Talk about Making it Happen, Paul Prosser writes about how riding his bike and a healthy diet enabled him to lose 35 pounds (along with his belly and excess fat), to get to a healthy 22.1 BMI.

Riding to Lose

by Paul Prosser

In February, after an adult conversation with my wife Susan, I started thinking real hard about my body and how I viewed it.  My 55^th birthday was approaching fast and I was thinking, “An over-burdened 6’-1” frame with an ample and sagging front porch is not the architecture of longevity.”

So I took stock.  Emotional eating is my number one problem.  I eat when I’m happy, stressed, depressed or angry.  Every emotion had a food as a compliment or comfort.  Portion control was my second big issue.  Too much of a good thing quickly becomes a bad thing.  Number three was too many fatty and carb-heavy foods, two few fruits and vegetables.  Number four was eating too fast for my body to recognize it was full.

Somewhere I read that savoring every bite of food, letting it linger in your mouth as you chew it slowly, helps your body send the appropriate “fullness” signals to your brain.  So I tried that and the additional suggestion that you should think about the source of the food, the people who helped produce or cook it while savoring.  I know this sounds crazy but thinking about the people and the process led me to appreciate the fact that, unlike many, I wasn’t risking hunger every day.  Savoring and appreciating food made eating much more enjoyable.

Calmness slowly became the emotion I associated with food because I was full with less food and, I took the time to enjoy it.  And, I decided that if food was in my mouth longer, it had better be flavorful and healthy.  Since Susan and I are pretty handy in the kitchen, we started spending more time cooking and less time eating out.

Net result: healthy, tasty food + smaller portions + emotional control = more enjoyment and fewer calories per day.  Bonus: more time cooking with Susan.

A friend of mine was asked “ How did you lose that weight?” He replied, “Move more, eat less.”  For me, the “eat less” part of the saying was addressed by savoring, the “move more” part of it is bike related.

Riding my bike is a mental health issue for me.  If I don’t ride I become mentally unstable (cranky old man unstable, not “stabby” unstable).  My wife prefers the non-cranky me.  So when I ride it’s a win-win for us.

Riding with the purpose of losing weight and increasing mental well-being changed the way I approach cycling.  My riding before was confined to three or four rides a week of dubious quality.  Two of those were 20-mile long weekday rides, one was a 40-50 mile Saturday ride and Sunday I “might” ride 25-30 miles if I felt like it.  Most Sundays I didn’t.  That added up to 90 to 120 miles a week, a lot of it at an easier pace and no real purpose but the delivery of endorphins to my brain.

February’s epiphany got me thinking, I didn’t want to just ride a lot and feel worn down all the time.  I wanted to be strong AND fit.  So in about three months time I slowly worked my way up to a 160 to 170 mile per week schedule.

This is the schedule now.  Tuesdays and Thursdays, I ride 20 flat miles at a 120-130 BPM average heart rate.  Wednesdays I ride 30 flat miles at a 135-140 BPM average heart rate.  Saturday is my long ride, 55-60 miles with some hills back at a 135 BPM average heart rate.  Sunday is a 35-40 mile ride at a 130 BPM average heart rate with a little less hill work.

In each of those rides I try to hit the 150-160 BPM range in random intervals.  For 3-5 minutes I’ll go hard on hills or long straits (tailwinds make them more fun).  Sometimes it really hurts, other times I’m killin’ it.

Every day, I stretch post-ride and do some yoga moves for about a half hour.  Monday and Friday, I stretch and do core exercises for about an hour.  Most of the yoga and core work was taken from Bicycling Magazine’s web site.

The end result is not just physical fitness, but peace of mind.

Yes I’ve lost 35 pounds, all of the belly and excess fat to get to a healthy 22.1 BMI.  My abs are visible for the first time in …um…ever.  At 165 lbs, I can safely say I’ve never been this light since long before I reached my final 6’-1” height.  But, those are only physical effects of examining and correcting years of ruinous behavior.  A sustainable physical edifice now houses a more peaceful mind.

The compliments and surprise on the faces of people who have known me for years are great mental rewards. (I’m still learning its okay to accept compliments.) After the wake up call conversation with my wife Susan and the inner struggle with my body image, my self-esteem is on the rise.  The fact that I look pretty good naked helps, but that is not what brings the most inner peace.

What brings inner peace is knowing, I did this myself.  Yes, Susan asked me some tough questions, but she didn’t hold my hand, design a program and monitor me.  Controlling all the moving parts and motivating myself was my responsibility.  My peace now flows from my accomplishment.  My joy comes from riding up and down hills, faster than ever before, on the Cervelo R3 I bought in celebration.

More Information: If you’d like to read more about how to use cycling and good nutrition to lose fat and trim up, download the min-e-book that Kelli and I put out a little while back.

Download Cycling for Optimal Weight.

Hi everyone, my name is Clive Chapman from Birmingham, England. This is the story of me and my bike, and how it helped me get my life back.

12 months ago I was a 45 year old married bloke with 2 kids, who stopped riding his bike 10 years previously. That’s an approximate figure and the exact reason for stopping totally escapes me. I could come out with all kinds of excuses if I tried, but none of them would be accurate I’m guessing, because as I said, I don’t really know why. It kind of just happened. Still married with 2 kids though!

The upshot to this is that as of June 2009 I was 22 stone 4Ibs. That’s 356Ibs to our North American cousins, and at 5’ 8”, it meant I was morbidly obese. I’d been to the Docs for help as I seemed incapable of doing something about it myself. But apart from recommending “Weight Watchers” the National Health Service didn’t seem equipped to deal with obesity. I did try “Weight Watchers” but it was all middle aged Ladies talking about their menopause and fatless chips. With all due respect to those fine Ladies, it wasn’t for me. So I continued to “promise” myself to do something about it. Then, as usual over the past 10 years did precisely nothing.

Just to complete the horror story, I went to the Docs for a HGV medical just to keep my licence current and he discovered that my blood pressure was dangerously high. So he prescribed me Perindropol to be taken daily. High blood pressure, sleep apnea, severe snoring (don’t laugh), aching joints, lethargy, a good chance of diabetes and it was not beyond the bounds of probability that I was eating and letharging (is there such a word?) myself into an early grave.

Then quite by chance I discovered Frank Kinlan’s blog. This was the story of a bloke roughly my age, my weight and in the same condition health wise who had used cycling as a tool to get back his life and his health. To give you an idea what’s possible, he has successfully completed the 2009 Etape De Tour. A mountain stage of the Tour De France for those who don’t know.

I’d always loved cycling, first as a lad in the 70′s with my first bike (a Raleigh Pavemaster), then graduating to a “racer”.  I even built my own early version of a MTB with an old “racer” frame, knobbly tyres and “cow horn” handlebars, and then chucking myself down various hills in Sutton Park and Cannock Chase.

So cycling seemed to be the answer after Frank’s blog had “flicked my switch” as I like to call it to motivate me to do something about it. June the 30^th 2009 was the first day of the rest of my life.

I dusted down my old Ridgeback MTB, fitted some 1.5 slicks, and did the first pedal. My commute is a 24 mile round trip. I started with a “park and ride” which involved driving to the canal, parking up and then pedalling 6 miles along the cut to work. I did that every other day for a couple of months, then progressed to every day. Bull by the horns time then. A full 12 miles pedal from home to Smethwick. That was every other day at first, then carrying on through the worst England winter in years.  Now, one year later, I’m doing an extended 20 miler on my new road bike into work and completing this every day, and I can actually speak when I get home too!

As it stands I’m now 17 stone 8 Ibs (246 Ibs), 3050 commuting and leisure miles completed and I have started MTBing again back in November 2009. This is my first love (after rugby) as much as I enjoy my towpath commute and my road bike 20 miler.

The online “fat biker’s blog” community is a massive support tool and now forms a part of my day. I have no doubt that without them I wouldn’t have started along this path and I would be still coming up with all kinds of excuses why I can’t get fit again. www.massivemtber.blogspot.com is my day to day story, have a read. And if it motivates one person to get up off their arse and get their life back then job done. Franks blog did just that for me.

Now, please don’t get the wrong idea about this. I’m not after sympathy. I have no-one to blame but me for being fat. It wasn’t a food industry conspiracy or a testament to modern living that I ended up like this. It happened because I ate too much and stopped pedalling, playing rugby and doing the other stuff that kept me active. I have now found something that appears to work for me and a support network of likeminded people who keep me honest.  It is hard, some mornings at 0530hrs when it’s raining windy and dark, I really want to reach for the car keys. But I don’t. This is me now for the duration, and pretty soon I’ll be back into Snowdonia, charging around Cannock Chase and trying to reel my mates in at Sutton Park as well as saving a shed load on fuel and food bills, all because of my re-discovered love of the bike.

Advice wise, if you’re reading this and have thought that you need to grab a hold of your life, then don’t think any more, just do it. I can’t begin to tell you how much I wished I’d done this sooner. Only this weekend I was climbing a tree with my 3 year old son, something I hadn’t done with him before because I was fat. I still am fat, but at least I’m not too fat to climb now.

I don’t profess to hold any answers for you as an individual, I know only too well what obese folk do with well intentioned advice, if I am used as an example it’s to nod sagely, say you’re right, promise to act, then do precisely nothing.

You need to find your own motivation, we’re not stupid people, even though our relationship with physical activity and food would suggest otherwise, I believe obesity is like alcoholism, only food related. Maybe the medical profession should start to acknowledge that fact? That’s a debate for another day and quite possibly another blog!

The bike blogging community is a fantastic place, Darryl’s site is wonderful and I visit it every day to catch up with what’s happening on his side of the pond. Ok you folk over there have a different attitude and if I might be so bold, a more open and positive way of looking at the world, which I find very refreshing compared to cynical, mickey taking good old “Blighty” (English slang for home). But we all have one thing in common, we all love the bike and it does us a power of good!

If any of you good people reading this do need any specific advice about fat biking, starting out or just a bloody good kick to get you going, please feel free to get in touch with me on my blog, maybe I will be the one to “flick your switch” just like Frank Kinlan did for me a year ago.

Finally a huge thanks to Darryl for giving me the honour of representing English fat bikers on his brilliant site, I enjoyed writing it!

Clive Chapman is an inspiring blogger with an incredible personality.  I encourage you to visit him over at www.massivemtber.blogspot.com and become a fan like I have.  Congratulations, Clive on the first anniversary of your comeback and gaining back your life.  Well Done.