Cycling buddies shed pounds with ‘training program’

My initial plan was to eat and drink my way through the pandemic.

Returning from an ill-advised Mexican getaway last March, I was stuck in a 14-day quarantine with my kids. We decided to turn our home into a de facto frat house, complete with big-screen TV and gaming console in the living room, order-in dinners featuring the finest selection of fast food joints and regular games of beer pong (my oldest is 19, the younger one used Mountain Dew which is probably worse than beer.)

Then I just kept going, using food as comfort and alcohol as a way to ease my increasing anxiety. Case numbers going up? Time for more wine and pepperoni pizza. Unsurprisingly, I put on most of the socalled “Quarantine 15” pounds in a hurry.

My weight and stress levels came down in the summer, as case numbers dipped and restrictions loosened. Being outside helped a lot and so I rode my bike a ton as a way to get back in shape AND find new microbreweries and bakeries in the area. Calorie neutral rides are the best rides.

But by December, as both the weather and the pandemic worsened, I could feel the urge to eat and drink myself into oblivion returning. Rationalizations aren’t hard to come by at the best of times and getting bullied by COVID-19 lockdowns made any and all coping mechanisms justifiable in my tiny lizard brain.

Sensing impending emotional doom and an expanding waistline, I asked a couple of cycling buddies if they wanted to try an “off-season training program” that would include exercise goals, food and drink restrictions and weight loss targets. I figured “training program,” would be an easier sell than “diet plan.” (See lizard brain, above.)

They went for it.

We capped the number of alcoholic beverages at 14 a week — still an absurdly high number but a drop for us. We each picked a problem food — potato chips for me, cookies for them — and eliminated it from our diet. We record our exercises — walking and cycling, even snow shovelling — on an online app. We weigh in once a week.

But most importantly we support each other and hold each other accountable. Men aren’t always great at that, often choosing competition instead (see lizard brain, above.) But competitions around weight loss can make people do dumb stuff and I wanted this to be both healthy and sustainable over the long term.

It’s worked, at least so far. After six weeks of our planned 10-week program, we’ve lost a collective 27 pounds and exceeded our exercise targets every week. The cookies and chips have gone stale in the snack cupboard. We’ve each missed the drink target ... but only once.

The pandemic has been challenging from both a mental and physical health perspective. Some days are really hard — especially when it’s freezing cold and the snow just won’t stop and the variants are coming to ruin us all. But finding new ways to cope with the support of friends has really helped.

Same lizard brain, just in a slimmer lizard body.