean ALL I had a serious food issue. I didn’t eat packaged food and cooked all the food I ate rarely ever going out and if I did I would overestimate as best I could. I tried 300,500-1000kcal deficits and saw no weight or composition changes. What I did see was lethargy, reduced mental function, insatiable appetite and terrible performance.
I’ll agree that if I fasted for a week then yes of course I would lose weight. The thing is if cutting weight requires that drastic of a measure when cutting calories then there is something wrong there.
I think what’s missed here and where most people miss the point is how the body responds to calories or really good varies. We know that gut bacteria, stress levels, inflammation, diet makeup etc all affect how ones body responds to calories. Experimental FMT has shown microbiota from a skinny person to an obese person can make the obese person lose weight as well as the reverse.
The body will upregulate and downregulate systems as needed to keep it where it wants to be or thinks it needs to be. So yes while you could continue to cut calories and eventually lose weight it may take getting to a level that is extremely unhealthy and unsustainable even if the person is overweight.
There’s clearly something else going on in these situations. I’m not saying this is the case with OP or even that many people. What I am saying is the stress placed on our bodies with the training we do can cause disregulation in the body leading to the types of unexpected calorie response I was talking about. I just think there is more nuance to this that many people neglect when they think it’s so ple CICO.
Yes, I know this but what I’m saying is people just think calories in calories out is super simple but it’s not. Perhaps I misspoke when I said it’s not just CICO. However my point stands that there is more nuance and there are more factors that affect these things. I don’t think that just cutting calories is the right or healthy way to do it.
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As a past nationally qualified bodybuilder in the NPC I do know of one way that always worked for everyone on my team. My coach would have me eat the same thing every single day (usually a prep was 12-16 weeks). After weekly progress pictures, changes to the diet would be made such as going from 1C of rice to 3/4C or changing protein serving per meal from 8oz to 7oz. Also cardio would increase slowly (first couple weeks would be just 20min/day but by the end close to 90min)
By eating the exact same thing everyday it took all the variables out of the equation and we knew if changes were occurring because we could see them in the pictures and on the scale. If they didn’t happen, less food and more cardio but just a small increase so as not to use up all your “bullets” If you can handle that much structure and you are willing to be that strict it will work 100% of the time for any normal human.
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RD here (disclaimer: consider this friendly rather than medical advice!). Lots of good points above, particularly those about inaccuracy of nutrition labels and protein/strength training. I’d suggest an approach in the same vein - albeit much less extreme - than @CaptainJack 's.
Come up with a balanced “template” of meals, making sure to prioritize vegetables + lean protein + fiber at every meal. Eat to satiety, and keep track for a week or so. Once you establish a baseline, make weekly small reductions in daily intake (aiming for ~300kcal/d deficit, but no stress on the exact figure). Since you can’t accurately track either calorie in or calories out, it is much easier to make small adjustments downward from a reasonable baseline than to try to quantify everything.
WRT variability in training caloric expenditure, keep everything constant and fuel specifically for each workout. This means taking in adequate calories before, during, and after rides, leaving your intake for the rest of the day relatively unchanged.
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Measure CI is pretty easy/simple? Agree on CO perspective.
It really isn’t that hard to just measure/weight stuff. Do that for long enough, and you can eyeball it with pretty good accuracy.
CI is sum(Mass * Calories (or whatever nutrient we’re measuring) per unit mass). You can weigh everything you eat down to 6 significant digits if you want, but if what you’re multiplying it by to get the kCal value has lots of error, for example because labelling is allowed to be off by 20%, or the difference between very ripe and underripe fruit, etc. You weigh your 2 slices of rye bread and go to log it in MFP, which food do you log it against and how far off the actual rye loaf you have is it?
CI is pretty simple: weigh accurately and multiply by an accurate kCal/g value. The former is easy, the latter is largely out of your control.
Yes, plus some differences due to digestive processes. So…there’s not too much point in aiming for accuracy. Tracking, yes, but trying to nail down exact calorie levels is useless IMO.
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The issue there is that calorie numbers on labels are notoriously inaccurate…
Also if one eats out at all…guesstimating is a total crapshoot. But yea obviously things like weighing food can turn a total question mark into a reasonably accurate range of calories in.
I think really what I am getting at is that if you are gaining, not losing weight, there is a zero % possibility you are running a caloric deficit (disregarding water weight of course). So the answer is ALWAYS to work more, eat less, or both. There is no other solution…barring really drastic measures like liposuction or fecal transplant if you really think you have a gut biome issue or something.
Agree with everyone here. CICO is physics, but CICO is almost impossible to estimate.
One other anecdote, if I am doing a lot of hard ‘brain work’ for my job consistently over a few weeks, I will lose weight. Since the brain is such a huge user of energy it makes sense.
Good luck estimating CO for the brain work your are doing 
Probably something else you’re doing differently at those times, whilst the brain uses a huge amount of energy - relative to overall body mass - it doesn’t change that much with high cognitive loads vs just basic functioning:
A person doing cognitively challenging work for eight hours would burn about 100 more calories than a person watching TV or daydreaming for the same amount of time, he estimates.
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I don’t count calories and I don’t try balance training load vs calories in. I did this in our winter 2019 (March to September) and lost a incredible amount of weight over a short period of time. I fueled my workout with oats and banana after was a protein shake. but the rest of the day was limited 100g protein per meal and a green vegetable i.e. broccoli or cabbage etc. I peaked in my training for a 150km event but crashed out half way through as it was wet and slippery a ride lost control in front of me at 60km/h down hill.
The “but” in this was I was already crashing, as my weight loss had affected my training and power it took me 6 months to recover as I denied my body needed carbohydrate to train. Until @Captain_Doughnutman started the thread “I heart carbohydrates”, my weight went up 5 kg in a couple of days or maybe 2 weeks @Nate_Pearson mentioned me in a pod cast. I have now figured out that no matter how you want to loose weight your body is in charge 2 - 3 year plan is the only way.
Another point to watch is your sleep, this is critical as it can derail the best weight loss plan ever invented. I suffer from sleep apnea and when I don’t get the required quality of sleep my weigh goes up, cortisol your body produces because of lack of sleep will make you put weight on! (This is no joke) I am going most probably to start using a cpap machine this summer just waiting for my sleep study results.
Oh by the way I have been for a DXA scan and I have managed to move my fat % to 20% from 25.4% but my weight has stayed at 88kg
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I’m not going down the rabbit hole of arguing with people who don’t believe science, so this may have been covered…
Is the Calories out just exercise or is it the Garmin Connect figure?
- My Garmin connect, synced with MyFitnessPal takes my calorie target from myfitnesspal.
- My target in myfitnesspal is my own estimation of my TDEE, allowing for my activity level.
- Activities for Garmin sync the calorie burn to myfitnesspal
- Calories consumed sync into Connect from myfitnesspal
- However, when I look at my “Active Calories” in connect, it appears to add in NEAT calories burned which I’ve (and I assume mfp targets) have already adjusted for.
fwiw I used Garmin calorie burn figures as part of method of calories in v calories out to go from 120kg to my current 70kg (ish). It is as simple as calories in v calories out for weight loss, because, Science.
So it’s accuracy of the figures. I weighed and portioned, and continue to do so, my inputs as best I can (not all the time, but most of the time). Where I have power, I use Kj for burn. Where I don’t, I use heart rate, but heart rate does rely on the correct settings of zones. I saw expected weight loss (or not). That was using Garmin for HR based burn. Through a 320xt, 935xt and now 245. I use my 245 for non-power bikes as my bolt continues to massively overstate calories burned on the same inputs (actually worse than that, same heart rate inputs, but even with my weight understated!).
My opinion is that I think the accuracy issues of counting calories versus packaging, is overstated. If you’re weighing and portioning, you’ll see the expected results. Outliers in food labelling are used the same way rugby players and body builders are used to dismiss BMI. For most people/ foods, most of the time, it works.
I am in the process of reading this book right now trying to cut a few more lbs. And one thing he does talk about on there that really shed some light for me, is the nutrient timing section. Which for me I think makes a lot of sense. I am putting this into practice now, will no results later on.
My wife and I are similar weight yet my Garmin would generally report double the calories of her Apple Watch after exercising together. MyFitnessPal assumes you burn a certain number of calories just being awake and Apple deducts this before calculating the additional calories from exercise, whereas I don’t think Garmin does. Could be a couple of hundred calories for an hour’s exercise.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I’m going to implement as much as possible over the next month and will report back. Going to still keep tracking food intake but will only look at active calories burned rather than the garmin full day. We’re also looking at options for a gym as our pool likely won’t open for sometime yet and my wife needs to get back into full IM training which means I’d have a pool and weights again.
Sometimes nutrition supplements can help with additional fat burning effects. In my case, Resurge helps a lot with this purposes. I could find on the web, few weeks ago, this review of Resurge and after getting some more details and information from other people who were consuming it, I’ve decided to start consuming it as well, and I’m glad because it’s effect is awesome.
The latest podcast from Sigma Nutrition just landed and it’s on point for this thread. It’s episode 359
Here is the accompanying article:
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Hi Everyone, its been a few months and I’ve taken a number of of the comments and put them into practice but still not seeing the desired results. Here’s what I’ve changed since my original post in trying to achieve some fat loss and get back to at least my old racing weight of 200-205.
- I’ve been following my TR plan and while the workouts are painful its been great so far. I’ve only had to reduce the intensity on one partial ride but find myself taking rest breaks after big intervals. This morning was 4x10min at FTP on 2min easy ride. I added 60-90 seconds full rest/back pedaling after each interval today.
- Without my regular pool or corp. gym I’ve joined the local Y. In addition to my 5 TR rides each week I’m back in the pool 2x a week for 6000 yards and am lifting 2x a week on top of my core workout and hip mobility/strength work. Currently at 11hrs of Bike, Swim, and strength work a week.
- I’ve started using SIS Rego as my plant based recovery mix, so far so good I think.
- My wife has got me to reduce my animal based intake, I’ll never be a vegan or vegetarian but more plants than before.
- I go for 45-60min walks daily as long as the roads aren’t icy which usually ends up be being 4-5 a week. I skipped one this week because I was exhausted. Rest week next week!
- So far my weight has climbed a few pounds to 228, I wake up hungry and tired most mornings but either ride or swim first thing. When I started swimming and lifting is when the weight climbed up those few pounds, I told myself it was just muscle coming back and it would go the other direction soon but that was in Mid-Nov.
- I’ve done my best to cut snacking and limit peanut butter intake as I could eat peanut butter all day.
- Calories wise I’m aiming for 1500 NET, some days I’m on target, other days I’m 100-200 over.
- I’ve cut alcohol out completely since Nov.
I don’t think I could cut my intake much more without cutting activity level.