When it comes to weight and body dysmorphia, we cyclists can go toe-to-toe with any thirteen year old tween who has done their time flipping through the pages of Vogue and Sixteen. However fit and thin we might be, at some point it dawns on us that we’re not as light as we could be. The obvious solution is to buy lighter parts for our bikes, but eventually we will run out of parts to buy or money to spend. At that point, we’ll have no alternative but to start losing weight.
On the surface, this is a fairly simple matter; calories in minus calories out is the magic to any weight loss voodoo, right up to the point where it stops working because the “calories in” part deviates from our lifestyle or our metabolism decides we’re old and that since everything else is slowing down, it should too.
It is at this juncture that we ask ourselves how we can lose those kilos that seem unwilling to melt from our bodies. The answer varies depending on your lifestyle, body type, how loud your Awesome is, and your ideal riding weight. (By the way, similarly to the number of bikes to own, your ideal riding weight is one kilo less than your current weight, or weight ideal = weight current – 1). But assuming that you enjoy eating, alcohol, or anything else that doesn’t suck, it will require doing something drastic.
My journey through weight loss started with doing everything the same but riding more until that program stalled, and then I started doing sit-ups and leg lifts, both of which meet the aforementioned suck requirement. And then I cut back on beer and wine, which sucks even more, but that’s when things really started happening. A surprising side-effect of cutting down on booze, by the way, is that although you get less charismatic, you feel better in general and sleep better in addition to losing weight. It turns out that alcohol is a poison or something. Who knew?
But now that my V-Jersey isn’t stretched like a balloon on a pumpkin, I’ve moved on to worrying about my upper body, which is bigger than a typical cyclist’s thanks to 15 or so years of nordic ski racing. Which brings me to Ullrich’s sleeves. I have always had it in my mind that Jan and I are of similar physique, aside from the quads and calves and the devilishly good looks. But my stupid sleeves are always tight, and his were always loose. I take off my jersey, and sure enough, there’s that little mark that the sleeves made on each of my arms. Infuriating. The only solution is to focus completely on wasting my upper body into nothing.
Since I’m not doing anything outrageous like routinely lifting weighty objects or doing pushups, the only conclusion I can draw is that I’m carrying too many groceries into the house at once. I’ve therefor moved to a strict regimen of only carrying one gallon of milk at a time. It takes twice as long to unload the car that way, but all that walking is good for my cardio, you just have to push through the pain. I also alternate hands every few strides if I’ve parked more than a hundred meters from the house in order to avoid becoming lopsided.
Finally, if this latest program doesn’t work out as well as I expect it to, I’ve also realized that while carbohydrates are an athlete’s friend in terms of providing easy energy to burn during a workout, they are heavy on the fork, and repetitively lifting forkloads of pasta into my mouth may be what’s causing my shoulders to bulk up unnecessarily. I’m therefor on the lookout for a healthy food source that can be drank from a straw or something in pellet form that I can peck out of a bowl.
It’s drastic, sure, but drastic times call for drastic measures, and I’m determined to get there eventually.
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@Oli
I agree with you. Things that he has done off of the bike are probably far more significant (from a social perspective) than what he did on the bike. His recovery from cancer to return to racing at any level probably outweighs any race victories no matter how big the race.
My own take is that he is giving up because continuing to fight this would hurt more than just Lance Armstrong. I fully believe that if he was the only other dog in the fight then a different decision would have been reached.
@the Engine Wow, I wish I'd thought of this exquisitely apposite quote. I'm going to use it unashamedly though...
@Oli
Yeah - I had a post ride Leffe Bruin and it just came to me.
I thought that "The evil that men do lives after them;/The good is oft interred with their bones;" caught the spirit of what you were saying.
@frank Broad strokes. When things are going well for everyone, it is easier to believe things that are too good to be true. When the shit hits the fan, people tend to look inward to examine their own opinions and responses to things that were going on at the time. The articles I've read over the last 2 days have been doing a lot of that, and the Cyclismas article (on a site that has "satire" in it's banner and is written by the UCI overlord) may have it's tongue somewhere in the vicinity of it's cheek.
But like the best satire, it keeps close to reality:
(snipped from site)
There are hundreds, if not thousands of lives that have been affected negatively by the Armstrong era - those who were harmed by the maniacal pursuit of cycling monetary gain at any cost or by any means. I can think of vast swaths of people - the ones who actually performed the jobs and did the volunteer work to give the sport its backbone at the grassroots level all over the world - who, over the past twenty years, have walked away with a sour taste because of what happened in that era. This is the reason why McQuaid has had to force his globalisation efforts around the world, as he stated in interviews this year, complaining of a lack of volunteers at European races. The sour taste of a tainted Armstrong era turned them off the sport they loved. Maybe through USADA's actions, we'll begin to bring them back.
As you can see, the circumstances aren't about Armstrong, in spite of what he wants you to believe, and they certainly are not about the jerseys. Armstrong is merely a symptom of the era, and a necessary exercise in order for us to finally begin to close a chapter of excess and a lack of regulation. We need the regulation. We need the oversight. We need checks and balances. Without these circumstances, we couldn't return the sport to its central theme. We need someone to stand up and say it's time we unite to bring all the elements of cycling together equally to continue to promote our sport in a healthy and sustainable manner. (end snip)
All in all, seems like he gave a great deal "to cycling" and he loves it. This is still cool.
lancearmstrong.com is a humanizing website
For me the whole Armstrong this saddens me in so many ways.....
The sport again gets dragged down in the public opinion, tainting a sport I love, rather than celebrating and embracing the fact that the tour this year has been won by a clean ridder and that teams like Sky and Garmin are leading the way in riding clean. Again we focus on the negative of the past rather than the positive of the future.
I am saddened because i have such happy memories of sitting on the couch with my father in awe as Lance attacked in the mountains. Today I feel those memories have lost a bit of the shine they once had......
I hope this will be the end of it, and we can put this sad era behind us and move on, otherwise what's next are they going to go after Merckx, Simpson etc. Time to let sleeping dogs lie.
My formative teenage years was during this period and therefore was inspired into the sport by abunch of dopers! I'm not sure what that says about me but I'm glad that they did inspire me otherwise I wouldn't be having so much enjoyment today.
Oops don't know how "cycling" became "teenage".......I'm not that young.
@the Engine
Indeed... this one works quite well too - I dragged it up for a young friend (appropriately named Daniel) who has been worshipping Armstrong for years. He probably doesn't understand feet of clay anyway, but whatever...
Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33)