Quote Originally Posted by Irulan View Post
I'd look at the food piece of things. I recently went from 130 to 121, from 30% body fat to 21%. The main thing I did was nutrition tracking and ramped up my cardio. My goal was to lean out so I was pushing a little less me around skiing and biking. The food tracking thing was huge. I was thinking "sure I eat pretty healthy" but to be concrete about portion size and calories was rather enlightening. Also what I learned about the relationship between base calorie needs, and what you can earn through exercise, was also enlightening.

The main tool I used was a smart phone app, MyFitnessPal. Now I know a lot of folks dis these apps as approximate at best, but it sure worked for me. I used my age, starting weight and desired weight to set the parameters for the nutrition guidelines it used. The database is huge, the bar code scanner is great, and even adding the scratch stuff I make at home ( I do this a lot!!) wasn't much of an issue. I followed the calorie guidelines pretty much to the t and was even able to follow my intake of protien carb and fats and make adjustments when needed. It was a very educational process and I'm really glad I did it. Plus leaning out like I did - can't complain about that.

Thanks!! This is pretty much what I have been doing since December of 2010 and is what I think helped me to lose those pesky 20#. I, like you stated above, want to see if I can drop just a few more to make mtn biking a little more easy on some of the more challenging hills out here :-)

I do appreciate all of the comments and the thought has crossed my mind many times that I may be over doing it or my body might getused to that kind of expenditure.

I guess I just need a goal/plan to focus on so I just picked those numbers as they are conrete vs..I am going to ride my spin bike with a training dvd.

My diet is pretty clean...mainly lean meat, fruit and veggies....although today I cheated as it is my B-day so I had some awesome lasagna.