Saturday, May 25, 2013

Training the belly

I have started to count calories on the bike. As mentioned before, I have never liked 'counting' calories. Or watching what I eat. Or restricting my diet. When I do, it feels like I have OCD.

My coach recommends at least 300 calories an hour consumed, which just seems like an enormous amount of calories for one hour. I typically burn just over 500 calories an hour on the bike. I will be on the bike for probably be on the bike 6-7 hours.

Let's do the math, shall we?
300 cal consumed x 7 hours = 2100 calories
500 cal burned x 7 hours = 3500 calories

For those of you who aren't following this, even with that intake, that's a caloric deficit off of the bike.

I now get why I must account for every calorie. I have had to 'train up' for this kind of calorie intake on the bike. At first my stomach just couldn't handle that much with the exercise and would give me some fun time gasses. Or even better, the fun time crampy mccrampersons. The ones that make you need to poo. Now. Not later.

I rode 64 today in just over 4 hours, and I'm happy to say that I consumed just over 1200 calories. No gasses, no immediate needs for a toilet. I have trained the belly.

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