Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

After watching the BBC Horizon documentary, I bough the book by Brad Pilon, Eat Stop Eat and have been trialling the fasting method for the past 3 weeks.
So far have lost 4 kgs with no noticeable ill effects. I fast for 2 24hour periods per week and eat normally the other 5 days. I even ride to work on fasting days,
35km round trip without any problems. I'm interested in the views of any other cyclists who have tried this non-diet.

If this is working for you then that is fantastic - and well done.
IMO, I don't believe one needs to fast in order to lose weight.

As long as you are expending more energy than you are consuming then you will lose the weight....and obviously the larger the deficit the bigger or quicker the losses.
One could fast two days a week but eat too much (and/or the wrong foods) on the non-fast days and still not lose weight.

But at the end of the day, whatever works for you is what you should do....as long as it can become a long-term and sustainable way of eating.
Otherwise you risk putting it back on (and potentially more) when you resume a more normal way of eating.

Dave

do you feel any effects at work ie sleepy, lack of concentration on your fasting days? do you drink coffee and/or sugar on the fasting days??

What about eating again after fasting for that long?

The thought of fasting for 24 hour is making me hungry.

The reason I'm trying this is to develop a sustainable method of weight loss and fitness.
I started at 110kg and with cycling got down to 94kg where it stopped, the problem is I enjoy eating too much.
I feel fit but with the extra weight those hills never grow easier. The theory with fasting is that you eat normally
for 5 days and fast for two. You also need to do some resistance training during the week to improve lean body mass.
Before this I had never fasted in my life and was worried about headaches, fainting, dizzyness
and all that other stuff you hear about.
On fast days, you are allowed water, black tea/coffee, zero sugar soft drinks, anything but calories.
After trying this for 3 weeks, I have to say that hunger is overrated. I don't feel hungry anymore.
According to the book, eating constantly is a habit, and I believe it now.

My wife signed up to the Michelle Bridges eating and exercise program about 6 months ago. She suggested it would be easier if we both followed the eating plan, so I (grudgingly) agreed. I have always been reasonably fit and healthy, and but also felt that cycling, running, swimming etc would offset the occassional poor diet.

We haven't changed our diet much, but have reduced the amount of red meat, bread and processed foods we eat. However, the Michelle Bridges program has been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I have learnt that I CAN survive on smaller meal portions, and that vegetarian meals CAN be tasty. I have also learnt to measure portions and read the ingredients on food packaging. In the past 6 months I have lost almost 9 kgs (from 98 down to 89kgs) and my cholestrerol level has dropped to a healthy reading.

I don't think you need to resort to extreme diets to lose weight. For most people, it is simply about sensible eating.

roobab wrote:After watching the BBC Horizon documentary, I bough the book by Brad Pilon, Eat Stop Eat and have been trialling the fasting method for the past 3 weeks.
So far have lost 4 kgs with no noticeable ill effects. I fast for 2 24hour periods per week and eat normally the other 5 days. I even ride to work on fasting days,
35km round trip without any problems. I'm interested in the views of any other cyclists who have tried this non-diet.

I employed this about 12 months ago for a month or two and it worked great.
Except I fasted for about 16hours just twice a week and usually when I commuted (which was 25km each way)
Dropped to my target weight no problem and didn't feel too bad in the morning but the ride home was always a struggle.

I've put on about 5kg since then which is fine, but like most diets it's not really sustainable and not particularly enjoyable either. And of course you won't be improving your cycling much unless you're very very new to the sport.

the Michelle Bridges program has been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I have learnt that I CAN survive on smaller meal portions, and that vegetarian meals CAN be tasty. I have also learnt to measure portions and read the ingredients on food packaging

I did something similar, but I used the 'MyFitnessPal' app on my ipad.

Free app which is essentially a calorie counter and calculator of calories burned, but super easy to use (ie, eat a muesli bar, scan the barcode, and the app adds it to the list, or add stuff manually.... if you have the same breakfast everyday, you can enter it as a meal, open ipad, push 'breakfast' and done...)

Anyway, what was really interesting for me was where all the extra calories come from.... We eat very healthy at home, but I found it was one or two things each day that made a huge difference....

As one example, I had thai green curry one night with a small amount of rice...that was fine...afterwards we were walking around an had a coffee and a small pastry from starbucks (I mean, a tiny, biscuit sized pastry)......however, that one pastry had almost as many calories as my entire dinner......

I've since found it much easier to cut out only a few bits and pieces, plus smaller portions, plus keeping active.

Down 8kg in about 4 months

I do a similar thing for bodybuilding. When you starve yourself for 24hrs, HGH and Testosterone skyrocket when you start feeding again.

Fasting it good for the body and has it's benefits. No doubt about that. Of everything I've experimented with (and that is a hell of a lot over 15 years), I think the zone diet it the best and most sustainable. 40/30/30 (carbs/protein/fat). I've found the zone diet the easiest way to hover around single digit bodyfat levels all year round.

Keep it up... when you get bored, switch to a normal diet for a few months, then back to the intermittent fasting.

Sweeper59 wrote:My wife signed up to the Michelle Bridges eating and exercise program about 6 months ago. She suggested it would be easier if we both followed the eating plan, so I (grudgingly) agreed. I have always been reasonably fit and healthy, and but also felt that cycling, running, swimming etc would offset the occassional poor diet.

We haven't changed our diet much, but have reduced the amount of red meat, bread and processed foods we eat. However, the Michelle Bridges program has been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I have learnt that I CAN survive on smaller meal portions, and that vegetarian meals CAN be tasty. I have also learnt to measure portions and read the ingredients on food packaging. In the past 6 months I have lost almost 9 kgs (from 98 down to 89kgs) and my cholestrerol level has dropped to a healthy reading.

I don't think you need to resort to extreme diets to lose weight. For most people, it is simply about sensible eating.

Michelle Bridges plan is 1200 calories a day. You don't think thats extreme dieting?

So, AP81, you do body building and riding? Do the two complement each other?

durianrider wrote:

Sweeper59 wrote:My wife signed up to the Michelle Bridges eating and exercise program about 6 months ago. She suggested it would be easier if we both followed the eating plan, so I (grudgingly) agreed. I have always been reasonably fit and healthy, and but also felt that cycling, running, swimming etc would offset the occassional poor diet.

We haven't changed our diet much, but have reduced the amount of red meat, bread and processed foods we eat. However, the Michelle Bridges program has been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I have learnt that I CAN survive on smaller meal portions, and that vegetarian meals CAN be tasty. I have also learnt to measure portions and read the ingredients on food packaging. In the past 6 months I have lost almost 9 kgs (from 98 down to 89kgs) and my cholestrerol level has dropped to a healthy reading.

I don't think you need to resort to extreme diets to lose weight. For most people, it is simply about sensible eating.

Michelle Bridges plan is 1200 calories a day. You don't think thats extreme dieting?

My wife's program is 1200 cals a day. I was eating larger portions and consuming around 1800 cals a day. At 190cms, I'm feeling pretty good at 89 kgs, so I've simply adjusted the menu to maintain that weight.

AP81 wrote:I do a similar thing for bodybuilding. When you starve yourself for 24hrs, HGH and Testosterone skyrocket when you start feeding again.

Fasting it good for the body and has it's benefits. No doubt about that. Of everything I've experimented with (and that is a hell of a lot over 15 years), I think the zone diet it the best and most sustainable. 40/30/30 (carbs/protein/fat). I've found the zone diet the easiest way to hover around single digit bodyfat levels all year round.

Keep it up... when you get bored, switch to a normal diet for a few months, then back to the intermittent fasting.

IF is great; usually fast till 3pm, and have a window of around 6-8 hours before bed. If your workouts are AM I think its awesome.

roobab wrote:So, AP81, you do body building and riding? Do the two complement each other?

The short answer is no. My predominant exercising is weights 4-5 x week. I then got into cycling up to the point where I was doing 97km on Sat, 50k on Sun, and 50-70km spread over the week. Nothing compared to the distance a lot of you guys cover, but still was considered a lot for me.

What happened? I started losing a fair amount of muscle. Not so much because of the riding, but moreso because I struggled to eat enough calories to make up the calories burned. I would end up eating around 4500 calories on days I did big rides.

In the end I cut down the rides down to 50km max and focused on intensity rather than distance. These days I don't really ride much futher than 25km at a time.

If you're trying to put on bulk, regular endurance riding will always be a hinderance.

Sweeper59 wrote:

durianrider wrote:

Sweeper59 wrote:My wife signed up to the Michelle Bridges eating and exercise program about 6 months ago. She suggested it would be easier if we both followed the eating plan, so I (grudgingly) agreed. I have always been reasonably fit and healthy, and but also felt that cycling, running, swimming etc would offset the occassional poor diet.

We haven't changed our diet much, but have reduced the amount of red meat, bread and processed foods we eat. However, the Michelle Bridges program has been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I have learnt that I CAN survive on smaller meal portions, and that vegetarian meals CAN be tasty. I have also learnt to measure portions and read the ingredients on food packaging. In the past 6 months I have lost almost 9 kgs (from 98 down to 89kgs) and my cholestrerol level has dropped to a healthy reading.

I don't think you need to resort to extreme diets to lose weight. For most people, it is simply about sensible eating.

Michelle Bridges plan is 1200 calories a day. You don't think thats extreme dieting?

My wife's program is 1200 cals a day. I was eating larger portions and consuming around 1800 cals a day. At 190cms, I'm feeling pretty good at 89 kgs, so I've simply adjusted the menu to maintain that weight.

1800cals a day??? For an 89kg cyclist looking to get even fitter?? 1800cals a day is what the mayo clinic recommend for 8 year girls. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nutrit ... ds/NU00606

Im single digit body fat for the last 11 years because I always eat healthy. If you eat healthy, you can eat as much as you want and stay lean on very little training. Im not 18 anymore and I work 70hours a week behind a desk. I eat foods that keep you lean naturally. High carb, low fat, low protein, low sodium whole plant foods. My strava results and single digit body fat speak for emselves.

Seriously though bro, eat double that caloric amount otherwise you are just slowing down your metabolism and setting yourself up for some nasty junk food binging. I just did a youtube video about these guys that make a LOT of money promoting Intermittent Fasting. I had a video where they were eating a 7000calorie junk food meal EACH after fasting for a few hours lol! I won't post it here as it contains explicit language. Moral of the story: fad gimmick diets ALWAYS lead to junk food and weight gain in the end. Can't replace healthy balanced eating of nourishing foods.

durianrider wrote: 1800cals a day??? For an 89kg cyclist looking to get even fitter?? 1800cals a day is what the mayo clinic recommend for 8 year girls. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nutrit ... ds/NU00606

Im single digit body fat for the last 11 years because I always eat healthy. If you eat healthy, you can eat as much as you want and stay lean on very little training. Im not 18 anymore and I work 70hours a week behind a desk. I eat foods that keep you lean naturally. High carb, low fat, low protein, low sodium whole plant foods. My strava results and single digit body fat speak for emselves.

Seriously though bro, eat double that caloric amount otherwise you are just slowing down your metabolism and setting yourself up for some nasty junk food binging. I just did a youtube video about these guys that make a LOT of money promoting Intermittent Fasting. I had a video where they were eating a 7000calorie junk food meal EACH after fasting for a few hours lol! I won't post it here as it contains explicit language. Moral of the story: fad gimmick diets ALWAYS lead to junk food and weight gain in the end. Can't replace healthy balanced eating of nourishing foods.

Fasting is a proven method. It works well, and there is scientific backing which shows fasting has many benefits. It is sustainable as method of weight loss... probably not. Is it a fad? No. This method has been used for decades, unfortunately some people have tried to capitalise on the idea, but it isn't a fad.

Also 3600 calories? That is a lot. 2600 to 2800 would be more reasonable. We have no idea of the OP's current age or body fat levels, so telling him to double it is not a good idea.

1800 cals is perfectly fine for dropping fat, I'd bump the calories up after you come close to your desired bodyfat levels.

Week 5 and still going strong. Fasting days are quite easy now. No more hunger pangs.
I actually look forward to fasting. Must be something wrong with me?
Anyway down another 1 kg stabilized. I'm riding normally and have increased weights training to 2 half hour sessions a week.

roobab wrote:...I'm interested in the views of any other cyclists who have tried this non-diet.

In my case I love to eat big so I just find it easier to not eat a meal here or there so I can gorge when I want.

There is some established science behind fat burning benefit of short term fasting. If it works then go with it.

It is sustainable in a sense if you are still making those calories and nourishment at other times. I am yet to see a clear basis for 3 x 7 meals a week being the sole healthy eating regimen.

ColinOldnCranky wrote:

roobab wrote:...I'm interested in the views of any other cyclists who have tried this non-diet.

In my case I love to eat big so I just find it easier to not eat a meal here or there so I can gorge when I want.

There is some established science behind fat burning benefit of short term fasting. If it works then go with it.

It is sustainable in a sense if you are still making those calories and nourishment at other times. I am yet to see a clear basis for 3 x 7 meals a week being the sole healthy eating regimen.

Colin speaks the truth...

The whole "6 meals a day speeds metabolism" is a myth. It came about by an article published in 1997 by the British Journal of Nutrition (called Meal frequency and energy balance). If has been proven a myth by multiple studies done since then.

If any trainer or nutritionist ever tells you to eat six small meals to speed up your metabolism, laugh at them an walk away. As long as your calorie intake is similar day to day, pick a meal amount that suits you.

Hello,

To start off, my names Billy and im 16 years old. At the start of the year, I weighed 107kg's, and was 165cm tall. I was really unfit, feeling exhausted after riding 2k's. I Since then, I rode to and from school everyday, starting off taking the most direct route, 3km's approx, and have since increased it to 5-10kms with a less direct option. I now weigh 70kg's, an I am 171cms tall. I feel like I have lots more energy than I ever have. I still continue to ride to school, and have now moved house, convincing the parents to move 10kms further away from my school, just to enjoy the ride everyday. I ride the Lilydale -> Waburton trail, 40km each way, every saturday religously, and now refuse to use public transport; instead, i just pedal.

My goal is to drop down to 65kg's, and lose my belly fat by 3/2/2013 (first day at a new school). I will make this happen; but as they say, the last 5 kilo's are always the hardest to lose.

Is anyone one on here a dietician, personal trainer, or have enough experience to suggest what i should be doing in terms of riding/excercising to lose my stomach fat? ie, what i should be eating, meals, snacks, ect. Im not looking to "bulk up" just to basically slim down, and get into shape for next year.

my basic daily food is pritty boring..

Breakfast - oats/porridge, a banana and sometime Activia yoghurt.
Snack 1 - piece of fruit, mixed nuts and dried fruit
Lunch - can of tuna, small portion of salad
Snack 2 - Piece of fruit or Activia yoghurt
Dinner - Steamed veggies (corn, carrot, broccili) or salad (lettuce,tomato,cucmber,feta cheese) and either chicken breast, or a steak (lamb)
Desert - fruit or activia youghurt (What ever i didnt have a snack 2).

I also drink a load of green tea, Ive been having a cheat meal, once a week at lunchtime, just to keep my diet half interesting, which is apparently reconmended, not mcdonalds or anything, just more carbs than i would normaly have ie pasta, burger with grilled chicken and mayo ect.

i know bmi's are partly bullsh@t, but i went from a bmiof 39.3, severly obese, to a healthy bmi of 23.9. pritty rad

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. I have a gym membership, but find it really challenging to do anything there, (lack of motivation) instead i just ride somewhere; should i be using light weights and working on cardio exercises?

Thanks again,
Billy

Billy, drinking loads of caffeine aka green tea at any age let alone during your teenage years ISNT the healthy thing to do.

Congrats on the weight loss but remember anyone can lose weight easily BUT keeping it off and staying fit and healthy for life is the real deal we want to be focusing on.

Look at long lived lean slim healthy cultures. They didnt fast, they didnt starve. They ate high carb low fat low protein whole foods like rice, corn, fruits, vegetables.

Anyone that needs to cut calories is simply just eating the wrong things. Eating the wrong things and eating less of them will lose one weight BUT its never really sustainable. Ive seen super ripped fitness models put on 30-40kg of body fat in 2 years. They never had a sustainable plan to begin with. Ive done a lot of youtube vids on this subject as its one that comes up regularly at my work.

durianrider wrote:Eating the wrong things and eating less of them will lose one weight BUT its never really sustainable.

Yet I have done that over a long term. To all appearances I remain fit, strong, healthy with good vital signs.

Be very wary of confirmation bias. And especially be wary of attributing the good or bad attributes of any society or individual on one or two things of your choice. If I did the same then I would be telling you to gorge on big helpings of fat and sugary food, drink too much coffee and strong tea, eat nice sugary vanilla slices (yummmm), lotsa meat - the redder the better, never leave any wine in the bottle for the second sitting, breakfast of a muffin and coffee, work thru lunch, etc.

Oh, if only the world was that simple.

I am not advocating that the way to healthy life is to eat what I eat. I eat badly.

I tend to drink the decaf version as often as i can, aswell as macha green tea, which is decaf, and extremely potent. i use 1/4 of a teaspoon withy boiling water. it has 4 times the antioxidants as regular green tea

Week 8 and still going, this stuff is just like giving up smoking. So much extra time on fasting days, the garden work is getting done !!

roobab wrote:Week 8 and still going, this stuff is just like giving up smoking. So much extra time
on fasting days, the garden work is getting done !!

So how many years can you live like this ?

The key measure of the success of any diet is whether you can sustain the effort in the long run - hopefully for the
four score and ten years you'd like to live.

The pitfall of many crash diets is that eventually if and when you reach your goal weight, you have to work out how
to transition to a balanced diet. Your previous weight (110kg) is probably solid evidence that you hadn't been
able to do that before. And the crash diet doesn't teach you how to do that.

So how are you going to do it for the rest of your life once you reach goal weight ?

While you are happy about the extra time you've got on fasting days, there can be down-sides; take a look at
the rise in traffic accidents in Islamic countries during Ramadan. It's a different type of fasting, but how would you
know whether Pilon's recipe doesn't have the same pitfall (could be literally, a crash diet) ?

FWIW, like many diet plans, Brad Pilon's work is not peer-reviewed research. While he touts an academic qualification
in nutrition, he claims

During my time in the industry part of my responsibilities included traveling the world learning about
potential cures for obesity (weight loss supplements are big money, so the first company to come
out with a new ingredient that actually worked would be making billions).

From China, Germany, Scotland, England and all over North America, I have had the privilege of
meeting some of the world’s greatest minds in nutrition and weight loss.

Not only have I been lucky enough to travel the world but I have also had unlimited access to
state of the art exercise physiology equipment, the kind of equipment that would make
many University laboratories green with envy.

With this equipment I was able to conduct multiple body composition tests on numerous
athletes and top level bodybuilders and monitor them while they dieted and tried new experimental
weight loss programs.

This was cutting edge science performed on people losing UNBELIEVABLE amounts of weight
while getting incredibly lean

In fact, it was these experiments that ultimately led me to leave the industry and pursue
graduate studies in human biology and nutritional sciences.

Many of the experiments I conducted had results that were VERY different from what I expected,
and I soon realized that if I were to truly understand nutrition’s role in weight loss, then I
would have to start from the very beginning and study what happens to the body when
it goes without ANY food.

Believe it or not, Eat Stop Eat is actually all the research from the scientific reviews I
completed in graduate school on the benefits of fasting for weight loss and for health.

Cutting edge science So you don't need to go to university
and do careful research for years, you just have to travel the world and meet some
unspecified "greatest minds", get some equipment that is somehow vastly superior to t
hat possessed by those poor university chaps, and somehow the right answers will just
magically rub off onto you, and you'll become the expert everyone should follow.

No one should ask why we shouldn't just listen to those greatest minds instead, or why
they couldn't get that vastly superior gear and show us the way. And he's not about to
name them lest we're tempted to try that path instead of buying his book.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but that's the greatest load of twaddle I've read for quite
a while. Until he publishes his work in a form where the experiments and methodologies are
clearly documented in ways that other well respected researchers with recognizable names
can examine, and repeat his experiments with the same results, it has very little merit.
It is not cutting edge science, it is pure unadulterated bunkum.

If he didn't think it worth the effort of properly conducting research and publishing it, then
why should anyone else believe it to be the magic bullet ?

But don't give up on the diet roobab. Whilever it appears to be working for you, you ought
to stick with it. There is plenty of evidence that people do lose weight on crash diets, and
that is a good thing. Just be mindful of the challenge of keeping it off.

Cheers

For those who like to listen to self-proclaimed gurus have a read of Wombats concise critique and appreciate the proper use of scepticism. Scepticismis where you SHOULD start. Being sceptical is not negative, it is simply demanding persuasive data. Especially before challenging established and tested science.

And unsourced self-proclamation is not data. Nor is circular confirmation which the internet is great at throwing up and can be difficult to filter out. Ditto appearances on the 6:30 report or Today Tonight or lot's of youtube presentations.

If the pedlars of wonder-diets and similar can't (let's be charitable and say "choose not to") put a dent in your initial scepticism with good data then they are not worth listening to.

+1 Wombat.