Many of us are always on the lookout for the best equipment for our budget, naturally because we wish to get the best bang for our buck. While a lot of bike repair stands on the market are good, they are still not as good as others. For those willing to invest a little over $100 on a quality bike repair stand, there is the Park Tools PCS-10. This highly rated bike stand for maintenance and repairs is top-of-the-line in quality and functionality.

The Park Tools PCS-10

This bike repair stand is regarded by many owners of bikes to be a heavy-duty bike repair stand that offers stability. When it comes to bike maintenance stands, the most important thing to look for is stability, and this bike stand has it. The Park Tools PCS-10 may actually look rather fragile at first glance, but many reviewers have attested that the Park Tools PCS-10 bike stand is indeed very sturdy. A bike stand will need to be able to steadily prop up your bike in whichever way, when you do maintenance or repair work. Your bike and parts should not be in any form of danger of getting twisted or broken when this is done. The Park Tools PCS-10 has a “3-point leg system”, arranged in a tripod fashine for improved steadiness. In the event that you wish to do repairs at home, the PCS-10 is the bike stand tool for you.

Lifetime warranty

There are some features available to the PCS-10 that makes it superior to generic types of bike storage stand on the market. For one, it comes with a lifetime warranty that is unlimited. In the event that you encounter any problems with the bike stand and it needs repairing, you only need to bring it in, and it will be fixed or replaced. Covers for clamps of the PCS-10 can also be replaced.

Ease of use

The reason the Park Tools PCS-10 bike stand is the favorite of many bike owners is because it is easy to use. The clamp effortlessly locks in place with one quick motion. This is preferred by many over the screw-type systems available to most other generic bike repair stands. There is also a mechanism on the PCS-10 that makes it fast and easy to adjust its height.

Portability

In terms of design, the PCS-10 is very compact and simple. It is also collapsible, so you get to just fold it up and place it in the corner when it is not in use. The total weight of the PCS-10 is only around 25 to 30 lbs. This is a good weight for just the right amount of strength and stability, but not enough to be cumbersome.

1) Cycling to lose weight is a natural and fast method – it’s like cycling losing weight was a match made in heaven! You burn most of your calories not when you exercise but in your every day life, it’s called your metabolic rate. Those calories are burnt up just keeping you alive, and that rate can change. Heavy dieting will make you feel and act sluggish, and send a signal to your body to hang onto as much fat as possible because there must be a famine on the way. Instead, signal to your body that there’s no need to hold onto fat by eating a healthy diet, and getting some exercise in. When you do that exercise you get stronger muscles, and muscles need fuel. The more muscle, the faster you burn calories. And it becomes a positive cycle (‘scuse the pun)! The bigger the muscles, the more energy is burnt, the more exercise you can do, and that means more weight is lost if you control your diet as well.

Cycling burns calories like a furnace gets through coal, builds muscles, and is FUN!

2) Cycling is very social, which will keep you accountable. Go with friends. And when you talk with your friends you can talk about new bikes, distances covered, exploring and adventuring. Half of all my friends cycle someplace! Cycling weight loss is very social: in one small group of 6 of my friends we have lost a combined total of 12 stone…that’s one extra person!

3) Cycling to lose weight is highly motivational. Beating your own personal ‘bests’ in time; over a given distance; cycling for a longer period; or travelling further. My own motivation for losing weight was so that I could get up hills faster here in Lancashire! And now I am 2 stone lighter than when I started I can really notice the difference.  I am looking forward to losing the last stone and a half.

4) How often have you found yourself motivated to exercise, but the time commitment of going to the gym or even getting out the equipment is just too much hassle? Or maybe you just can’t find any cheap gym equipment to buy in the first place…or it takes up too much room. But cycling can be included in normal life. Go down the shops on your bike. Go to work on your bike. Even if you get more serious, it only takes an hour 3 times a week to benefit massively from losing weight by cycling. As you progress, you will be able to cycle harder, and that has an affect on your metabolic rate as it doesn’t just increase your rate when you exercise, but for up to 24 hours afterwards!  So unlike many exercises where you get diminishing returns, losing weight cycling is pretty much constant until you reach your ideal weight, and you won’t need to keep cutting massive amounts of calories because your loss has stalled, which will all go towards long term loss rather than short term.

5) Are you put off exercise because of the cost of getting started? cycling can be one of the cheapest forms of exercise to lose weight and get fit. If you already own a bike it might mean getting the local bike shop to tweak it up for you and make sure it’s safe (about £50 / $75). You could borrow a bike, or even hire one. Buying one is also cheap. Second hand you can pick up a cheap mountain bike for under £100, and the one I’ve had for over a year with only a couple of complaints cost me only £250, about the price of a gym membership. Only I now don’t have to pay for it! You don’t need special clothing either, but you may choose to buy some as you go along. And if you become a cycling enthusiast, then you have time to save up!

6) Lastly, there is no barrier to age or when you start. You can start cycling at any point in your life!

In summary

Road bike cycling to lose weight is naturally fast; it’s social; there are many ways to stay motivated; cycling doesn’t take lots of extra time; it’s cheap; you can start at any age.

Coming soon: a detailed step by step guide on how to lose weight cycling.  Make sure you grab the RSS feed to stay in touch.

Link to this post: http://icyclelite.com/cycling-to-lose-weight/

I wrote that I had problems with sleep and that the amount you sleep could influence weight loss – read this article.  But scientists also suggest that some of us might mean a little more than others.  As I will come to, personality also has something to say about it.  In this article I will share personal experience of my struggle with sleep.

What does that mean for those who are hoping to lose weight?  Feasibly it could mean that, when combined with my suggestion that lack of sleep causes weight gain indirectly, that if you need more sleep than others, and yet try to survive on less, you could be more prone to putting on the pounds.

My personal problem with sleep though doesn’t rest in my needing more sleep, I actually don’t like sleeping all that much.  Einstein apparently needed 11 hours, where as Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, needed only 4.  Churchill needed catnaps. but could keep going for days like that – he had a cot in his office.

Now I’m not saying that I can go with hardly any hours, but I can get by on 5 to 6 hours if I can grab an afternoon ‘power-nap’ of 15 minutes.  And if I can sleep as long as I want to, I still only sleep for 7 hours.  Whereas my wife can sleep for 8 or more quite happily.  And it’s a good job I can survive on that because I have an awkward part to my personality: I am an extrovert.  On the scale of extroversion, I am at the extreme end.

People don’t always understand what introvert and extrovert means, often giving them negative connotations of being ‘very quiet’ or ‘aren’t they noisy’ kind of labels.  Which is sad, because it simply is the western dislike of extremes.  It’s important to realise that one of the most important points of being introvert or extrovert is simply how they gain their energy.  For introverts their own company is how they recharge  - me time.

For extroverts they love being with people.  When I am with people I wake up.  But it has a real negative affect: if I go and visit anybody in the evening then I recharge, not the thing to do when you hope to sleep that night.  As a minister much of my life is made up of evening meetings, so if I have a late meeting then I can’t get to sleep sometimes as late as 2am! And then I’m still up early.

The result is that I can then end up collapsing as soon as I sit down in the afternoon, and I certainly don’t feel up for any exercise.  And if I have worked the morning, and have another evening meeting and can afford the time, I can sometimes sleep really heavily.  Thankfully although my day can be crazy with catnaps if needed, all my work gets done, even if it does occur at odd times.  But it doesn’t lend itself to getting on the bike, and getting off the pounds.

Now there are a few things that I do to try to reset, or at least manage, this condition.

1) Nap in the afternoon, not in the evening.  Then for only 15 minutes at the most.  Longer creates disturbed sleep patterns.  Sleeping in the evening is a bad idea altogether.

2) I can reset my body clock with my Elite SAD light box.

But in the end, it can still be a vicious cycle that ends in weight gain, not weight loss.

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree?  Have you had similar experiences?  Please leave a comment.

 photo credit: alancleaver_2000

It would be nice to say that we can do what we want, when we want, and not have any changes in our weight.  But for some strange reason, which is probably a combination of many factors and not just one, when we don’t sleep enough it is possible to gain weight.

I’ve put my own thoughts together as to why this might happen, and it would be good to hear of the experiences of others, and indeed if there is some proper research on it – I couldn’t find any.

I don’t sleep particularly well, and I struggle with my weight.  But then again, it’s my own fault if I stay up late and then get the midnight munchies – something that you should definitely do if you are looking to lose weight is to avoid such temptation.  Traditionally it’s because your metabolism slows down at night and you  don’t burn it but store it.  I think that that is untrue, and in fact what happens is you use up all your calories throughout the day, and then still go and eat late at night.  It’s the body’s way of wanting to stay awake.

My wife, on the other hand, could sleep for England.  She certainly prefers to be in bed by 10.30pm, and the alarm goes off at 6.45 am (I am usually up praying at 6pm – early morning start with the Boss…).  But if we look at our individual patterns throughout the day, I have less activity about my day than she does, even though mine is longer.  In other words her intensity of effort is greater I think because of her more rested body.

But it goes further.  I have noticed that when I am more rested I feel better, and have more motivation to do exercise – certainly in the winter you need that to brace against the cold and rain.

And then when you are actually out there, you can really feel the difference in the intensity of effort that you can apply to your exercise regime.  After all, recovered muscles mean more effort and that means more calories burnt so more weight loss.

Then there is the affect of tiredness.  You get depressed, which is a bad thing in the winter if you are already a SAD sufferer like I am.  That can in turn lead you to comfort eating problems.

So the summary to all this is get sleep: you exercise better, avoid the midnight munchies, and can side step problems associated with depression and comfort eating.

Now if I could only convince myself to follow my own advice…

 photo credit: kaibara87

Many people who are regular sportsmen and women find that even though they stick to a good diet year round, during the winter months they do gain a few extra pounds, only to shed them again the following season.  I have found the same thing, and it can be a bit depressing!  But take heart, because it’s not the end of the road.

Winter brings with it a few certainties:

• dark nights
• short days
• cold weather
• illness.

Our bodies have adapted over millennia to cope with these seasonal changes and, unfortunately for those of us living in a western world where we have central heating and work that lasts 24/7 and isn’t affected by sunrise and sunset times, it throws that natural rhythm.

Eating is how, I believe, our bodies have learnt to cope with those 4 points that I have raised above.

When there are shorter days we have should in theory have less opportunity to do work (hunting, gathering etc) so we might as well sleep.  Eating helps us to sleep.  However sleep in cold weather can be dangerous if you are a cave-man, without the exertion our body temperatures drop so we need to put on fat to keep us warm, especially if there is a risk of little food around.  Also, more sleep gives us the recovery to work harder when we do have daylight hours to work by.  So it’s a win win situation.

Unfortunately for us, our modern jobs don’t go away, we aren’t Neanderthals, and we don’t have a seasonally affected rhythm of life. So the opportunities to actually get out there and burn off that excess are fewer.  In other words our bodies say eat more, but the chances of getting rid of it diminish.

Then our metabolic rate slows – who wants to burn off that keep-you-warm fat if it’s going to keep you alive?  Better conserve it until the winter is over, thinks our evolved body.

And then lastly comes illness.  Illness is staved off with good food; and when you get ill you can’t eat the same, so again you need the fat.

What I am saying is that gaining a few pounds in the winter is no bad thing, as long as it isn’t  few stone.

There are a few things you can do.

• Keep to the diet – I always say the British Heart Foundation diet.
• Get an SAD light box because it helps to keep your body clock at the right time even when you get up a couple of hours before dawn
• Get natural daylight whenever you can.  Go outside in your lunch breaks
• Take a multi-vitamin
• During the party season, follow my suggestions on Party Strategies

And lastly, don’t stress about it.  A few pounds out cycling might seem as though all your hard work cycling to lose weight is for nothing, but it’s just your bodies natural way of keeping warm.  As long as you aren’t adding stones, the extra will drop off in the spring when you can hit the road again within 4 weeks.  Just slacken the belt a little.

 photo credit: Lord Jim

When you get a new bike for Christmas or any other gift, you might jump on it with great enthusiasm, only to discover quickly that it is uncomfortable.  This really applies to things like cheap mountain bikes and the like from stores which don’t specialise in bikes.  That’s because generally at a ‘proper’ bike shop they will make sure that it roughly fits you, even if they don’t do a bike fit, which usually costs around and extra £70 – well worth it if you ask my opinion, but only if you have spent over about £500.

But if it’s a gift, then you won’t have had that opportunity, so how do you set up a bike at least roughly so that you can ride it?

The key is to think in terms of stretch, flexibility, and contact points.

Stretch

Stretch too far and you will get pains in your back.  Set the saddle distance of the nose of the saddle from the handlebars stem about the length of your finger tips to your elbow.  Set the height of the saddle so that when you put the arch of your foot on the pedal at its lowest position your leg is only slightly bent – flexed is the right way of describing this.  Though you will pedal with the ball of your foot, measuring at the arch seems to work better for the quick and ready method

For more stretch slide the saddle rear-wards, and forwards for less stretch.  If you get neck pain or your hands are getting pins and needles then you are putting too much weight on your hands, so you need to slide the saddle forward.  The rough guide is to get the saddle as far backwards as you can but not so that you put too much weight on your arms.

Contact point: saddle

A comfortable saddle is essential.  Gelled saddles are nice.  For women a wider saddle is better for the sit-bones, but even men with a larger pelvis might benefit.  Racing saddles are thinner, and mountain bike saddles are wider, but who says a racing bike can’t sport a mountain bike saddle?

Contact point: bars

Mountain bike gloves and road bike cycling gloves aren’t just nice little extras.  As well protecting your hands in the case of cycle accidents, the padding reduces road noise vibration.  Though I haven’t heard of cyclists getting white finger – a particularly nasty syndrome which people who work with vibrating power tools – it can be a little unpleasant when you get off the bike and your fingers are tingling because of a nasty ride.  Glove help.

Larger tyres

If you get a hybrid bike, it will come with road tyres.  Whilst not as thin as road bike tyres, they still don’t have as much comfort value as wider mountain bike tyres.  So as long as there is space in the forks, which not switch out for something wider?  Certainly that will be better for winter cycling.  If you are concerned about speed, then rest assured that hybrids don’t change much below 15 mph no matter which tyres you have on.

 photo credit: emdot

Yes, we all love the party season. My personal joy is the mince pie.  Christmas party time is a nightmare for anyone who struggles with weight loss, and particularly when you have spent all year cycling to lose weight and then along comes all that gorgeous rich food.

Well there’s some good news and some very good news: you don’t have to end up with a waistline to match Santa’s just because it’s Christmas.

I’ve come up with a few different ways that you can look at your food without getting into a massive stress

Christmas food can be healthy – the turkey dinner

If you were to count the calories in a turkey Christmas dinner, it’s about 1000 calories.  Now that isn’t bad considering a diet of 2500 calories for a non-exercising person is the norm.  If you are active like a cyclist this will be a great start, and it leaves you your normal breakfast and the chances are after stuffing your face with stuffing, you won’t need much in the evening meal.  That said, where can you shave off without missing much?

Don’t worry about skipping the gravy, or the cranberries.  Equally go mad on any of the veg.  Bacon and pork sausage are probably worth a miss as between them you can glean back a couple of hundred calories, and if you can halve your portion of stuffing to a 50g ball, then you get back another 100 calories.  Roast of anything just adds fat, but if you must, keep the portion sizes on the smaller size.

But in the end, if you are watching your portions and sizes, then the mixture of protein, carbs and mixed veg is going to take you near to the recommended levels on the British heart foundation diet without any problems.

You can have 100 calories of whatever you want extra on the BHF diet

I think this is very important.  Since you can have 100 calories for free, then you can have your cake, and eat it.

Just not too much of it!

Red wine is good for you

Again, watch how much you consume, but there is mountains of evidence that even for top sports men and women, red wine is ok.  Perhaps some of those saved calories can stretch you to a couple of measures?

Using the BHF diet you can count in portion sizes, so there’s nothing embarrassing

Don’t stress!  One of the advantages of the BHF diet is that you can judge your meals by eye, and not by scales.  So when people ask you how much you want so long as you have the portion sizes in mind it’s pretty easy to say yes or no.  I judge portion sizes according to handfuls, apart from milk, protein and fats.  Fat is by the teaspoon (1 portion for lite, 2 portions counted for saturated fats, like butter).  Milk is per glass or cheese is by the matchbox size.  Bread is by the slice, potatoes by the tablespoon.  And proteins are by the size of a packet of cards.  Easy.

Do something active – something is better than nothing

Go out for runs, walks with the dog, or use the excuse of your new presents  to try them out.

Avoid extra sauces and the like if offered

This is the simple way of adding calories to your food that you just don’t need.  So don’t.

Avoid mince pies:

they have a massive number of calories

well…some of them

 photo credit: mdid

It was sad to read that a night ride cyclist has been convicted of causing death by careless driving.  See here for the full article.

Night ride cycle events are a common feature of the British cycling scene, from 24 hour events to early mornings, and late nights.  These are usually well organised affairs, and provided you light up well and wear good hi-vis clothing there aren’t any problems, other than the cold.

But this incident does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

I am concerned that just recently there has been more than ever bad press about cyclists involved in road accidents.  It was a case that people were being encouraged to get out on their bikes.  London bike scheme, and air pumps in London were suggesting a trend toward economical and environmentally friendly travel.  There has been a rise in the number of people who have been buying bikes, and whilst I don’t agree with the huge trade done by superstores in cheap mountain bikes because of the safety issues, at least more people are getting out there.

No, bad press has suggested that without cycle insurance there is a greater than ever chance that a cyclist will be accused of causing accidents and be sued, but unable to pay.  The reality is of course that there is more injury of risk to the cyclist than a car, and it is more likely the car caused the problem in the first place.

And then of course there is the issue of the cyclist who was convicted of furious cycling a few months ago, thankfully thrown out of court!  Basically he was an athlete in training.

The problem is that it is the fact that he was a cyclist that seems to be being given as the reason for the accident.  Not by Road.cc I hasten to add.

I can see people reading the article and saying that the chap shouldn’t have been doing a late night ride.  Such a ride would have caused the cramp.  Such a ride would mean he was too tired to drive.

But lets break it down a little.  Anything can cause cramp.  Sure, cycling can, but I don’t think we can blame only that.

And as for tiredness, have you NEVER driven a car when you were too tired to do so?

I think that the apparent cause of the incident should be separated from the facts.  It doesn’t matter if he was a cyclist or no.  If you are to tired to drive you should take responsibility for the fact.  If you have muscle fatigue then you need to ask if you are able to operate machinery of any sort.

In the end, night ride cycle events shouldn’t be outlawed, but I do think that the organisers should be putting together a warning pack suggesting taking a day off of work the next day to recover, certainly not driving a car.

Lets not tarnish the cyclist just because it seems related.  Remember that many cyclists are injured every week by car drivers who are too tired.

 photo credit: EUGENE HOOD PHOTO

Are there such things as fat burning foods?  I don’t think so because whilst some food will guarantee to put on weight, I don’t believe that there are significant results that can be achieved by eating so-called negative energy foods: more on that in a minute.

What I do think though is that if you get your food in the right balance depending on your sport – cycling, swimming in my case – then you are more likely to lose weight than if you just eat any old thing.

Negative energy foods?

Celery is a good example of this. And I am led to believe cabbage soup.  Cabbage soup diet anyone?  Urggh!  The thought is that the food you eat takes more energy to process than it actually contains.  But seriously, you are more likely to lose weight by just not eating.  And that means a slower metabolism which will slow your weight loss efforts.

Not to mention just that, you’ll feel awful too.

So what should you do?

Simply get your diet in the right balance.  The BHF diet does just that.  When I was weight training I was under the impression that I had to eat a lot of protein.  But the more I ate the more I found I put on weight, even though I was following the correct proportions and all the rest of it.

But now I am not weakening, but eat a far lower amount of protein, and more carbohydrate, than ever before.  Not zero protein, just a balanced amount.

In fact now that I am swimming I have noticed that some of the old shapes of muscle have returned from the days when I was weight lifting.

No extra protein remember.

And because of how it works, the more muscle you have, the higher a metabolic rate you have.

So, leave all the fat burning fads behind.  Get exercising, and just hit the free British Heart Foundation diet and it’ll do you everything you need.

 photo credit: [puamelia]

In my ‘day job’ as minister I suddenly seem to be coming across more and more people in my life who are struggling with cancer.  How I’ve really avoided it for so long I don’t know.

A friend died of cancer a couple of weeks back.  Another friend is struggling with Leukaemia. I am visiting someone tomorrow who was a close friend a couple of years back, then we kind of lost touch.  I am seeing them in a more professional role, but still as a friend: part of me looks forward to it, part of me dreads it.

Then I receive many emails for prayer for people who are being affected by cancer, most notably in my prayers and thoughts at the moment is 8 year old Isaac who has a brain tumour and hasn’t long to live.

It’s all very sad, and as a minister I have no answer to any of these.  Any answer would seem glib.

The BBC have reported today on the relationship between healthy lifestyles and cancer.

“Nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year – over 130,000 in total – are caused by avoidable life choices including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, a review reveals.”

Smoking is, unsurprisingly, the biggest killer.  And, this links also to those people who work with chemicals, I guess our bodies just aren’t built to cope with the toxins.

But surprisingly gullet cancer comes from too little fruit or veg.  I have to admit, as it gets colder I get more and more reluctant to eat fruit and veg, and end up eating only bananas and raisins, and tomatoes and salad whilst they haven’t shrivelled up in the fridge.  I’m just hoping the orange juice helps…

Considering my own Gran died of a combination of stomach cancer and other related complications I need to take care.

The bottom line is eat better, live better.  And it seems that losing weight isn’t a bad idea too, though I should say that if you are eating well, avoiding smoking, and taking exercise then the result is that you will lose weight anyway.  It’s like you get the first bits right and the actual target follows.  Losing weight, in the end, is simply a way of measuring the result.  But don’t let that be your target necessarily, congratulate yourself on a day of doing the right thing for your body.

But I’m still left with the sadness that so many people, such as Lance Armstrong, do everything right and yet still end up with cancer.

I pray that one day a solution can be found to this disease which affects so many lives.

Thing is, even as a minister the only thing I can offer is hope.  The day when we can say there is no more sickness, no more death, no more dying, no more crying.  This is what I believe awaits those who follow Jesus.  Is healing possibly now?  Yes, I believe it is.  I have seen and heard of more healings by God than ever that are happening even now to these friends of mine – though let it also be said that I know of people who are not healed; and I believe it is important that those who pray for others for healing also should encourage people to go to the doctors.  We work hand in hand with the medical profession, not in place of them.

And sometimes things end in death.

But there is still hope.