OMG, I Do Not Eat Well

Steffen (Love To Eat Right) Schairer, asked me what my typical daily food/fluid intake looks like.

Frankly, I thought it was fairly good until I really sat down and thought about it.

Breakfast: Hot tea and a pop tart or eggs with English muffin.  Then, I always have a Starbucks latte.

Lunch: If at home it will be a grilled ham and cheese on rye.  If out, it will be my worst meal of the day – a sandwich or burger.  I eat at home about half the time.

Dinner: If at home, I eat well and have pasta or rice with chicken and veggies.  If out, I generally do fairly well, although tend to eat beyond being full.

Snack: Hard cheese and crackers, cereal or something crunchy (popcorn or chips) is common.

I rarely eat drive-thru food.

So a typical day of fluids is hot tea, Starbucks latte, soda at lunch, two or three bottles of water.  I also drink 2 or 3 cocktails in a typical evening.

Post exercise, I will often have a glass of chocolate milk within 30 minutes and a proper meal within two hours.

In my mind, I try to maintain a 60% carbs, 30% protein, 10% good fat ratio.  Looking at the above, I do not.  My metabolic scale says that I can consume 2,180 calories per day and maintain weight.  Judging by the above and the extra 18 pounds being carried, I am over that nearly every day.

It is clear that the 500 to 750 calories from the alcohol has to be reduced.  It is no wonder that I have become a big fattie.

Steffen, what is your advice?

Everyone else, how are you doing on your daily nutrition?  You may not want to, but perhaps you should write it down.

I Wanna Go Fast – My 2011 Plan

I previously posted my fitness goals are for 2011.  Check them out here: Todd’s Goals

How the heck do I race faster and lose weight at the same time?  This is actually a bit of a conundrum, as the best way to lose weight is many long training sessions at low aerobic intensity.  To go fast, I will need more intervals and speed work at or above my threshold.

I also want to really focus on my core this year.  In part, this is necessary to help me firm up the gooey center and a stronger core will help me go faster.

Coach Jackie Miller, of Britfit Coaching, is helping me design a plan which will incorporate core strengthening and speed work with those longer endurance efforts.  Speed comes from power and power = the endurance of speed.  It’s all about the magic formula baby.  Longer slower training sessions builds endurance.  While, intervals and weights build speed.  Put them together right and whammo, you go faster.

I have always said that losing weight is simple.  Just stuff less in your face and move your ass more.  We’ll see how that goes.  I can definitely improve the quality of my nutrition and eat a bit less.  One step is to try to stop eating every meal until I am past full.  It’s a bad habit that I need to break.  Steffen will you help me Love To Eat Right?

Jackie is also an expert at Functional Movement.  Having had several serious cycling injuries and concomitant surgeries, my muscle balance is seriously out of whack.  Jackie will have her work cut out for her to straighten this out.

The past two years have been tough on my body.  As I near 50 my recovery takes much longer than it used to.  Bad luck has only been partially reversed by medical miracles.  Frankly, I am in poor condition compared to where I have been and to my expectations.  2011 is about reversing this.  I wanna go fast.

How are you going to meet your goals?

Pondifference and Consternaculation

Yeah, I have been talking about my personal plan and goals and such a long time that even I am sick of hearing about it.  However, there is something very effective about working diligently on these and, more importantly, committing to them in public – such as with this blog.

After much pondifference and consternaculation, I am now prepared to share my 2011 personal fitness goals.  Here we go:

I Wanna Go Fast – For the past three years, I have focused quite a bit on long triathlon and running races at the expense of speed.  Repeated injuries have also kept me from training hard for blocks of time.  Being slow on the bike is especially not acceptable to me.  I want to run a PR half marathon and a PR a sprint or olympic distance triathlon. I want to ride with the A group on Thursday night.  I also want to race the 56 mile bike on a half-ironman in 2:33 or less.

I Am Tired Of Being Pudgy – Age, lack of discipline, stress and other forces have combined (perhaps ganged up on me) such that I am 18 pounds over my ideal race weight of 188 pounds.  I hereby contend that I will lose this and return to fabulous from flabulous by the end of summer.

I do have a plan as to how to execute on the above and will put that down here in the next day or so.

Have you thought about and written down your 2011 goals?  Got a plan how to get there?  Care to share either?

 

Thermajock: The Strangest Product Ever

OK, this is probably the strangest product ever.  I was fairly certain that this was a joke, but I called the customer service line.  This is real.  Check out Thermajock.

Yeah, ladies, occasionally the guys get cold.  The spandex, arm warmers, vests, leg warmers and such leave certain parts dangerously exposed with one layer of thin spandex.   I can actually see how this product came about.

We don’t get a lot of dangerously cold weather here in North Carolina.  But, every so often, there’s those days of 15°F temps the triangle is chilly enough to freeze the guys. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something that kept the little man downstairs ultra-warm and cozy in the cold, but was easily removable as the temps increased. Ergo…Thermajock.

The ThermaJock is like a fleece stuff-sac for your male hardware and has two fastening straps than allow adjustment to fit any athlete. It’s double strap fastening system allows for maximum comfort and retention, without having to over-tighten either strap which could restrict blood flow and sensation.

These devices are one size fits all.  And, yeah, this next image is from the Thermajock website.

Guys, if you are running or riding in the cold this may be a great answer for you.  Ladies, this may be a product to help your man avoid a very embarrassing situation in cold weather.