Another point to make is that higher-quality food is more satisfying in smaller quantities. The object example there is chocolate. A really high-quality bar of dark chocolate can make you feel satisfied with just a couple of squares. Compare that to sitting there the day after Halloween with a bowl of leftover Hershey’s assorted bits of brown chocolate-like wax; you wind up eating six or eight of them because your body gets stimulated but not satisfied.
See also: prosciutto vs. baloney.
I guess my frustration is that I upped my activity, kept the amount of food intake about the same, and cut out some junk, but it hasn’t translated into getting smaller yet.
I guess the bottom line is that I need to up my activity more and/or reduce the intake more… The frustrating part is that I want to be better at my activity (unicycling) but I think that my weight is at least partially holding me back…
Some of the suggestions are good, but impractical… I can’t eat every 2 hours at work… Often, there isn’t enough sunlight for me to exercize before I eat breakfast (still regarding unicycling as my exercise)… and exercizing several times a day is usually not an option.
I weigh myself on the 1st and the 15th of every month, and write it down… Every time I get down to 230, I jump back to 235…
Anyway… I feel like I might be crossing the line into whining… and if I have… sorry…
Thank you all for the encouragement… I guess I just need to work even harder… I keep telling myself that it took 15 years to get all this weight on… it will probably take a while to get it all off… 
-Keld
I would recommend weighing yourself every day if you’re trying to lose weight. You’d be amazed at how much your weight can fluctuate from day to day, especially when you’re exercising. I can drop five pounds in water weight just by going out for a long ride, and there are definitely cycles throughout the week. Weighing every day has helped me understand my body better.
I would also recommend not focusing on your weight overly much. It’s more important to be fit than to weigh a certain amount, and the most important factor in developing fitness is to make sure you are enjoying your activity. Work on setting fitness goals (“I want to be able to do that whole fire road climb without a dismount”) rather than weight goals. The weight will come off if you’re regularly exercising and improving your fitness.
Your weight, on any given day, can fluctuate +/- 5 pounds on its own, not counting water weight and the like. So if you do decide to weigh yourself everyday, be sure its right when you get up and roughly the same time each day. Weighing yourself in the middle of the day tends to be disappointing, since you have already consumed food and drinks. Eating 4-6 small meals thru out the day is probably one of the best ways to loose weight. If you want to have two hamburgers, then have two burgers. Just don’t eat them at the same time. Eat the other one a couple hours later. Do that for a month and you will see the difference. (I’m not an advocate of eating burgers everyday for a month, this was just an example) If it was me, and I was looking to drop a few pounds, I would go 40% protein…40% carbs…20% fat in my diet. Whole wheat instead of white grains. And go light on the condiments. Anything with ‘low fat’ on it is ok, but dont’ get caught up in them. You need fat in your diet. Just don’t go eating a tub of icing and wonder why the weight isn’t coming off.
I agree… and I do weigh myself more often than that… but I don’t write it down… I am looking for long term trends, not smaller swings… I was 238 this morning… 
By the time the 1st rolls around, I should be about 234 again… (or even more frustrated… 
) But I havn’t seen myself under 230…
-Keld
What I recomend, if you have the time and money. Is taking a trip up to the mountains. I think you shoul be able to find some places pretty close to you. Maybe you have some friends up in the hills and dont have to rent a motel room. Anyway I spent some time in Big Bear Lake CA, at about 7000 feet. It did wonders for my stamina and cardio, which allowed me to ride without stopping when I was back at normal elavation. I dont know alot about phyical training, tho I know there are some mixed martial arts training centers up in mountains for that same reason. If time is something you have, I am sure it would help you out to take a week long trip up into the sky every now and then. Not to metntion some very beautiful rides.
-Sam
Carson City is at 5000’, and the trails he’s riding are all higher than that.
Keld,
Perhaps you should try a different type of exercise, maybe another kind of unicycling like bigwheel distance riding or even gasp bicycling. I say this because I used to do a lot bicycling before I got into unicycling, and when I first started unicycling, I found it difficult to achieve the same workout intensity on my unicycle as I could with a bicycle. I believe this was because my unicycling technique wasn’t good enough to ride up and down the hills that could provide the intensity. So, for the first year or so of unicycling, I used to go out for bike rides when I really wanted to exercise hard.
Well, I don’t own a b*ke… I started off doing distance running, but I got tired of my shins and knees aching all the time…
As for a different kind of unicycling…
Its my understanding that the best way to burn fat is not to push myself to the brink of exhaustion, but to consistently exercise at a moderate pace for a longer time. The whole anaerobic vs aerobic discussion. So, many times when I ride my uni on the road, its perfect… I am working a bit… got a nice sweat going, but not panting like a dog. I’ll hit a hill or try to hop on stuff or do other things occasionally and get my heart rate up good… That’s about half to 2/3rds of the riding I do…
The other part is the frustrating part… The muni trails and the like where I am sweating like a pig, panting for all I am worth, and wondering if I will get my foot on the ground in time for the next UPD. On these, I almost always hit some kind of wall at around 2 hours… I’ve pushed thru that and taken more breaks so that I can finish my rides… Those are the ones that leave me wiped out and sore for days…
I know that the second kind burns way more calories… but the first kind supposedly burns them slow enough that I can get some of them directly from fat.
All I have right now is a 24"… so just riding distance can be a lesson in patience… Usually my feet and/or crotch go numb before I am physically taxed…
I think for me I just need to concentrate on the eat less calories side of the equation for now, and hope that the riding just kind of takes care of itself thru self torture… I think what Tholub said above about setting riding goals is good… I’ll have to go back thru the trails I have ridden and see if I can do them quicker or smoother or with less exertion…
Also, to the other person who talked about training at elevation… my house is at 4770 according to Google, and the trails I ride are usually 6200-8000 feet high… (I am riding up by Lake Tahoe a lot)
Keld
a ha… well I bet doing some rides at lowere elevation would allow for longer distance hence more of a work out- may lead to more weight loss.
Well it sounds like you’ve got your head around the exercise part, the only other thing you could try is being more active during the day. If you’ve got a desk job get up and walk around as much as you can. Take the stairs instead of the lift, walk places. If you don’t think there has been a reduction in the percentage fat of your body then you really need to start the journal of what you eat and try to work out the calories. It’s important to not starve yourself and to make sure the balance of fat, protein etc is correct. Check out the food labels and watch for all the hidden calories.
Don’t get disheartened you’ve started a very important process just keep working at it and refining the process.
As someone said earlier size is a better guide as to how you are improving than weight. Measure the diameter of your unflexed bicep, chest, middle around widest section, hips, thighs, neck, and calves and write them down. If you add up all these dimensions I bet you will see the total shrinking (some of them may be increasing). Or get one of those nifty scales that measure body fat percentage.
If you eat the exact same food and number of calories, but in 6 meals instead of 3 your metabolism will be raised and burn more calories.
Grab a handful of nuts, or eat an apple, or a carrot…
Well, do something, but uniing would be preferable since it’s increased practice as well. I used to have a job at 7 AM and would get up at 5 and go running, just as it was starting to get light. You could also get a powerful helmet lamp and go riding any time.
As Tom said, writing down your weight daily and noticing the fluctuations and your different things you did on those days may point out things that would be beneficial to change. Just don’t get worried about the scale going up and down.
I t would be better to do your rides less intently for longer or shorter but more often, so that you aren’t sore the next day. If you are you just destroyed muscle. Also stretching more can reduce/eliminate the soreness, esp. for new exercises or a significantly increased intensity.
Me- “Always eat breakfast, it raises your metabolism for the day. Also exercise before breakfast, that raises you metabolism even more.
Eat 5 or 6 meals a day (again, increases metabolism). Stay away from ‘low fat’ or ‘non-fat’ foods (non-fat milk and plain yogurt/cottage cheese are OK), most of it has tons of sugar added to it. No trans fats. Lots of fiber (helps your body disolve fat). No midnight snacks. I noticed a big change when I stopped eating by around 7 PM. I had to make sure I had a good sized lunch and afternoon snack in addition do a 6:30ish dinner so I wouldn’t get hungry later that night.”
Ride standing up for 30 seconds every 10 minutes or so will alleviate the numbness and strengthen your legs better. You could also ride SIF or SIB for long distances for increases strength and overal uni skill. (I’m still learning them and the longest I’ve gotten uninterupted is about one minute.)