With my training cut back this week, allowing my body parts to recover from the Half Iron race last Sunday…and in fact from the season of training so far this year…I’m reminded that I need to get back onto the calorie counting thing to keep from packing on the pounds.
In ‘normal’ training weeks I’m burning 10-15,000 exercise calories every week…so that gives me quite a bit of room to enjoy great food, fines wines and creative craft beers without gaining any weight…at 3-5,000 exercise calories during recovery weeks, that means 7-10,000 less calorie burn in the ‘bank’, and since 1 pound = 3,500 calories, if I kept eating and drinking at ‘normal’ levels, I’d gain 2-3 pounds a week…pretty staggering.
So I pull out my online Food Diary and start recording everything that I eat. The first thing that I typically see when doing this, is how I _really_ need to watch the little stuff…like a handful of almonds…or even an apple…if not, I can end up by 4:00pm, with almost no calorie ‘budget’ for dinner.
…and in either event ‘fine wine’ and ‘craft beers’ go out the window…just no room for them.
…and I go back and read a lot of my earlier ‘nutrition’ posts that I wrote during the recovery from Ironman Florida in November of last year, to help reinforce the good eating habits that I _should_ always be following…but become critical during down time.
…and if I’m _really_ smart, I’ll use the tightened calorie focus to actually lose a few pounds by the end of July, before ramping the training back up to Ironman levels…we’ll see how that goes 🙂
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