Weight Loss .....kind of

This post is not about intentionally wanting to lose weight, it's certainly nothing like the heroic efforts to lose weight put in by people like Gary over at theamazing39stonecyclist. It's just an observation on the effect that (almost) daily cycling has had on my own weight.

When I started riding the Brompton into work I weighed 10 stone 12 lbs or thereabouts. I'd roughly weighed this amount for years, it was a perfectly normal healthy weight for someone my size and it never occurred to me whatsoever that to take up daily cycling would result in losing weight. It just wasn’t why I was doing it. As far as I was concerned there was no weight to lose, so it was a little surprising to notice over the course of 8-12 months that I was steadily losing around 1 lb per month.

Early on, in response to this I decided I must be needing to eat more*, but it made no difference to the steady drop in weight.

The 1 lb a month kept disappearing til I reached around 10 stone 2 lbs. This is where it stopped and I still weigh roughly this much another 8-9 months later. This again happened without any further changes at all. My body seemed to have adjusted entirely by itself, slowly shedding the few excess pounds til I'd reached whatever magical weight my dna would be happy with given my current intake and exercise levels.

All of this without actively trying, I'm just cycling to work & back. Not particularly pushing it, but not trundling slowly either.

My weight has even stayed the same now that I'm back in Tameside and cycling much further each day. This makes me think that it's not really about the amount of exercise you do, but simply doing at least some everyday. Or at least 5 days a week.

I'm a stingy bastard hence the name, so hell will have frozen over before you get me to pay for a gym membership. Besides time is precious and I'm not inclined to waste any of it doing robotic exercise when I can achieve the same thing as part of my normal daily routine. In fact cycling has gained me some of my time back. It is by far the quickest way I could get to work and back and certainly beats catching colds on the train or bus.

*Bonus!, I get to eat and enjoy more tasty snacks without the bother of putting weight on. It's nice to know that little bit of money is going towards my enjoyment and not vanishing on petrol or public transport fares.