I’ve made a commitment that today I start counting my calories and eating better (you’ll know why tomorrow). I did buy a food scale this weekend and have messed around with The Daily Plate so that I can start tracking my calorie/nutrient intake on a daily basis.

Right now my daily calorie intake is set to 2013 calories. This takes into account my age, height, current weight, activity level outside of cycling, and my goal to lose 2 pounds per week. I’m certainly not going to bore you with what I’m eating each day but will provide any insight or lessons learned I have.

I Need To Get Smart

I am so dumb in the area of nutrition management as it pertains to cyclists. I know snippets of info here and there but there is so much info out there that information overload can be achieved in about 30 seconds. Stuff like hydration, supplements, when/what to eat before/during/after riding based on what type of ride it was, etc. I’m probably going to do some research and experiment a lot and see what works while keeping track of my calorie intake and losses.

Creating A Meal Plan

I want to move to a point where I plan out my meals a week in advance. That way it will make my shopping/cooking easier. I thought this might be easy but I’ve found out that it isn’t. I’ve found some 2000 calorie/day meal plans on the Internet and may give them a try (or at least portions of them). At least initially, I think I may just stick with weighing/counting what I’m eating and see how that goes right now. Today I have to pick up some measuring cups.

If any of my readers have recommendations, advice, or experience in these areas I’m all ears. That includes book recommendations.

Feature image courtesy of Beth Rankin.

I’ve been very truthful in that my diet is horrible. Have I tried to eat better? Sure but I always have problems with eating too much and eating the wrong stuff. I knew it was a problem but was too lazy to fix it. I made some half-heart attempts but never put anything permanently in place to correct the problem.

This is further mind-boggling because I knew that I needed to be counting, or tracking, my calories in order to solve my weight problems. So why don’t I do it?

Why Don’t We Count Calories?

Is it because we’re lazy? Maybe but I think the biggest problem is because we think it’s too hard. We’ve all seen the books available that show nutritional information for particular foods (calories, fat, carbohydrates, etc.). You have to look up your food, figure out how much you ate, and then write it down in whatever you were tracking it in (legal pad, moleskin, or perhaps excel). Then you had to add up everything and see how you were doing. Now you needed to figure out your balance of carbs, fats, and proteins. Good luck!

It Doesn’t Have To Be Hard

These days there are online tools (both free and paid) that let you do all this. They have big databases of pre-loaded foods with all the nutritional information already entered. All you have to do is figure out how much you consumed and the rest is done for you. Some of these online tools even track goals (weight loss per week, total weight loss, goal weight, etc.) as well as your exercise. They’ve taken all the hard work and made it easy.

I’ve used Fit Day in the past but was never really sold on it. Their database had a lot of food in it but you still had to enter a lot of stuff manually. Maybe that’s why I quit using it. Two days ago I was on Livestrong.com and found The Daily Plate. I looked at it but didn’t sign up. Then I read over on Jason Kearney’s blog, Out Here In The Middle, that he used The Daily Plate. so I headed back over there today to sign up (for free) and see what it was like.

I’ve only experimented with it a little bit but already love it. It pulled up my brand of oatmeal right away so I started putting in the rest of the things I’d eaten for the day. It tells you how many calories you’ve eaten for the day, how many calories you have left to eat based on your goal (for me it’s losing 2 pounds per week), and a nutritional breakdown. It also lets you add how many glasses of water you’ve consumed for the day. It’s got a ton of features I haven’t even explored yet.

Needless to say, I like it a lot. I’m going to give it a go, see how it works, and write a more detailed review later.

You Still Have To Measure

These online tools are great but in order to make them work we still have to measure how much we’re eating and exercising. For those of us cycling we have our trusty cyclocomputers to tell us how far and how fast we’ve ridden. What about food? We guess right? Wrong!

I’m just as guilty as the next person when it comes to measuring food intake. Some items are easy (1 packet of artificial sweetner has this many calories). What about that big bowl of noodles last night? Or that container of chicken I had for lunch? Or the taco dinner at your favorite taco joint. When left to do our own guesswork we always underestimate. Especially when it comes to food and counting caloric intake!

How can we, I, take our weight loss seriously if we can’t be honest with ourselves on how much we’re eating? The answer is that we can’t. Period.

That’s why I’m buying a food scale today.

Are You Counting Calories?

I’ve included a small poll below to see how many of my readers are counting their calories. Do you do it manually using the old book method or do you use one of the online tools?

Leave us a comment below if you have any good tips or recommendations for counting calories. Or maybe leave me a comment because you love my blog so much.

Vote Now! I guarantee there will be no hanging chads!

Feature image courtesy of Alan Cleaver.

Last night I had group ride training again and I did something new. One-leg drills. These were pretty tough and I could really feel it in my legs. Here’s how it went down.

After my five lap warm up on the 0.8 mile loop the group leader has us do a single lap riding with both feet clipped in. About halfway through that lap there’s a parking lot where he had us pull off and do five figure eights for cornering drills. Then we finish that first lap with both feet clipped in. For the second lap we unclip one foot and ride one-legged for a full lap. The third lap we repeat the first lap. On the fourth lap we ride one-legged for the other foot unclipped and for lap five we repeat the first lap again.

I’ve never done anything like that and it was pretty though on my quads and hams. After those five laps we had a discussion about our spins during the one-leg portions and what we experienced. A few of us (me included) were experiencing surging and slack at the top of the upstroke. He attributed that to us not properly using our leg on the upstroke and told us to be more conscious of using the entire pedal revolution. Makes sense to me.

Next he had us do 3 laps individually – the first slow, the second hard and the third recovery – while maintaining as good a line as possible. The loop we ride has two very good seams in the concrete that lets us basically ride the line to help us. I seem to be able to do this very well because in our paceline sessions I always get complimented on how well I can ride a steady line. Maybe they’re just being nice…lol!

For the last five laps he had us get in groups of five and start a paceline with each rider taking a one lap pull and then falling to the back of the line. Our group worked pretty well together although I admittedly need more work on cornering in a paceline.

Overall I thought it was great training and got in 15 miles in the process. My legs were feeling it this morning due to those one-leg drills.

As I write this I’m watching the Tour of Romandie coverage on Versus. I’m blown away by the conditioning of the riders and how fast they can ride. Equally impressive is the countryside there in Switzerland. Hard to believe how green the fields are. Just awesome.

I took Friday evening off from riding so that I could do some work on my bike and be fully prepared and rested for a hard Saturday ride. I planned on getting up early on Saturday, heading out to White Rock Lake for an early morning ride and, in the words of Phil Liggett, “suffer like a dog”. At least that was the plan.

Friday evening I did something to my bike that was long, long, long overdue. Get my point? I don’t think you do. I mean something like 8 years overdue. You see, 8 years ago was the last time that I think it could have been replaced when I had my bike overhauled and the brake cables were replaced. I’m talking about replacing my handlebar tape.

I had never done this myself but wasn’t afraid to try. I watched the video over at Bicycle Tutor and did it with no problems. The feel after I was done was amazing. I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to do it. I also gave everything else on the bike a good once over and it all seemed in order.

I got up early Saturday morning, had breakfast and headed down to White Rock Lake. I knew something was amiss when I started seeing orange cones at the entrances to the parking areas along with police offers. I stopped to talk with one of the officers and he said the lake was closed for the race….like I knew what ‘the race’ was. I could see some runners with numbers on their jerseys so it had to be a running race (yuck!) but I could see a few cyclists out there riding. I tried to find another place to park but they had everything blocked off. I finally gave up and decided to head to the .8 mile loop where I’ve been doing my group ride training. That’s when the rain started.

And it rained almost all day. There was drizzle, lightning, thunder, gully washers and wind. You may have heard about the Dallas Cowboys practice facility that collapsed. That’s probably about 20 minutes or so from where I live. There was no way I was riding on Saturday unless it was on the Ark.

Saturday night I put my culinary skills to use and decided to give the recipe I saw over at Cycling Tips a try. It’s super simple and turned out great if I do say so myself. It’s linguine topped grilled chicken, avocado, tomatoes and olives. There’s a picture of the dish to the right.

Sunday morning dawned overcast but it wasn’t raining. It was chili too at only 58F. I suited up and headed out to the lake. In the parking lot I was putting my bike together when a runner went by and said, “You’re brave riding today.” I asked why and he said because of the wet roads. I said I need to get it in and he responded that that’s the right attitude. I agree.

I headed out and within about a half-mile noticed a big problem. The huge amount of rain we had gotten yesterday had caused the lake to swell overnight. The water wasn’t a problem because it had receded but the debris it left behind was. I’m talking big tree limbs, small limbs, slush, and trash. Huge amounts of trash. I couldn’t believe the trash. Totally unreal. There were three of four spots where this debris covered the trail and you were really taking a chance riding through it. I did with no problems but could have easily dumped myself too. The picture to the left is of the spillway at the South end of the lake. It’s hard to see but the water was seriously moving over the spillway and throwing up a good spray and a lot of noise. Totally cool.

The rest of the ride around was no problem but I decided to only do one lap so I didn’t have to mess with the debris again. It was a short 10 miles but tomorrow is group ride training day. Looking forward to that. And suffering like a dog.

I’ll admit it. I know virtually nothing about nutrition. Unless you let me count the fact I know that the more I eat the bigger I get. Over the past week I’ve been trying to remedy this problem by reading quite a few articles on cycling nutrition and trying to develop some kind of plan to help me reduce my tonnage. Call it good timing but a couple of days ago I received in the mail the May 2009 issue of Bicycling. I read with interest the article on Big Fat Lies.

After reading this article I’m convinced my diet is totally wacked. Not skewed or slightly off-kilter but totally wacked. I’m pretty sure I’ve been eating the wrong kinds of carbs (high starch) for years and it’s probably a direct contributor to my current size. That and no self-motivation to take care of my body.

I began my research by going over about 20 or 30 articles on Bicycling.com that dealt with nutrition. I copied down thumbrules I found as well as any good recipes. When I return to Dallas next week I’ll be using FitDay to track my daily food consumption in an effort to have a better balanced caloric intake.

As is usually the case, I’ve come up with more questions than answers and am going to post some here in an effort to generate some responses from some of the more experienced cyclists and nutritionists that read my blog (both of them….actually, they might be the same person which would be only them). Here goes:

1. How closely do you monitor the exact portion sizes? My gut feeling is that if you want to be accurate you have to measure good.

2. Do you prepare meals in advance? Tips would be awesome.

3. Where do you get your recipes? Are there any good cookbooks for cyclists or that follow the article in Bicycling? I may look at the one they talk about in the article entitled Flat Belly Dietby Cynthia Sass.

4. What balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are you shooting for?

5. Do you have to take a supplement to make sure you get enough protein?

Over the years I tried to make light of my weight. I even had a saying that went like this, “I can’t stay fat and sloppy unless I eat.” How bad is that? I’m trying to make an effort to turn this around and would appreciate any info you can provide.

To be honest, I’ve never paid much attention to what I eat before or after a ride. Why? Because I always found it so confusing. Everybody has opinions on what you should and shouldn’t eat, when you should eat it, how much to eat, and what percentage of carbs, proteins, and fats it should be. It’s serious information overload in my opinion. Unfortunately, I think I’ve paid for my inattentiveness to my intake and need to start giving it the attention it deserves.

Up until now I’ve done almost all my bicycle riding in the mornings before breakfast. Now that I have nothing to prevent me from riding in the evenings I plan on doing my riding after I get home from work. That’ll put me on the bike about 6:00 PM and getting off, depending on the length, anywhere from 7 to 8.

The big question I have is what should I be eating that’ll fuel me through the evening ride. It needs to be something simple to fix and fast to eat. How soon before riding should I eat? I leave work around 5 so should I eat before leaving work?

What about post-ride? I’m leary about stocking up on food after the ride if I won’t be eating until 8 PM or so.

Please leave any comments, advice, personal experience below. If you have a link to a good no-nonsense article on the subject that would be great too.