I'm a little frustrated about my weight. Since April 13th I've only had 3 beers and by and large have eaten well 80 - 85% of the time and I've only lost 4 lbs and 1.5 % body fat. With all the calories I burn during training, combined with proper eating, I was expecting more of a weight loss. I figured if I didn't drink beer and stayed away from sugar and fried foods that I'd be down 8 - 10 lbs in a month.However, I will say that my body feels tighter, my pants are looser, and my heart rate is much lower resting and during exercise. I find that I'm constantly craving carbohydrates and my buddy Gord Brauer tells me that is one of the reasons I'm not losing weight. He says that eating carbs all the time is causing my body to release insulin and if I don't burn those carbs, then the insulin helps quickly stores them as fat. And because I'm eating all day long, I'm releasing insulin all day long and storing fat all day long. He suggested that I should be adding more protein and healthy fats to my diet and stop the late night snacking, which I'm going to start doing.
I did my biking speed work tonight. At first I thought my heart rate monitor was broken because my standing heart rate got down to 38 bpm as I was filling my water bottles. I always thought drinking beer helped improve my performance, but now I'm not so sure. I've never had such low heart rates when I was drinking beer.
Tonight my legs were exhausted, but not sore, and I would have loved to stay on the couch and not train. As I lightly pushed myself out the door it started "spitting" rain and getting cooler. It looked like this was going to be the first day I got my new bike wet and figured "it was going to happen sometime, I guess it will be today". But it didn't happen, I was lucky enough to finish my training before any real rain started.
I did two of the King hills as part of my intervals, about 12 minutes of straight climbing. I think I'm getting faster. By memory I think I used to go up them at about 6 kph and today it was 8 kph. I figured that's a 25% improvement. I went hard and left it all on the road. For the last 15 minutes of spinning back to my house my heart rate was mostly in the 130's and when I got home and started blogging I felt like I was mini "bonking". Those signs tell me my body is officially stressed from a good hard workout.
One positive is that my calf's were not as tight today. The big decision I have to make tomorrow is whether I do my running speed work session or make it a tempo run. One thing I do know is that this weeks training is a muscle and character builder.
Bike Speed Work - 1:13:34 / 36.47 km / 29.7 kph
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3 comments:
You'll notice a huge difference in hunger pangs and insulin/blood sugar spikes and drops if you up your protein intake (and add some fats too) and lower your carbs during the "sedentary" parts of your day. The idea is that by balancing your carbs with fats and protein, digestion is slowed down and your blood sugar stays steady, meaning no big releases of insulin (which make your blood sugar drop so much that you get the carb pangs to eat again to bring the blood sugar up, which then brings up your insulin again... it's a vicious cycle). Best carbs to eat of course are high fibre ones like fruits and veggies, not dense ones like white bread or rice/pasta.
Sounds awful I know, but here's the best part: you only lower your carbs in the hours between 2 hours after training until your next training session; i.e., during and up to 2 hours after training sessions -- especially long or intense ones -- eat lots of carbs! This is where you can feed the carb monster to great delight. The training primes your muscles to convert all those carbs into glycogen to refuel them, so this is the time to eat the pasta, rice, bread, sugary stuff.
Late night snacking is my nemesis too and I find it really hard not to go for salty stuff like chips after about 7pm. But if you can just have a handful of nuts instead, that's a lot better for you. Fat is neutral to blood sugar so will not affect insulin levels. The other thing I do is have some whey powder mixed with water right before bed, that seems to help me sleep better and is supposed to help rebuild your muscles better overnight.
This way of eating is similar to the Paleo Diet for Athletes approach (though they recommend avoiding dairy and such, which I don't really do), you can see a primer for it here: http://www2.trainingbible.com/pdf/Paleo_for_Athletes_Cliff_Notes.pdf
Try it out for a few weeks, see how it goes. It does mean a change to your routine if you're used to a bowl of cereal for breakfast and a bread-heavy sandwich for lunch. Snacks should also be balanced as much as you can, too. So an apple with a bit of low-fat cheese for example, or some yogurt.
Good luck!
Hi B
I am not an expert at all on nutrition, but what worked for me was the 60/20/20 principle. I've read the book from Mark Allen "Fit Body Fit Soul" and in one chapter they talk about nutrition. For our IM athletes you need 60% of your daily intake to be carbs, 20% protein and 20% fat. Remember that carbs & Protein calories need to be divided by 4 and fat by 9.
My daily intake was all mixed up and somedays my carbs would be more than 60% and some days my fat would be 30% without thinking that I ate wrong.
What worked for me is I started riding down all the foods I eat and after a month I had a good idea of what my 60/20/20 day should look like. If you ride everything down what you eat you would be surpirsed. By doing this I lost 5kgs or 11(lbs) just by following that principle in 2 months. If you read one of my previous post on my blog "little black book" it gives you some details.
sorry for the lenghty comment
Johan
More fat and protein! Cut WAY back on carbs unless you are working out or in the 1-2 hour post workout window.
If you add more fat and protein to your diet, you will not be as hungry. Try making some trail mix with almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews, and some minimal dried fruit/dark chocolate. Nuts are so filling and have lots of good fats and protein.
Try also making a rule that you cannot eat 2 hours before bed. This will help you in a couple of ways:
1. less calories when we tend to eat the most
2. A nice high dose of human growth hormone in your first sleep cycle of the night due to no insulin spike from food. This will help you lose weight and recover better from your workouts.
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