Winter

During the summer, that courtyard is an awesome place to sit and read a book over the lunch hour. Now, well, it's an awesome place to sit and read a book if you're a Eskimo. Winter's tough on many for about a billion reasons. It's cold out, so exercising outside is pretty much out unless you're a little nuts. The cold weather makes you want to eat more warm foods, and drink more. Lack of outdoor exposure makes everyone just a widdle bit on edge. And, you know, it's cold.

Every. Single. Year. Winter has been tough for me, and I've inevitably put on pounds - this year I've vowed (LIKE I'VE DONE EVERY YEAR OF COURSE) ((LOUD NOISES)) not to put on weight over the winter and - ideally - to lose some. I've got lots of error on the books, so I'm trying to learn from it. Here's some things I've done wrong:

• Pushed too hard to keep riding through the butt of winter using poor/incorrect equipment
• Pushed too hard to get in x number of hours at the gym
• Either completely deprived myself during the holidays, or completely went off the damn reservation
• Took a hiatus from calorie tracking because of the above
• Took a hiatus from weekly weigh-ins because all of the above
• Been a wuss

On the first count let's face it: getting cold stinks. It stinks, arguably, worse than getting overheated in the summer. You know what's worse than that? Falling on ice. So this year I'm just taking it easy on that stuff until I get studded tires - I'm not repeating the mistake of pushing too hard through too crappy conditions only to get discouraged and not do it at all. Similar goes with the gym, I'm not going to do the whole "well I ride outside for two hours a day, so I should workout indoors for two hours a day". Yeah, that gets old quick - the inside of a gym isn't as appealing as mama nature.

So here's where it all comes to play. Weight loss on paper is brilliantly simple: it's all intake vs burn. Track everything for a couple weeks, and you'll know pretty quickly what you are burning for what effort. Saturday and Sunday I didn't workout at all but that's OK - I also didn't eat as much as I do on days when I'm working out (and wasn't nearly as hungry). If you eat 2500 calories/day on a summer day when you're riding two hours a day, you could dump it down to half that on a sedentary day.

Full circle, just track. Track even on bad days. Track even on those days where willpower goes completely the hell out the window and you hit up the fast food joint like a sailor with his first paycheck on shore leave. Why? It keeps you accountable and it lets you look back and see exactly what went wrong where. So you had three pieces of pumpkin pie and half a turkey - you'll know in the future what that goes for. Either that, or just avoid it entirely if you have that willpower - and can move beyond the whole "I'm being denied" thing. It's up to what works for YOU.

So anyway, my plan for the winter is to just keep at it. I want to lose 10% of my body weight before March 1, which is pretty conservative but you know what? It's better than what I've done every. single. winter. up until now.

More ride pics as soon as either I get some studded tires, or the snow goes south for the winter.