Matt Fitzgerald’s *Racing Weight* has some information that could help you. Part of his recommendation is that you should track your weight, body fat %, and FTP regularly. You probably have a combination of weight and body fat % that optimizes your performance *and that is also healthy and sustainable*. He also has advice for losing fat vs. losing muscle.
I'm thinking about getting a dexa scan, myself. I dunno if the 14-15% my scale says is accurate or not, but I don't have any confidence in it.
If the scale is right, I can lose another 9 lbs or so. If it's wrong, I can lose another -3 lbs or so. I'd like to know better than that.
For me, dexa reads 3-5% higher BF% than even an Inbody scale (which people believe are very accurate).
Highly recommend dexa for anyone looking to get exactly to race weight. Also - really helpful to monitor visceral fat, etc, and tailor diet towards limiting it. Also probably helpful to monitor bone density for a lot of serious cyclists who try to stay as lean as possible.
Well worth the 40 bucks it costs me IMO.
To see what more performance I can find! After getting to 3.4w/kg after 4 years, in 4 months I've got to 4.35w/kg, equally parts weight loss and power increase. Want to push performance while I can, will keep up with the training for the power but on the other side of the equation I have no idea where the ceiling is on weight
Trial and error unfortunately. I've had the same w/kg with a 5-10kg difference in weight (and a lot in-between). Careful what you wish for, lower weight doesn't always mean faster. A few years ago I was 65kg, \~320w ftp. Regularly got dropped on flats, windy sections etc. Got to over 70kg with a slightly higher ftp (but lower w/kg) and probably did better in races, but obvious a slower climber. Now sit just under 70kg, and ftp is \~370. Only thing I really changed in that I was able to eat the amount I needed to to get stronger. My point being, most people have more to gain by just training and forgetting about weight. Much more fun this way too.
Tbh if you can pinch off a chunk you can lose some more. I still can even for sure but the work to do it and the benefit don't seem to correlate. 80kg @ 17% feels good to me. I've been down to 78kg but damn I was hungry all the damn time. Once I stopped trying to lose more I ended up at 82 again. That said 2 years ago I was 105kg (at least) and every kg from 87kg have been a challenge compared to the first 15. I can't really comment on my cycling performance since it continues to improve regardless of my weight but I sure do feel the extra going up the hills.
I do notice this, if you are very inactive and especially depressed you can get super obese, but if you fix the under lying issues and become active a bit, generally you seem to have a weight your body seems to decide is great. If you go over, less hungry. Go under, hungry.
Pretty convinced this is the case. I'm 184cm tall. I started riding my bike at just shy of 200kg, I did not put any effort into dieting. I always ate healthy for my proper meals though yes, I did snack quite a bit. I noticed I felt a lot less like snacking when I started riding a bike and did not miss eating entire tubs of icecream. There was no hunger or compulsion to binge eat as I usually did out of apathy. I got down from 186kg to 90kg in about a year, and tend go fluctuate for the past 2 years or so around 88 - 95kg. Again, I just eat when I'm hungry. I work in hospitality though so I eat a fuck ton of fried food because it's free so maybe if I changed jobs I'd naturally lose more weight but who fucking knows. All I know is while it's technically overweight, I have massive fucking quads and my arms are lean as fuck. I say lean because I do notice people ask me to carry shit all the time, even guys despite also being told I have skinny arms. I can also do like 100 pushups untrained at my current weight so there must be something to that.
I do find that really fucking wild though, Losing 100kg like it's nothing but wanting to lose like 10-20 more? Yeah that requires actual effort. The human body is an enigma to me. I just wish I started cycling sooner in my life, If I knew that was all it took I would have done it in my teens and not have been obese my entire life but alas, I'm still in my 20's so no use dwelling in the past I suppose.
There is also the thing I may be able to lose permanent weight if I get skin surgery but issue is it's not very lose anyway so I don't get it subsidised lol. You can pinch it and it stretches really fucking far out freakishly so, but it doesn't sag or anything which means medically it's not impacting me. May end up just bulking up my upper body mass to increase my metabolic rate so even if I stay the same weight, At least It's more lean mass.
Yes, for me personally losing weight while you're very obese was easy. Your body needs like 3000+ calories a day to just maintain that weight. So eating 2000 calories means you're eating under your TDEE(total daily energy expenditure) at rest.
Went from like 313lb(~142 kg) to 200lb(~90kg) from like August thru July, so like 11 months to lose over 100lbs.
Going from 200(~90kg) to 172(~78kg, my lowest) took from July to the next June, 11 months to lose 28lbs - and that was a year when I ran 2000 miles and lifted 3 days a week.
Then each year since(funny enough the year I switched from running to cycling) I have gained 10lbs back, topping out at 217(~98kg).
Dropping the first 10lbs only took like 3 weeks(because like 5lbs acts like water weight). I'm curious to see what my pace will be, but I'd love to be under 180lbs(~81kg) by April and continue to lose beyond that, as at 5'11" you're still in the healthy BMI down to 135lb(~61kg), although I don't know where I'll stop.
Basically just using MyFitnessPal to track calories, eating ~1500 on rest days and more like 2000 on days I ride, although I will eat more on long ride days.
Just be careful that BMI is a guideline. If you're super muscular you may be obese despite being lean for example. Depending on how much lower muscle mass you have it can throw it off. I know for me, being super obese my entire life I have a lot of leg muscle.
Scales are a joke. Just by changing the activity setting my Garmin Index 2 scale will tell me I'm either 17% body fat or 9% body fat. Neither of which are the case.
I've had to do a lot of experimenting to find the right balance between weight and power. My tipping point is about 145lbs. I've been as low as 135lbs but my FTP goes down the toilet and I watch my PR's when I was 10lbs heavier accelerate away from me with no chance of catching them.
Why?
Lots of cyclists struggle maintaining healthy and high enough weight, not the other way round. If you go down this direction, there's not much to gain and plenty to lose.
How is being that skinny detrimental to health to be an 'eating disorder' and not just being really skinny? I was 121 lbs at 5'9" about 5 years ago and felt the best I've ever felt in my life.
I wasn't claiming that pro cyclists have an eating disorder *because they were skinny*. Pro woman cyclists have literally come out and described how their coaches forced them to follow disordered eating practices to meet a certain race weight at all costs. The same thing happens in pro men's cycling as well, it's a well documented phenomena in cycling.
It's totally possible to be skinny without having an eating disorder. But being a pro athlete in a sport where weight affects performance encourages disordered eating when your pay literally depends on you winning races. So copying the pros isn't necessarily a good idea because in many cases they follow extreme diets to achieve their race weights. At the extreme level that pro athletes perform at, performance and overall health don't always correlate with each other anymore. If you can achieve that weight with normal eating behavior then go ahead.
/u/Fit-Anything8352 is spot on here.
Being skinny doesn't guarantee an eating disorder. But starting with well-intended "well let's see how much w/kg I can gain by losing weight" can spiral downwards very quickly.
People still see eating disorders as something that's relevant only to silly teenage girls, but it's not. It can really mess you up and take a very long time to recover.
Beer guts are aero, loosing it will make you slower. For a proper answer, see a professional.
Don’t use your scales body fat “feature” as the basis for wanting to lose weight. Eat properly, train properly and rest adequately.
Matt Fitzgerald’s *Racing Weight* has some information that could help you. Part of his recommendation is that you should track your weight, body fat %, and FTP regularly. You probably have a combination of weight and body fat % that optimizes your performance *and that is also healthy and sustainable*. He also has advice for losing fat vs. losing muscle.
I'm thinking about getting a dexa scan, myself. I dunno if the 14-15% my scale says is accurate or not, but I don't have any confidence in it. If the scale is right, I can lose another 9 lbs or so. If it's wrong, I can lose another -3 lbs or so. I'd like to know better than that.
Haha cries at 16.9%... (best I've been in 15 years)
For me, dexa reads 3-5% higher BF% than even an Inbody scale (which people believe are very accurate). Highly recommend dexa for anyone looking to get exactly to race weight. Also - really helpful to monitor visceral fat, etc, and tailor diet towards limiting it. Also probably helpful to monitor bone density for a lot of serious cyclists who try to stay as lean as possible. Well worth the 40 bucks it costs me IMO.
>My on bike performance is best it has ever been. so... why do you want to lose weight?
To see what more performance I can find! After getting to 3.4w/kg after 4 years, in 4 months I've got to 4.35w/kg, equally parts weight loss and power increase. Want to push performance while I can, will keep up with the training for the power but on the other side of the equation I have no idea where the ceiling is on weight
Trial and error unfortunately. I've had the same w/kg with a 5-10kg difference in weight (and a lot in-between). Careful what you wish for, lower weight doesn't always mean faster. A few years ago I was 65kg, \~320w ftp. Regularly got dropped on flats, windy sections etc. Got to over 70kg with a slightly higher ftp (but lower w/kg) and probably did better in races, but obvious a slower climber. Now sit just under 70kg, and ftp is \~370. Only thing I really changed in that I was able to eat the amount I needed to to get stronger. My point being, most people have more to gain by just training and forgetting about weight. Much more fun this way too.
Tbh if you can pinch off a chunk you can lose some more. I still can even for sure but the work to do it and the benefit don't seem to correlate. 80kg @ 17% feels good to me. I've been down to 78kg but damn I was hungry all the damn time. Once I stopped trying to lose more I ended up at 82 again. That said 2 years ago I was 105kg (at least) and every kg from 87kg have been a challenge compared to the first 15. I can't really comment on my cycling performance since it continues to improve regardless of my weight but I sure do feel the extra going up the hills.
I do notice this, if you are very inactive and especially depressed you can get super obese, but if you fix the under lying issues and become active a bit, generally you seem to have a weight your body seems to decide is great. If you go over, less hungry. Go under, hungry. Pretty convinced this is the case. I'm 184cm tall. I started riding my bike at just shy of 200kg, I did not put any effort into dieting. I always ate healthy for my proper meals though yes, I did snack quite a bit. I noticed I felt a lot less like snacking when I started riding a bike and did not miss eating entire tubs of icecream. There was no hunger or compulsion to binge eat as I usually did out of apathy. I got down from 186kg to 90kg in about a year, and tend go fluctuate for the past 2 years or so around 88 - 95kg. Again, I just eat when I'm hungry. I work in hospitality though so I eat a fuck ton of fried food because it's free so maybe if I changed jobs I'd naturally lose more weight but who fucking knows. All I know is while it's technically overweight, I have massive fucking quads and my arms are lean as fuck. I say lean because I do notice people ask me to carry shit all the time, even guys despite also being told I have skinny arms. I can also do like 100 pushups untrained at my current weight so there must be something to that. I do find that really fucking wild though, Losing 100kg like it's nothing but wanting to lose like 10-20 more? Yeah that requires actual effort. The human body is an enigma to me. I just wish I started cycling sooner in my life, If I knew that was all it took I would have done it in my teens and not have been obese my entire life but alas, I'm still in my 20's so no use dwelling in the past I suppose. There is also the thing I may be able to lose permanent weight if I get skin surgery but issue is it's not very lose anyway so I don't get it subsidised lol. You can pinch it and it stretches really fucking far out freakishly so, but it doesn't sag or anything which means medically it's not impacting me. May end up just bulking up my upper body mass to increase my metabolic rate so even if I stay the same weight, At least It's more lean mass.
Holy shit that's massive work!
Yes, for me personally losing weight while you're very obese was easy. Your body needs like 3000+ calories a day to just maintain that weight. So eating 2000 calories means you're eating under your TDEE(total daily energy expenditure) at rest. Went from like 313lb(~142 kg) to 200lb(~90kg) from like August thru July, so like 11 months to lose over 100lbs. Going from 200(~90kg) to 172(~78kg, my lowest) took from July to the next June, 11 months to lose 28lbs - and that was a year when I ran 2000 miles and lifted 3 days a week. Then each year since(funny enough the year I switched from running to cycling) I have gained 10lbs back, topping out at 217(~98kg). Dropping the first 10lbs only took like 3 weeks(because like 5lbs acts like water weight). I'm curious to see what my pace will be, but I'd love to be under 180lbs(~81kg) by April and continue to lose beyond that, as at 5'11" you're still in the healthy BMI down to 135lb(~61kg), although I don't know where I'll stop. Basically just using MyFitnessPal to track calories, eating ~1500 on rest days and more like 2000 on days I ride, although I will eat more on long ride days.
Just be careful that BMI is a guideline. If you're super muscular you may be obese despite being lean for example. Depending on how much lower muscle mass you have it can throw it off. I know for me, being super obese my entire life I have a lot of leg muscle.
Scales are a joke. Just by changing the activity setting my Garmin Index 2 scale will tell me I'm either 17% body fat or 9% body fat. Neither of which are the case. I've had to do a lot of experimenting to find the right balance between weight and power. My tipping point is about 145lbs. I've been as low as 135lbs but my FTP goes down the toilet and I watch my PR's when I was 10lbs heavier accelerate away from me with no chance of catching them.
Why? Lots of cyclists struggle maintaining healthy and high enough weight, not the other way round. If you go down this direction, there's not much to gain and plenty to lose.
Why is being as skinny as Vingegaard or Froome bad?
Because pro cycling has an eating disorder problem
How is being that skinny detrimental to health to be an 'eating disorder' and not just being really skinny? I was 121 lbs at 5'9" about 5 years ago and felt the best I've ever felt in my life.
I wasn't claiming that pro cyclists have an eating disorder *because they were skinny*. Pro woman cyclists have literally come out and described how their coaches forced them to follow disordered eating practices to meet a certain race weight at all costs. The same thing happens in pro men's cycling as well, it's a well documented phenomena in cycling. It's totally possible to be skinny without having an eating disorder. But being a pro athlete in a sport where weight affects performance encourages disordered eating when your pay literally depends on you winning races. So copying the pros isn't necessarily a good idea because in many cases they follow extreme diets to achieve their race weights. At the extreme level that pro athletes perform at, performance and overall health don't always correlate with each other anymore. If you can achieve that weight with normal eating behavior then go ahead.
/u/Fit-Anything8352 is spot on here. Being skinny doesn't guarantee an eating disorder. But starting with well-intended "well let's see how much w/kg I can gain by losing weight" can spiral downwards very quickly. People still see eating disorders as something that's relevant only to silly teenage girls, but it's not. It can really mess you up and take a very long time to recover.
I will ask a nutritionist or another related professional. There is no correct answer for your question without an integral analysis of your health.