This post next to the last post pretty much explains my life – always confused in my desires to overeat with my desires to be healthy and lose weight and train smart. Maybe this is how every athlete feels? Hell, maybe how every person feels!

My training is increasing. I had at one time planned to write out my general workout plans, but those are available more or less on my strava (https://www.strava.com/athletes/bfahringer), so I have an excuse for my neglect (I am now embedding a strava widget in my site).

Discounting core/stretching, I did 19 hrs last week, 8 hours the week before (I went to Pittsburgh for a bachelorette party and was in no state to workout.), 16, 21, and 11 hours the weeks before that. Most of this has been endurance-zone work, with a little recovery after longer rides. I am not really sure when in the world I should start doing efforts, but I feel I have a while given that I don’t really care about my performance until cross season. I am going to try to keep up the endurance, but the track started up last week, allowing me to get a few efforts in. The track is a crit-style training series held on a NASCAR track’s road course, run for maybe 1-1.5 hrs every Thursday in Loudon, NH. The incorporation of efforts into my workout, and even the idea of a “race” that I don’t want to totally suck in, is making me rethink my weekly schedule as well as nutrition. When can I be hungry?

In The Feed Zone Cookbook Biju Thomas and Allen Lim assure us that “As a general rule of thumb, when you’re in a period when you’re not training or are training very little, it’s okay to be hungry. When you are training, be a little hungry. And when you’re getting close to a major competition or event and when you are competing, make sure you aren’t hungry.” Can we define a period here? I am on a lighter day, but tomorrow is an event. But not a major competition. I DON’T WANT TO BE HUNGRY!!!!

Here is what I am doing for myself. It is a thing I think many of us do periodically: I am counting calories. Ugh, I know. I am using the phone App My Fitness Pal to keep track of my meals and workouts. It will count not just calories, but also keep track of fats, proteins and carbs. Putting your workouts into the app can be dangerous, as it will often over estimate how many calories we burn, and it will make it an even swap, calories burned should be offset. I don’t think athletes can abide by this rule entirely, instead, we need to account to for what we ate before our workouts, what we are burning and taking in during, and how much we eat immediately afterwards.

My (nutrition) goals:

• Never net more than 1800 calories per day, but try to eat less than 2500 per day unless I am going out for over 4hr endurance or 3hr with efforts (Thursdays). Then I can allow myself more sweets and carbs, if placed during or immediately following the ride.
• Get at least 96 grams of protein a day (this is based on my height and weight [5’5″, 145lbs]). This will require a protein shake after hard or long rides, and consciously eating protein-packed snacks.
• Eat quality, not quantity. And be okay with throwing something out if I can’t resist stuffing my face with it.
• Be a little hungry. (I am starving right now, this is terrible.)
• Don’t get ridiculous with this. Stay sane. Writing about this is not helping.

Staying focused and balancing all of my goals, not just nutrition, may prove to be difficult as I start juggling running, cycling, racing, mountain biking, eating right, trying to recover, all without a coach, but I will do my best for now. Every person is different, and I just have to use (educated) trial and error to learn my body while training it.

Here’s to being the best we can be!