Tuesday, Wednesday & My New Plan

I went for my first outdoor bike ride yesterday. Bruce and I rode with Team Godzilla on the Tuesday night ride. I would have to pick the windiest night of the freaking whole world for my debut ride. Oh well, it was a good time. Bruce's dad rode with us for a while also (he's also in Team Godzilla). Oh, here's a funny thing: a guy peed while riding his bike in front of me. (I don't think he realized I was behind him). We had just gotten past the part of the warm up part of the ride, where the group starts to break up and everyone goes at their own paces, and I notice this guy in front of me doing what I thought was pouring out his water bottle, as he's riding along. "That's odd. Why is he pouring out his water?" I thought.

Bruce pulled up along side of him and asked "What are you doing?" In this funny knowing voice.

"Oh, just lightening the load a bit." He said. That's when I figured it out. The guy had just pulled down just the top of his bike shorts and aimed it off to the side. Anyway, it was funny. I'm glad I didn't get close enough to get squirted by his "water bottle."

We rode 19 miles, straight into the wind. It felt like riding up-hill the whole way. It was tough. I think we averaged in the 15s mph. That doesn't really count though, I'm sure we would have been a lot faster without it.

Today I ran 5 miles pushing Justice and Clayton in the stroller. That was tough! Average speed 6.0 mph.

Okay, here's the plan: Timpani, and the whole protein thing has gotten me thinking about calories and fat, and how much I should consume. I've got about 10 lbs that I want to get rid of. (Since I'm 5'9", 10 lbs looks like a whole lot less than it would on say Liz). I've never in my life tried dieting, so I'm no expert, but I'm giving it a try. I've been googling around trying to figure out how many calories, fat and protein I should eat a day. Taking into account my gender, height, weight, activity level, and the fact that I'm breastfeeding, I think to maintain my current weight, I should eat around 2200 calories. Therefore, I'm subtracting 250, in attempt to lose weight. I'm allowing for 30 percent of my calories to be from fat. So, my goals are 1950 calories, 65 grams fat, and 90ish grams protein. I divided those figures by 4. Three of those sections are allowed for a meal; the fourth is divided again and spread out for snacks. I think if I follow that, and add some weight lifting, I should be doing good, and the weight should come off (hopefully). My earlier way of thinking (which I knew was flawed all along, but I just chose to ignore the fact), was to just look at the fat content. I tended to eat less than the 65 that I'm allowed (which is good), the problem is that I eat the crud out of low fat, but calorie high items. So, I ended up consuming too many calories. Everybody knows that if you eat too many calories, your body just turns them into fat. As for links, jeez I don't remember all of the places I've been to. Just google it. I took an average the info I found from many different sights. Here are just a couple that I found useful: about calories about protein and a calorie calculator. One place I read that the best way to cut calories was to burn 250 more a day, and to eat 250 fewer, therefore you are minus the recommended 500 for healthy weight loss. Okay, I'll shut up now. Wish me luck.