JohnnyReggae

I am struggling with motivation to change my eating habits. I love food, and I love eating ... way to much. Over the years I have done so many different diets and eating plans and know what is required to lose weight but can't bring myself to follow any sensible eating plan. Over the last 20 years I have probably lost the equivalent in weight of another person, and put it all back on again. My heaviest being 120kg's and lightest 85kg's. I'm currently hovering around the 105-110kg mark. The most weight I lost at a time was 35kg's, going from 120kg's down to 85kg's in the space of about 6 months. My previous best was 23kg's going down from 110kg's to 87kg's in the space of 3 months. The last time I attempted a serious effort at losing weight I only managed 8kg's in the space of 4 months, stopping at 92kg's. I am fairly active riding around 90-100 minutes with an average heart rate around the 135bpm mark, 4 times a week, split over 2 sessions. This is done on my commute to and from work. I don't have any other time to exercise or even time to prepare nutritious/cheap meals as I have 2 kids, the youngest being 5 months old. My life is busy... So working up the motivation to eat healthy when only getting between 4 and 6 hours sleep a night is a struggle. I'm sure there are others in a similar position to me .... so how are you doing it ? I suppose I'm just looking for a pep talk to get my butt into gear to make a serious effort to get somewhere with a healthy lifestyle that I can maintain. The maintenance is the biggest problem for me. I can starve myself and lose weight, done that before, but that's not really a solution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk30a0qsVIk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rD1LeECDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyl5DlrsU90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeHVLQhq54I

Decided to bite-the-bullet and go for the Premium option. Time will tell if it's money well spent, but the intention is there.

Went onto Endomondo this morning to check out my morning ride, and noticed that the web site has undergone a significant facelift. Interface is a lot more "swish" ... and works nicely. However they have also introduced a Premium (pay for) option to their site, which includes some of the stats that up to yesterday were freely available. I've been using the stats a lot over the last few weeks to have a gauge as to how my daily commutes to work have been improving, amongst other things. The $19.95 is not a lot of money for a yearly subscription .... just a little annoyed that I need to pay for something that was free. I'll probably pay the amount .. but still a little peeved.

Unicycles are a little easier to store. Used to have 3 Uni's, but sold my 29'er to buy a 29'er bike which I keep in the garage also on a hook.

Done some more Googling and the problem may be related to the derailleur that needs adjustment. Been riding the bike for 3 weeks solid now and haven't adjusted the rear derailleur cable since the initial setup. Will do that on my ride home this afternoon, to see if it makes any difference.

I have a Titan 29'er Comp, which has a Shimano Alivio-9 rear derailleur. At the moment I'm using it for a commute to work on the road with the occasional mount onto sidewalks to avoid traffic. Pedalling along it feel like it skips a tooth on the rear cog. The gear stays the same, but the chain skips. This morning after I had to make a quick stop, I started again in the same high gear I had stopped in and had to really stand on the power to get going and the whole chain skipped off the front derailleur and the cable seemed to have stretched a little at the same time as I had to make an adjustment so that the front derailleur was not being caught by the chain. So the question is .... is the chain to long and perhaps needs a small shortening, or is the rear derailleur not pulling the chain tight enough ?

I was thinking of doing that, but rather wrap it around, and only cable tie the ends. Figured the easier thing to do would be to buy a chainstay guard, which I did. I was very surprised to see how many little paint chips I had from 2 weeks of commuting to work. On the brake side of things, my shudder is less than before but still there ... next option is STRADA's suggestion. At least the brakes work well ... had to do some serious braking yesterday when some pedestrians decided to walk through traffic right in front of me, and when I had stopped a mere few cm's from them they gave me serious dirty looks ... like what the hell was I doing ?? ...

Don't stretch either before or after a ride, whether it's on my bike or Unicycle. Never been big into stretching. Used to do it many ... many... many years ago for Karate and Kung-fu, but that was to enhance flexibility for all those kicks and lunges.