Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I woke up early this morning, right at sunrise, and the first thought through my head was I'm so lucky to wake up to all of this.  I could hear the mourning doves cooing, the finches singing, and other birds joining in to welcome the morning. No car noise. No people noise. Just birds. After getting in my morning walk with Ado, and after feeding him, I jumped on the bike. The wind the first few days this week was awful. 20-30 mph with gusts to 40. Not much fun to cycle in, so this morning, with the wind out of the west at 9 mph, I decided a ride was in order. Thirty hot and sweaty miles later, I rolled into the driveway. I had to laugh when I looked at my stats. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to go 15 miles out. It took me 45 minutes to go the fifteen miles back. The whole time I'm cycling into the wind I keep telling myself it'll be worth it when I turn around. And it is so worth it.  I'm averaging 30 miles each ride at this point. Not bad for only having a good...

I got to thinking today about some of the changes I've made with what I eat, well, more like don't eat any longer, and that led to thinking about the amount of calories in a cola. Which led to how many calories I had been drinking when I was consuming a 16 ounce cola each day. Every. Single. Day. I pulled out my handy, dandy calculator, punched in the numbers--240 x 365--and my jaw dropped. 87,600 calories. I then divided 87,600 by the amount of calories in a pound. 25. That's 25 pounds worth of calories I was consuming each year while I was drinking colas. Talk about sabotaging myself and my desire to improve my eating habits. Part of me kept saying, "Oh, it's okay. I exercise every day, so one cola a day isn't going to hurt." Yeah. I was duping myself for a very long time. Now, into my third month of being soda free, I feel like I've taken a huge step forward with my journey to better health. While giving up sodas may not seem like a bi...

Without a doubt, I am a calories in/calories out junkie. The high I get seeing the amount of calories I've burned during a ride or during a walk/jog makes me giddy. And this evening, when I pulled out the Garmin to check my mileage, I saw I'd already reached 900+ calories after only 2.28 miles (I think my Garmin was playing with me; I really don't think it was accurate). However, just for kicks, I'm going to go with it and say BAMM! lovin' the numbers. By the time I was finished with the 5.5 miles, the calories out showed 1674 (again, I think my HR monitor and Garmin were in cahoots over this one). Thinking over what I ate for the day, my calories in isn't much more than my calories out. As an athlete, I know this isn't a good way to go, but as a woman who has a fear of underarm flab, back fat, and a spare tire, the calories out equaling or surpassing the calories in brings me peace. You'd think that with everything I've read about nutrition over t...

My little bonk the other day made me re-evaluate a couple of things: my workout schedule and my eating patterns. I thought I had the workout schedule figured out in such a way that it would fit nicely with my work schedule. The working out in the evening followed by a workout early the next morning, though, just isn't the best plan. In addition, I was only eating the usual three meals a day. With the increase in energy expenditure, I need to eat more and more often. I was still going by my 1500 calories a day, which is okay if I'm not doing a whole lot. Most days, however, I'm using around 500 or 600 additional calories, meaning I'm really only getting anywhere from 900-1000 calories a day. My body is saying, "JK, stop being a knucklehead! Eat, damnitall, eat." I ended up taking Thursday off. I wasn't physically tired after work, but I was sleepy tired. I went to bed early that night to try to make up for recent lost sleep. Thursday was also my first day...