In 2008 I was nearly 17st and re-adopting cycling helped with getting me down to 15st pretty rapidly. I'm 6'5", veer toward muscularity rather than leanness and broad-shouldered, so I was pretty happy with that. I still struggled on some climbs though, so decided that 14st would be better. I reckon exercise accounts for only 20% of weight maintenance, so the food would have to be looked at. The problem is, I don't believe in calories as a practical way to measure food as part of a lifestyle, and I've never seen a picture of a 'metabolism' either (neither really exist, after all).
How many calories did you really eat yesterday? How many did you burn? In one day, the proposed figure for each of these questions could be incorrect to a tune of hundreds, so how can they possibly be relevant for the rest of your life? An example. This month I attempt to eat the recommended daily intake, apart from one day a week, where I consume nearly three times that amount. By rights, over one year, this habit would result in significant weight gain, but that doesn't happen because the calorie-counting science doesn't work (and has been debunked for decades). I read somewhere that to monitor calories to mitigate the average weight gain of a US citizen over twenty years would mean appreciating the effect of a quarter of a slice of unbuttered bread a day. Good luck.
I'd done the Atkins diet with great success ten years ago, but cutting carbs is a fairly miserable long-term process and the gradual-reintroduction of 'good' carbs is too much effort for me (and dangerous if ignored).
For the last four years, I've been nailed on 14st and this is what I do:
1. I Cycle and walk as much as possible. Moderate exercise is better, I think, for long-term weight management as you sustain less injuries and there's less strain on your immune system.
2. I do any exercise as early in the day as possible. For me, this is walking the kids to school (about 2.5 mile round trip), which I hope also influences them to walk more. I read once that this puts the body in active mode for about four hours, during which any physical act is augmented and I believe it. These first two things are the largest investment in terms of time and effort, so you have to enjoy them, but they only take you so far, so....
3. Keep to regimented mealtimes at approximately the same time every day and have them as early as possible. I eat breakfast at seven thirty, lunch between 11.30-12pm and dinner at 5-6pm. I eat a lot, because by the time these meals come around, I am peckish. I don't eat anything between meals, which means that by the time breakfast rolls around, I haven't eaten for 13-14 hours. The best part is, for most of that time, hopefully I'm asleep so I don't even notice. In fact, despite not eating for so long, I'm rarely very hungry in the morning. Obviously, when riding (or hiking), this rule is suspended. I also don't fret about it; if I have a boozy curry night, I don't care because it is irrelevant in the face of my normal everyday eating.
4. I brush my teeth about an hour after my dinner. This might be a personal thing, but in the early days it helped me remember not to graze in the evening (it's not really an issue now). I don't want the hassle of brushing them again, and I'm certainly not going to sleep with rotting food in my mouth, so it's a nice full-stop to the day's eating.
5. I have a large glass of water every morning and just before I go to bed. In my mind it helps to flush the system of impurities, but I've been told that this is bollocks. What it does do is give me a systematic way of keeping hydrated without really noticing and it also helped prevent hunger before bed in the early days of the process (again, it's not an issue now).
6. I don't fret at all about what I have or haven't done. If I haven't cycled for a bit, it's positive because the next time I do, the benefits will be greater per mile than if I was in top shape. I'll go a bit slower so I'll enjoy the scenery too. If I've pigged-out one day, so what? I just go back to the normal mealtimes the next day and it's like it never happened. I've watched some members of my family waste so much time dicking around with diets over the years; who needs that?
It took me about six weeks for this discipline to become easy. Society is already set up for you to keep to mealtimes, it's just that over the last thirty years or so (maybe longer in the US) we've added crappy snacks and patterned behaviour at point-of-sale. I'm extremely dubious about the weight-loss industry (including the consultants in the medical profession); if they were successful, their job would be gone so where's the incentive? If I were them, I'd prefer a general lifestyle where weight fluctuates and dieting is always required and guess what? That's exactly what happens. There's been an explosion of study, products, surgery and advice regarding 'diet' and it's resulted in the fattest populations in history. There are also a suspicious amount of studies and even hospital departments partially or wholly funded by food companies, which can't be a good thing.
I'd be amazed if my theoretical calorie intake was within the recommended daily limit, or anywhere near it, but these things I do are easy to maintain and seem to work for me. I suspect that the amounts I eat will gradually diminish as I grow older (and that glass of water before bed may have to shrink!), but it should be a natural process. I don't refer to my eating as a 'diet' or the process as 'weight loss'; I rarely weigh myself at all. The only things I notice are how difficult cycling climbs are and how tight my jerseys are and it's not been a problem for years.
There's no science behind any of this and I've no idea how it would work for really fat people, but I'm pretty confident that most people would benefit from it.
(Apologies for the writing; typed with Swype on a portable telephone!)
