The new exercise plan

After realising my metabolism was shot to hell by attempting to eat too little and exercise too much I've made a few changes this week to get things back on track. I can't describe the frustration of eating half what I used to while exercising more and still be only maintaining my weight.

One of the most interesting things I've come to grips with recently is that exercising to "burn calories" is kind of a mistake, and on a low calorie diet will really only help your body go into starvation mode. Part of finding the right balance between creating a calorie deficit but keeping my metabolic rate fairly high is to keep exercise sessions short & hard. Doing this has several benefits:

• I create the right hormonal balance so my body "wants" to shed fat
• High intensity training has been proven to raise metabolism for much longer periods afterwards than long duration lower intensity exercise which really only burns calories while you're doing it
• I'm forcing my muscles to constantly adapt to new things like bigger weights or going faster so the calories I take in go towards retaining and/or growing muscle rather than being stored as fat.
• Lean body mass requires a lot more calories than fat does even at rest, so the more muscle you have the more you can eat without getting fat.
• It's a lot easier to get motivated when you know you've only got 30 mins or so ahead of you rather than hours

I think I've adapted all I'm going to on the mountain bike so I've cut those sessions back to just my two social rides on Wednesday nights and Sundays and I now regard them as "recreational activities" rather than exercise. However, they do still require a fair bit of energy so I've scheduled the rest of my exercise program around that.

Mon PM - Gym (45 - 60 mins)
Tue PM - Gym (45 - 60 mins)
Wed AM - HIIT road bike (30 mins); Wed PM Social MTB ride (1.5 hrs)
Thurs PM - Gym (45 - 60 mins)
Fri AM - HIIT road bike (30 mins)
Sat AM - HIIT road bike (30 mins) followed by an optional 1 - 2 hrs of low intensity riding (I've got a really cool bike path and waterfront circuit I love doing)
Sun PM - Social MTB ride (1.5 - 2 hrs)

One unfortunate aspect is I have two gym sessions two days in a row rather than alternating cardio with gym as I'd prefer, but I'm ok with that because I'm generally far more motivated to do weights earlier in the week than I am later so it actually works out well for me.

I did my first HIIT session on the new road bike this morning and was pleased to finish with a neat 29.0 km/hr average. Not bad for my first road ride in ages, and on a single speed bike too! My usual average times on the old slicked up hybrid were around the 27 km/hr mark. I am getting bad aches in my feet & back though so I think the frame size of the new bike might be a little small for me but I'll fiddle around a bit with seat height and so on to see if I can sort it out.

Diet wise I've deliberately cranked the calories up this week to sort out my crashed metabolism so I won't be too surprised or concerned if I go up one or two kgs next weigh-in. However, next week I will be watching portion sizes more closely, especially during the week.

I've been reading Tom Venuto's website at http://www.rippednaturally.com/ with great interest lately and note he enters his "cutting phase" with a diet consisting of roughly "80 grams of protein, 50 grams of carbs, 20 grams of fat" 7 times per day. Now, he reckons that comes to about 4000 calories a day but if you consider 80 grams of protein is about half a chicken breast (around 140 calories) and 50 grams of carbs is roughly 2 slices of wholegrain bread (125 calories), and let's call the 20 grams of fat avocado (32 calories). Multiply all of that by 7 and you get a tad over 2000 calories. No wonder I was thinking those portions were a little on the small side... Still, it's a good rule of thumb and very similar to the meal plan I've adopted. (I'm also working on 2000 calories a day for weight loss with a bias towards protein and putting most of my carbs earlier in the day).

Tom also says "I'm not that big of a guy, I only weigh about 175 pounds at 5 foot 11 inches tall".
175 pounds = 80kgs. I'm the same height and estimate my lean body mass to be around 90 kgs give or take 5 kgs so I might actually have to eat a bit more than Tom did to avoid crashing my metabolism. However, I won't know for sure how accurate I am with that estimate until I start approaching that weight but I should be fairly close going by my caliper readings, but if Im wrong and end up needing to go right down to 80 I'm ok with that. I'd be more than happy to have a physique even half as good as Tom's and I definitely wouldn't mind weighing in around the 80kg mark for my cycling. I'd be uncatchable on the hills then!