It involved traveling across nasty terrain, off trail with large elevation changes on foot and carrying several heavy packs across the same. It also involved minimal weight travel, meaning not a huge lunch or 8 power bars in the pack. What was key I believe were the temperatures. Low 20s at night in an unheated tent and barely above freezing in the day will burn a few hundred extra calories just staying warm.

Like I said, some of it will likely come back - there may be some dehydration / starvation effect. ;)

G

It comes off in chunks in my experience. Sometime your muscle mass may increase at the same time to a net zero, but you will be able to tighten your belt by a hole. Once the muscle is established (and consuming those calories even when not exercising), it will start increasing your burn rate.

1 lb / week should be your goal, maybe even a little less. Anything over that will not be healthy IMHO and may cause a yo-yo effect.

G

Hope not.

Going back to my summer paleo diet. Means bringing my lunch to work every day. Egg whites, chicken breast, fruit. And no more comforting heavy winter meals. Eat like a shivering caveman.

How quickly is your HR supposed to come down after exercise? I checked tonight:
Finish riding home, take off gloves - 140
Put bike in garage, 1 minute - 112
Go in house, remove jacket sweater, helmet, bag, 1 minute - 112
Remove booties, rain pants, bike shoes, 1 min - 88
Lay on couch, peck this post on iPhone, 1 min - 80

This looks excellent in my non-expert opinion. I am assuming your ride is 20+ minutes, so that means you did not just get your HR up for a minute before measuring the recovery rate.

From Wikipedia on recovery heart rate:

IMHO it also depends where you start out at. I.e. if you go hard to 160 bpm, you probably see a bigger bpm drop in 1 minute than if you only go to 130. I believe the drop is an exponential function with the rate asymptotically approaching resting heart rate. I believe therefore just saying 12 bpm and above is good, is lacking.

Here a study that is pretty interesting, it mainly focuses on recovery positions, but it gives you a good idea what some young lads see in terms of HR recovery after immediately resting. Looks like they exert themselves to 80% of max HR, but I am not 100% sure, I had no patience to carefully read the paper.

http://www.jssm.org/vol10/n2/18/v10n2-18pdf.pdf

What is also interesting is that they indeed do model the recovery as an exponential function like it was my intuition.

G

Breakthrough!

190.2 (11/1/12)
189.6 (11/6/12)
189.8 (11/8/12)
189.4 (11/13/12)
188.0 today (11/15/12)

I knew it, I could feel some weight coming off the last couple of days!

I can't tell you how heartening this is.

The only semi-discouraging thing is the extreme, sustained level of exercise and dietary discipline this has taken thus far. It's a solid 5 lbs lost since late October now, but it's been a pretty hellacious road so far. 5 lbs is very easy to gain. It seems that by the late 40s, it can be almost impossible to lose. Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but what I've gone through the last month is something I think 95% of people could not sustain. All for 5 lbs.

Onward and downward.

Congratulations!

Yes, losing weight is hard now, gaining is easy. The opposite of hair.

lol, with ya on both counts there. Sucks.

Headed into the "danger days" (weekend). Gotta hold the losses made during the week. Really want to see 187.0 next week.

Okay. First day of resumed calorie counting. Jeez, 8:30 am and I've already eaten 400 calories without hardly noticing it.

190.2 (11/1/12)
189.6 (11/6/12)
189.8 (11/8/12)
189.4 (11/13/12)
188.0 (11/15/12)
186.8 today (11/19/12)

I've been killin it since the last weigh in.

1000 to 1200 calories per day (conservative estimate), including on the weekend.

2X exercise sessions per day (probably burning 450 calories, conservatively, total in those).

Also, not eating anything that isn't animal or plant, so that by definition means no junk and very little carbs.

I feel like I've broken through whatever resistance my body was showing to losing weight and it's starting to come off easier. I'm going to readjust my goal from 185 to 179.8.

I hope to see 185.x by Thanksgiving.

(Hey G, where'd you go??)

183.6 If I get to 180, that will be enough.

Damn, you are killing it. When your body gets in a groove like that, make the most of it.

Eat it, suckas! :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1353528527.jpg

I dipped into the 177s but wasn't posting because I know the weekend was coming. 180 again on Monday ... bracing myself for TG. I will get to 175 before the end of the year though.

Congrats on the progress McL - make sure to not go too fast - danger of yo-yo!

G

190.00000000000000000

:-(

183.8 Pretty good all things considered.

178.6 - not bad post TG!

I am going for a run here soon.

G

WTF?

Have you been pigging out?

You will have to start your own thread soon:

"The PPOT Weight Gain Challenge 2013!"

:D

G

I've been reconstructing what happened.

Over the summer I was riding about 100 miles/week and eating all paleo. Was holding in the low 180s, peeked below 180 one day. Not at my goal weight but reasonably happy.

Starting Sept, I have been only commute riding, eating sort of "light normal" - not pizza, mass pasta, ice cream, pastries, anything like that, but allowing bread, moderate amounts of rice and pasta, etc. If you took meals with me, you'd think "this guy is watching what he eats".

Gained - call it 8 lb - in about 70 days, implying excess eating plus less exercise totalling about 400 cal/day. That feels about right, just thinking about what I've been eating and doing then and now.

So I need to cut what I'm eating by at least 600 cal/day and replace at least 50 miles/wk of riding with gym work.

The disturbing thing is learning how I need to live to hold my weight stable. What I think of as a "normal" lifestyle isn't "maintenance".

It's frightening, isn't it?

IMO, it requires a *major* "reset" of how we view food and eating. As in, eating much healthier, cutting out most "recreational" eating and also (this is the big part) basically eating half portions. The bottom line is we just are much more efficient at storing calories as fat/weight.

Since I weigh during my work day, I haven't had a weigh-in since my picture above.

I'm not super optimistic that I can match that on Monday! Holidays are tough, as is being home/parties for 4 days straight. I just have fingers crossed that it's close.