A question about weight

[Grog]

Hum, that's interesting Eden. It does remind me that whereas I became REALLY hungry the first few months I was cycling for "real" (i.e. more than 100km/week), it's now much calmer on that front, even if I exercise more overall than I did back then. Or maybe I've just gotten used to eating more or adjusted my nutrition accordingly? But I think what you say makes sense.

Other factors I think would include some genetics, metabolic rate, % body fat vs. muscle, the "age" of the fat (supposedly fat takes as much time to leave as it took buildilng up, so the "older" the fat the longer it takes to go away... but I don't know whether there is more than anecdotal evidence for that), nutritional habits, exercise habits, number of years practicing endurance sports, etc. I think someone who's been mostly sedentary for most of their life would have a steeper curve to face compared to a person who's been into sports for ever.

But I'm no physiologist.

[Grog]

Oh, and I wanted to add:

- I've often read that when you're training for something is not the time to try to loose a lot of weight. Ex: it's not a good idea to train for a marathon in order to loose weight. It's already enough of a stress for your body to run that marathon, trying to loose weight by buildling a calorie-deficit every day would not be a good thing, energy-wise.

- It takes more energy to get a heavier body to move (simple physics). So the heavier the person, the more that person will have to eat in order to exercise more. Bigger athletes just can't live on 1200 calories a day, or they wouldn't have the energy to be athletes.

- Now the psychology: People of all body shapes are concerned about their weight. My whippety sweetheart, with a BMI of about 20 if not 19, and about 3-4% body fat, keeps an eye on what he eats and often feels "fat". If you just had a soundtrack of him, no video, you'd think maybe he's indeed overweight. Sure, in his case, having 1 pound more fat and 1 pound less muscle would mean loosing precious seconds up that hill he's racing on. Competitive runners can get similarly, dare I say, obsessive about having the perfect body mass composition. It's all relative...

Again not sure this helps but you sure raised an interesting topic.