Interesting situation! Do we need this....

@thespeakerdude

Indeed, that 15lbs of fat off your ass is much more important than 15lbs off the bike. That’s been my experience. I used to go on a fast training ride every Thursday here in town. I had a 27lb Raleigh Technium and I’d get dropped on one of the hills every time. One day I came out with my new weapon - a 17 lb Bianchi with all Dura-Ace. I was eager to hit that hill and when we got there I got dropped. It was as if nothing had changed. Skip ahead 8 weeks of fairly serious training and that hill was no longer a problem - even on the Technium. I think gaining power is even more important than getting fat off your ass. But if you do it right you'll both lose weight and gain power. I've tried dieting by counting calories and witnessed myself get lighter and slower. The trick for me is to ride often and pretty hard and watch what I kinds of things I eat, not how much. I gotta eat as many calories as my body asks me for or I get weak. For me the right foods seems to be very low fat, high carb, but not refined sugars or wheat. The refined sugars and wheat may not make me fat but they make my old teeth hurt, as does diet soda for some reason. 

I have been doing low carb since before it was fashionable and learning to eat to match my activities, carb loading when I was going to need it. I found that strength training was the best change for weight loss. More muscle mass, more calories burned. I am about 22lbs, but some of that is a carrier and a folding panier. You never know when a good bakery or winery will pop up on your rides. You have to have your priorities straight.

@thespeakerdude 

You have to have your priorities straight.

You do.

Even, if like me, after years of resistance, you're eventually forced into a reduced sugar/ carb diet. You don't have to give up sugar/ carbs, just reduce them and burn off the rest.

Apparently there's already over a billion people walking around in the insulin resistant phase.
 

An awful lot of future suffering could be avoided if more people followed your example.

more calories burned  

That's the heart of it I think.

We all slow down metabolically, but we don't have to stop altogether. 

Music also has healing qualities and a good system can certainly improve mood.

@cd318 

I was a fat kid. Not obese, but "fat". Turned into a fat young adult. Sort of hit me one day, and I vowed to change, and came across this low carb thing. I slip, but it is an easy thing mentally get back on track. It is much easier to do today that is was 25+ years ago.

Huge numbers of people in the world who get a large portion of their daily calories from rice. It is a ticking time bomb. In North America, we layer that with too much fat that on its own would be fine.

I often find it hard to find the time for a healthy ride so my "thing" now is a modified version of HIIT. A couple minutes flat out on the rowing machine several times a day. Consider it 10 minutes a day of a whole body flat out sprint.

I did low carb for about 4 years. I was serious about it - extremely low carb. And it worked in certain ways. I had a very good ability to go for long periods without eating anything while doing moderately vigorous work.  I was great at dealing with cold weather, but struggled with heat stress in the summer. That kind of diet automatically means high fat, and any success for me on that diet meant being extremely picky about what kinds of fats I ate. When I started to get cheap on that diet, going for chicken and pork and other sources of fat high in polyunsaturates it became a problem. I'm thinking now the key is not total carbs or fat,  but total polyunsaturated intake. I experimented with an ultra low fat diet partly because I realized that even the best sources of fat are considerably higher in polys than something like a banana or a boiled potato. So I cut the fats to see what would happen, and so far it's been great. I'm coming up on 2 years now. No cravings for anything with higher amounts of fat have materialized at all. They say the polys are essential fats, suggesting that if you don't eat them you'll die or get gravely ill. The evidence is uncertain that they're needed at all. They seem to be fattening and accumulate in our bodies with age. As body fat levels go up, the percentage of polyunsaturates in the adipose tissue also goes up. The only way that can happen is if you are eating them. Our bodies don't make them. If we do need them, I see zero evidence that they are needed beyond about 0.5% of calories, and pretty much anything natural that you can eat has at least that much.