Thursday, May 19, 2011

Over-eating

Lack of better judgement.  That's what let me get back on the scale after laying off of exercise for 6 weeks.  I'd gained 1% body fat and about 3 pounds.  Not a huge amount, but it's been a struggle to lose the last 7-10 pounds of fat.  I'm re-reading "Racing Weight" now, and that seems to help me regain focus.  It's a terrific book for any cyclist or endurance athlete.  I've been very impressed with it, and it certainly helps you understand what you, as an athlete, need to be doing.

One of the first statements in the book is a bit of self-marketing, but does have some interesting insight.  Most people want to lose weight because they want to look good or feel good, but an endurance athlete has the added goal of wanting to perform at a high level.  While our goals and methods are very different from the average person, we both fight some of the same battles.  The primary thing holding me back (and a lot of others) is the fact that high-calorie, low-satiety food is everywhere.  I can walk into a McD's with $5 and walk out with 1200 calories, no problem.  It takes me about 1-1.5 hours of hard riding to burn that off, strictly speaking calorically. (Yea, I made that word up).  But what nutritional value did I get from that?  And what un-necessary additives/preservatives/chemicals did I ingest as well?

This is less about being a food snob, and more about living well, and not feeling like crap after you ate some manufactured food product.  It's hard to eat well in this country.  But I think things are getting better.  It needs to be cheaper though.  How many low-income families are overweight because it's too expensive to eat well?  And then they are the same families struggling through medical bills because they are 100 pounds overweight and have diabetes and whatever else?  It's a vicious cycle.

So the intent of this post was going to be how I have a tough time walking away from food, and accordingly lose weight pretty slowly.  But then it turned into a social opinion piece.  Funny how our brains are wired.

Maybe I'll revisit this topic later.  But for now, I'll think about riding my bike.

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