I reached 123.4kg last year following a near-death experience with COVID, lungs turned into Swiss cheese and no exercise. I'm 51 years old, was pre-diabetic, very high blood pressure and (I felt ) too fat to exercise. On April 01 I decided to play a joke on myself and do something about it. I now weigh 75 kg and can now wear Castelli without any hit of looking like a stuffed sausage . Frankly, exercise was not the key. In fact I lost the weight and then started back on exercise. For me I was a heavy drinker, I gave it up. I stopped eating meat and started to embrace healthy eating. I also started concentrating on gut health - not eating before 1pm and eating more (and a greater variety) of fruits, vegetables. I motived myself by weighing myself and logging my weight at the same time every day (not a great idea for some but works for me). Following the weight loss I am now back on the bike and enjoying more than ever, im also running on the days when the weather is not so great and have set my self a realistic set of targets now that I am healthy (but not fit). This year I intend to run 10km a week on average, cycle 100 a month and have done 1 hour of exercise per day. There are a lot of fads out there - my mantra was to look at everything that was being said and discovering that there were certain things that everyone was saying - don't eat processed foods, give up alcohol, don't eat late at night, eat a balanced diet, keep hydrated etc. Good luck Jack and good luck to the rest of you on the journey to loose weight and, more importantly, to those struggling to get healthier
Thanks so much for posting this, truly amazing progress and very inspiring! I've been very fortunate not to have had a bad experience with Covid/any serious health problems beyond the osteoarthritis so have always kept up some form of exercise even over my very indulgent festive period, and since starting on the new plan I am just finding it easier to stay in a calorie deficit that way. I'll think of your story whenever I'm tempted to reach for the beer and cake, well done and all the best! Jack
@@normanmart7933 not that a take too much stock on calorie numbers, but to burn off a Medium pizza and two pints of beer would take me over 4 and half hours of riding at 25km/h with almost 1000 meters of climbing if I look at my strava numbers. if the pizza and pints was a weekly treat that you gave up, you could possibly loose over 12 kg over the course of a year!
Meat is healthy for you and you need protein to hold onto muscle mass as you age. You don't want to go into your later years in a muscle deficit. Eat simply.
Last year I lost 10 kg over say 6 months. Now trying not to loose anything more then that... This is what I did: - no alcohol - always healthy food - few sugar - yes to some carbohydrate - little really fat food - but I could eat about anything, surely every now and then (keep it fun) - ride 2 times per week for 1 hour (monday-friday, pick your own favorite day, or let it depend on rain) - AND weekend 1 time a longer ride say 2 to 4 hours. For me this meant at least 100km per week, never in one go All bikes can work even the crappy ones, as long as you don't get flats, and as long as you love your bike
I was 111 kgs end of July. Cycling loads in August in France and now Tacx throughout the winter. I’m now 86 kgs. Cycling itself was not really doing it. Cutting the carbs pizza chocolate has. Also the 2 bowls of cheerios with nut crunch at 21.00 each night has gone. I’m always hungry. More I cycle the more I want. It’s so so hard but feeling a whole lot healthier and looking forward to the roads this year.
I lost 45lbs in 4 months by doing nothing more than riding a bicycle 0.5 of a mile every day. Every day is the key. It took me a few years to get to every day. But I finally stuck with it. April 23 2023 I'll have 5 years of consecutive days at an average of more than 20+ miles a day for all 5 years of consecutive days. Oh and I never changed what I ate. My body told me what was okay and not okay to eat as if I ate something that made me lethargic the next day, I quit eating it. I now outride almost all people, and I'm 58 years old.
One can't overcome the kitchen on the road. I worked on eating better and lots of riding and wt. training have been holding 195lbs from 250. It took about a year to hit my goal but have been holding for over 4 years now. I'm 6'2".
For many of us, weight loss doesn't involve using a scale at all. I got back to cycling last spring after many years of barely riding and running only when my knees allowed, which wasn't often. After riding for 5 months an average of 100-120 miles per week at a moderate to "pretty difficult" pace -- but without any conscious effort at losing weight or controlling my diet -- all traces of my beer belly and love handles had disappeared, and my ribs and abs had appeared in their place. Trousers and jeans I had stopped wearing because they had gotten too snug in the waistband were now snug in the thighs instead. I don't know how much weight I lost, and I don't care. I was by not overweight to begin with, but I sure look and feel better now.
Good luck Jack. I found losing weight very difficult, I have stopped the weekly beer intake and processed foods. Doesn't mean you can't have a pint so i discovered zero alcohol beer, which is quarter of the calories of normal beer. So one or two on Sunday after training is fine. The hardest thing is discipline and eating proper cooked vegetables not something out of a packet... losing weight is slower as you get older 😢
2 years ago, I went from 113kg down to about 91kg with a certain Weekly Cycling magazine fitness project. Fast forward 2 years, another bout of COVID and the weight has gone back up to about 102kg. Asthma and arthritis very quickly become more noticeable once the weight creeps up. Going back to 5am commutes or 8pm training sessions fills me with dread - biggest barrier is always the psychological side of it
Swap out breakfast twice a week for Banana, oat, date, coffee and oat milk shake with a dash of salt and go extreme and intermittent fast once a week and cut out any food until midday.
over the summer I lost three stone in weight I cut out all the rubbish. i was riding loads but over the winter I have got lazy. and found it easier to talk my self out of going out in the cold and curling up with the dogs watching Netflix
I've been cycling 1500-5000 miles per year for forty-one years and been able to gain weight easily because cycling makes me inordinately hungry. I'll burn 800 calories and eat 1500 after. I don't gain weight when I have to go a week or two without riding because my appetite decreases.
@@globalwarsrocks I shouldn't need to eat while riding 25-40 miles, my common ride distance. I have plenty of nutrition in reserve from the previous meals. On the rare occasion when I do eat a bar or gel, I still eat out-of-scale to the exertion. I've been that way for 35+ years.
@@ianthompson6268 Well... You do. If you don't want to have the appetite compensation afterwards anyway. If you don't care about it then that's totally fine. Fuelling even shorter rides will make you have more power on the bike, faster recovery afterwards and stronger performance in the long run because the stacking of every ride that individually is higher in quality. You burn about 90gr of carbs/hour just noodling about at 100W. 40 miles is 2 hours on a good pace or 2,5 at an easier pace. By not fuelling you are tapping into the 'reserve' you speak of, which alerts the body and mind that when things settle down it should replenish as much of it as it can. These are the hunger bursts you speak of. If you fuel on the bike with about 50-60gr carbs/hr, your body won't go in this panic replenishing state and you'll just be able to mantain the same diet regardless of your ride. Do with this information what you like.
@@globalwarsrocks had some more time to think about this and I'm curious why it doesn't happen when i run and hike. I don't feel like eating for 1-2 hours after running and hiking which are usually more exertion than when I ride. It's just riding that makes me wanna eat, regardless if I snacked during the ride or not.
@@ianthompson6268 Well I'll be honest, I don't really have an answer to that... The only thing I could think of is that in my case the run would be shorter in duration vs cycling, but that's also because i'm not very well trained in it.
Cutting alcohol out is the best and quickest way to drop the pounds from my own personal experience over the last couple of months. I would drink roughly 1 bottle of wine a week and maybe a couple of bottles of beer. Cut it all out completely for about 6 weeks now and consistently 5kg lighter on the bike with no really changing food. Sugar is the next target to stop
I am an old guy, former amateur racer, trained and raced since the 80s. I just returned from my winter. riding of 3months where my goal was to get back to my best cycling weight after gaining almost 20lbs due to working all last summer and not riding enough. I raced best at around 165lbs but I left for my desert training at about 185. I read that zone 2 training is the way to lose fat. I've always slipped into Z 2 sometimes, but this year I consciously sought to ride there a LOT, almost only zone 2. It worked. I'm back to 168lbs after logging between 150 to 350mi/week for 3 months. It was hard to decline group rides till the last few weeks..hard to stay off my favorite climbs so as to not get into the glycogen metabolic effort zones, except as a few intervals at rides' end. Historically I've always had to avoid overtraining on these trips. This year I decided to really hold to a plan...to drop that extra fat by staying in Zone 2 and Hurrah! It worked.
Great video! At 5:33 the coach said "via these apps." Can someone share what apps he is referring to? Or his he just referring to tracking the calorie metrics shown on the screen?
55-60% of max heart rate!?! Dude that’s like 110-118 bpm for me… my heart rate is usually over 100 just from carrying my bike down the front steps! Riding? I am NEVER that low. Zone two power on a good day puts me in the 130-144 range… no way the low teens are happening for me…
At 59 years old, I lost 17 lb (8kg) over a summer riding about 120 miles/week. I ate whatever I wanted. Just get out and do it. Good luck to Jack, he will make it, as he seems motivated! 🙂
Same here. All this no alcohol no sugar etc gets on my nerves a little as I don't have any of that. I have to be hungry 100% ofthe day and go to bed hungry to lose anything.
you cannot out train a bad diet. so start by eating clean, fresh, low fat food, weigh everything, count the calories and log everything you eat every day. eating 500 cals less than your bmr (basic metabolic rate) each day almost guarantees a one pound fat burn each week. if you can manage 500 cals of exercise every day too that will generate another one pound fat burn. 2 pounds per week is the maximum sustainable fat loss it is possible to maintain over a long period. most people fail because the are impatient and starve themselves, which causes uncontrollable hunger that cannot be resisted for long. they pig out and are back to where they started before they know it. slow and steady wins the race here.
You need 2000 calories a day especially if trying to speed metabolism and muscle gain..the right foods though otherwise if you cut calories like you do it leads to just skinny 😜
I started cycling in 2016 and commuted to work plus riding at weekends. It made absolutely no difference to my weight. What DID change things was moving to a low carbohydrate diet. Between Oct 2021 and December 2022, lost almost 15kg. I didn't give up alcohol (except for Lent) or go ketogenic, just restricted the carbs to c50g per day and watched the calories. Of course, traditional cycling orthodoxy places carbs front and centre of any fuelling strategy but I found that cutting back carbs didn't make any difference. For long rides, I would eat carbs beforehand, knowing they would be used for energy but kept things low carb otherwise. I used Fast800 and, after years of trying everything, it has worked for me. I am currently following a cycling training programme with three rides and two strength sessions per week and seeing good progress. I still keep the carbs clustered around the workouts and eat low carb the rest of the time.
😂😂 the skinny men say they can fix me...😂😂 Sorry for being flippant... All the best Jack, I genuinely hope you achieve your goals. I find that even on a 100 mile ride I only burn about 1/3 more calories in a day. So diet is everything or at least more important than the cycling I'm afraid.
This is all becoming very confusing! Latest research suggests that there is little value in counting calories as there is good and bad calories (processed food vs natural etc) and therefore its the quality of the food that counts (including its impact on your gut) in terms of weight loss (ie cut out the sugar and booze!.) It's also said that exercise has very little impact on weight as it is your diet that controls that aspect; exercise is obviously good for cardio and muscle toning but exercise alone will not shift the extra weight. Fascinating topic with many different views but no real certainty as to the best way forward. I'm training for the Fred in May and have been since January - I do 12-15 hours a week on the turbo and outside (180 miles per week in total), 3 hours in the gym doing circuits and strength exercise and I watch my diet having cut out processed food and booze. I've lost 4kgs and have a further 6 to go
I’m 56. I ride twice a week, one week day in early morning if no rain, 30km. On Sunday 60km. Average speed 25kph, 4K km per year for last 3-yr. Before I started cycling I was 94 kg, now I’m 97kg😅, why? Yes, I take whiskey moderately and eat healthy food, sleep like baby…I’m happy and feel good while riding, who care fat middle-aged man😂
I reached 123.4kg last year following a near-death experience with COVID, lungs turned into Swiss cheese and no exercise. I'm 51 years old, was pre-diabetic, very high blood pressure and (I felt ) too fat to exercise. On April 01 I decided to play a joke on myself and do something about it. I now weigh 75 kg and can now wear Castelli without any hit of looking like a stuffed sausage . Frankly, exercise was not the key. In fact I lost the weight and then started back on exercise. For me I was a heavy drinker, I gave it up. I stopped eating meat and started to embrace healthy eating. I also started concentrating on gut health - not eating before 1pm and eating more (and a greater variety) of fruits, vegetables. I motived myself by weighing myself and logging my weight at the same time every day (not a great idea for some but works for me). Following the weight loss I am now back on the bike and enjoying more than ever, im also running on the days when the weather is not so great and have set my self a realistic set of targets now that I am healthy (but not fit). This year I intend to run 10km a week on average, cycle 100 a month and have done 1 hour of exercise per day. There are a lot of fads out there - my mantra was to look at everything that was being said and discovering that there were certain things that everyone was saying - don't eat processed foods, give up alcohol, don't eat late at night, eat a balanced diet, keep hydrated etc. Good luck Jack and good luck to the rest of you on the journey to loose weight and, more importantly, to those struggling to get healthier
Thanks so much for posting this, truly amazing progress and very inspiring! I've been very fortunate not to have had a bad experience with Covid/any serious health problems beyond the osteoarthritis so have always kept up some form of exercise even over my very indulgent festive period, and since starting on the new plan I am just finding it easier to stay in a calorie deficit that way. I'll think of your story whenever I'm tempted to reach for the beer and cake, well done and all the best! Jack
@@roadcc Thanks Jack, appreciate the kind words. Ultimately, I think people just need to find what works for them. Good Luc kk with everything!
I think you're spot on , your diet is key and exercise eventually makes you feel better as it takes a lot of work to burn off a pizza and a few pints.
@@normanmart7933 not that a take too much stock on calorie numbers, but to burn off a Medium pizza and two pints of beer would take me over 4 and half hours of riding at 25km/h with almost 1000 meters of climbing if I look at my strava numbers. if the pizza and pints was a weekly treat that you gave up, you could possibly loose over 12 kg over the course of a year!
Meat is healthy for you and you need protein to hold onto muscle mass as you age. You don't want to go into your later years in a muscle deficit. Eat simply.
Last year I lost 10 kg over say 6 months. Now trying not to loose anything more then that...
This is what I did:
- no alcohol
- always healthy food
- few sugar
- yes to some carbohydrate
- little really fat food
- but I could eat about anything, surely every now and then (keep it fun)
- ride 2 times per week for 1 hour (monday-friday, pick your own favorite day, or let it depend on rain)
- AND weekend 1 time a longer ride say 2 to 4 hours.
For me this meant at least 100km per week, never in one go
All bikes can work even the crappy ones, as long as you don't get flats, and as long as you love your bike
Hey stop bullying us flat bar enjoyers 😂😂
I was 111 kgs end of July. Cycling loads in August in France and now Tacx throughout the winter. I’m now 86 kgs. Cycling itself was not really doing it. Cutting the carbs pizza chocolate has. Also the 2 bowls of cheerios with nut crunch at 21.00 each night has gone. I’m always hungry. More I cycle the more I want. It’s so so hard but feeling a whole lot healthier and looking forward to the roads this year.
I lost 45lbs in 4 months by doing nothing more than riding a bicycle 0.5 of a mile every day. Every day is the key. It took me a few years to get to every day. But I finally stuck with it. April 23 2023 I'll have 5 years of consecutive days at an average of more than 20+ miles a day for all 5 years of consecutive days. Oh and I never changed what I ate. My body told me what was okay and not okay to eat as if I ate something that made me lethargic the next day, I quit eating it. I now outride almost all people, and I'm 58 years old.
One can't overcome the kitchen on the road. I worked on eating better and lots of riding and wt. training have been holding 195lbs from 250. It took about a year to hit my goal but have been holding for over 4 years now. I'm 6'2".
For many of us, weight loss doesn't involve using a scale at all. I got back to cycling last spring after many years of barely riding and running only when my knees allowed, which wasn't often. After riding for 5 months an average of 100-120 miles per week at a moderate to "pretty difficult" pace -- but without any conscious effort at losing weight or controlling my diet -- all traces of my beer belly and love handles had disappeared, and my ribs and abs had appeared in their place. Trousers and jeans I had stopped wearing because they had gotten too snug in the waistband were now snug in the thighs instead. I don't know how much weight I lost, and I don't care. I was by not overweight to begin with, but I sure look and feel better now.
Good luck Jack.
I found losing weight very difficult, I have stopped the weekly beer intake and processed foods. Doesn't mean you can't have a pint so i discovered zero alcohol beer, which is quarter of the calories of normal beer. So one or two on Sunday after training is fine. The hardest thing is discipline and eating proper cooked vegetables not something out of a packet... losing weight is slower as you get older 😢
2 years ago, I went from 113kg down to about 91kg with a certain Weekly Cycling magazine fitness project. Fast forward 2 years, another bout of COVID and the weight has gone back up to about 102kg. Asthma and arthritis very quickly become more noticeable once the weight creeps up. Going back to 5am commutes or 8pm training sessions fills me with dread - biggest barrier is always the psychological side of it
Jack's surname says it all !
Great stuff
Swap out breakfast twice a week for Banana, oat, date, coffee and oat milk shake with a dash of salt and go extreme and intermittent fast once a week and cut out any food until midday.
over the summer I lost three stone in weight I cut out all the rubbish. i was riding loads but over the winter I have got lazy. and found it easier to talk my self out of going out in the cold and curling up with the dogs watching Netflix
I've been cycling 1500-5000 miles per year for forty-one years and been able to gain weight easily because cycling makes me inordinately hungry. I'll burn 800 calories and eat 1500 after. I don't gain weight when I have to go a week or two without riding because my appetite decreases.
Well that is 100% because you don't eat enough on the bike. If you fuel the ride well, you won't go into munchmode afterwards!
@@globalwarsrocks I shouldn't need to eat while riding 25-40 miles, my common ride distance. I have plenty of nutrition in reserve from the previous meals. On the rare occasion when I do eat a bar or gel, I still eat out-of-scale to the exertion. I've been that way for 35+ years.
@@ianthompson6268 Well... You do. If you don't want to have the appetite compensation afterwards anyway. If you don't care about it then that's totally fine. Fuelling even shorter rides will make you have more power on the bike, faster recovery afterwards and stronger performance in the long run because the stacking of every ride that individually is higher in quality. You burn about 90gr of carbs/hour just noodling about at 100W. 40 miles is 2 hours on a good pace or 2,5 at an easier pace. By not fuelling you are tapping into the 'reserve' you speak of, which alerts the body and mind that when things settle down it should replenish as much of it as it can. These are the hunger bursts you speak of. If you fuel on the bike with about 50-60gr carbs/hr, your body won't go in this panic replenishing state and you'll just be able to mantain the same diet regardless of your ride. Do with this information what you like.
@@globalwarsrocks had some more time to think about this and I'm curious why it doesn't happen when i run and hike. I don't feel like eating for 1-2 hours after running and hiking which are usually more exertion than when I ride. It's just riding that makes me wanna eat, regardless if I snacked during the ride or not.
@@ianthompson6268 Well I'll be honest, I don't really have an answer to that... The only thing I could think of is that in my case the run would be shorter in duration vs cycling, but that's also because i'm not very well trained in it.
Wry good video, thank you both
Cutting alcohol out is the best and quickest way to drop the pounds from my own personal experience over the last couple of months. I would drink roughly 1 bottle of wine a week and maybe a couple of bottles of beer. Cut it all out completely for about 6 weeks now and consistently 5kg lighter on the bike with no really changing food. Sugar is the next target to stop
weight loss = 80% nutrition, 20% exercise.
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.
Matt Lucas is such a versatile thespian.
I am an old guy, former amateur racer, trained and raced since the 80s. I just returned from my winter. riding of 3months where my goal was to get back to my best cycling weight after gaining almost 20lbs due to working all last summer and not riding enough. I raced best at around 165lbs but I left for my desert training at about 185. I read that zone 2 training is the way to lose fat. I've always slipped into Z 2 sometimes, but this year I consciously sought to ride there a LOT, almost only zone 2. It worked. I'm back to 168lbs after logging between 150 to 350mi/week for 3 months. It was hard to decline group rides till the last few weeks..hard to stay off my favorite climbs so as to not get into the glycogen metabolic effort zones, except as a few intervals at rides' end.
Historically I've always had to avoid overtraining on these trips. This year I decided to really hold to a plan...to drop that extra fat by staying in Zone 2 and Hurrah! It worked.
will you be publishing the training regime?
Simple and very very instructive! Many thanks!
Great video! At 5:33 the coach said "via these apps." Can someone share what apps he is referring to? Or his he just referring to tracking the calorie metrics shown on the screen?
Solid advice!
55-60% of max heart rate!?! Dude that’s like 110-118 bpm for me… my heart rate is usually over 100 just from carrying my bike down the front steps! Riding? I am NEVER that low. Zone two power on a good day puts me in the 130-144 range… no way the low teens are happening for me…
You might be dehydrated then
At 59 years old, I lost 17 lb (8kg) over a summer riding about 120 miles/week. I ate whatever I wanted. Just get out and do it.
Good luck to Jack, he will make it, as he seems motivated! 🙂
I've just accepted the I have to regularly starve myself to lose any weight.
Same here. All this no alcohol no sugar etc gets on my nerves a little as I don't have any of that. I have to be hungry 100% ofthe day and go to bed hungry to lose anything.
you cannot out train a bad diet. so start by eating clean, fresh, low fat food, weigh everything, count the calories and log everything you eat every day. eating 500 cals less than your bmr (basic metabolic rate) each day almost guarantees a one pound fat burn each week. if you can manage 500 cals of exercise every day too that will generate another one pound fat burn. 2 pounds per week is the maximum sustainable fat loss it is possible to maintain over a long period. most people fail because the are impatient and starve themselves, which causes uncontrollable hunger that cannot be resisted for long. they pig out and are back to where they started before they know it. slow and steady wins the race here.
^^ 100%
You need 2000 calories a day especially if trying to speed metabolism and muscle gain..the right foods though otherwise if you cut calories like you do it leads to just skinny 😜
1000 cal deficit is in now way sustainable, it is basically starving yourself. it's a recipe for bouncing back even fatter than before
@@WellValUa yep deficit is key word basically starvation
I have lost 30 lb over 10 weeks using a low carb diet (
Ain't that the truth because I went and got McDonald's after a ride and the day after ate bad again wth 😅
Good luck!
I started cycling in 2016 and commuted to work plus riding at weekends. It made absolutely no difference to my weight.
What DID change things was moving to a low carbohydrate diet. Between Oct 2021 and December 2022, lost almost 15kg. I didn't give up alcohol (except for Lent) or go ketogenic, just restricted the carbs to c50g per day and watched the calories.
Of course, traditional cycling orthodoxy places carbs front and centre of any fuelling strategy but I found that cutting back carbs didn't make any difference. For long rides, I would eat carbs beforehand, knowing they would be used for energy but kept things low carb otherwise.
I used Fast800 and, after years of trying everything, it has worked for me. I am currently following a cycling training programme with three rides and two strength sessions per week and seeing good progress. I still keep the carbs clustered around the workouts and eat low carb the rest of the time.
I lost 10 stone on a keto diet with 2 hours of cycling everyday rain or shine.
Problem is after long rides later that day and all day after I eat like crazy.
😂😂 the skinny men say they can fix me...😂😂 Sorry for being flippant... All the best Jack, I genuinely hope you achieve your goals. I find that even on a 100 mile ride I only burn about 1/3 more calories in a day. So diet is everything or at least more important than the cycling I'm afraid.
Good luck! 👍🏻
hey guys, link in the description is wrong
Fixed, apologies!
How about cycling to gain weight…… me. Yup. We’re all different. Ugh :-0)
This is all becoming very confusing! Latest research suggests that there is little value in counting calories as there is good and bad calories (processed food vs natural etc) and therefore its the quality of the food that counts (including its impact on your gut) in terms of weight loss (ie cut out the sugar and booze!.) It's also said that exercise has very little impact on weight as it is your diet that controls that aspect; exercise is obviously good for cardio and muscle toning but exercise alone will not shift the extra weight. Fascinating topic with many different views but no real certainty as to the best way forward. I'm training for the Fred in May and have been since January - I do 12-15 hours a week on the turbo and outside (180 miles per week in total), 3 hours in the gym doing circuits and strength exercise and I watch my diet having cut out processed food and booze. I've lost 4kgs and have a further 6 to go
You don't need to count anything..we know when we're fat and what we ate and slacked in to get there
Jack hide the Biscuits
I’m 56. I ride twice a week, one week day in early morning if no rain, 30km. On Sunday 60km. Average speed 25kph, 4K km per year for last 3-yr. Before I started cycling I was 94 kg, now I’m 97kg😅, why? Yes, I take whiskey moderately and eat healthy food, sleep like baby…I’m happy and feel good while riding, who care fat middle-aged man😂
Cut the Refined SUGAR out.
That didn't do anything for me. I cut that decades ago. Buy certainly is something that should be done
You can’t exercise your way out of a poor diet. Fix your diet first then do the exercise.
Bullehit he put that on. Over the holidays 😂😂
He didn’t, that was over about 4 years, the festive period was just the final straw
just get on the gear and wait till the legs fall off...
Lifting weights and building muscle mass is vastly more effective than endless zone 2.