Peaches and Corn

I have nothing of particular interest to say today so I'm going to make sure you all go out and get the following 2 locally grown things as soon as you can:

1. Peaches
2. Corn

It's high time in Jersey for both of these, so do yourself a favor and go buy some. I just had half a peach that Nat picked yesterday and it was outstanding. Not as good as a nice soft stick of butter, I'll grant you. But pretty damn good nevertheless.

Sometimes life can be overly complicated. But it doesn't need to be. Eat a peach!

Continued Photography

Much less blogging on this side lately as I've started a training blog/thread on the mtbnj site which you can see here. Anyone who might be interested has already seen it I imagine. Jake wants team stuff on the site so I said I would give it a shot for 6 weeks as the season wound down to see if people read it.

Well 6 weeks turned into 7 as the season changed a bit. The 50k was canceled which pretty much puts a wet rag on the season as a whole. I no longer have a target event to shoot for. Instead I'm looking to do any number of H2H races and then call it a year, where "any number" is 0-4.

I don't know what that makes this blog. Probably more readable since I won't be going on about training details and rides so much. It also makes it less frequent which is fine since it was getting mundane and verbose anyway. That gives me more time to read, something I've been lax with since I got this BB.

Back up to 187 today but I hit 186 over the weekend, which was my lowest weight since June 10. This "slow and steady" eating is working out well so far. As of today I am 7 pounds less than last Tuesday. At first it was a little tough but since then it's gotten really easy. I'm quite frankly shocked at the small amount of food I need to eat to be full. I also decided to stop counting calories on the weekend because it's just a royal PITA especially with all the goofy Asian food we eat. Since I went the weekend without my normal 3 pound weight gain that's a good start. I'd like to get to the point where I don't feel the need to count calories at all. I've been doing it for over a year now and it's become tedious. Plus it doesn't do me much good if I'm not able to turn that daily calorie count into weight loss. This approach is more realistic because I would say it represents a long-term sustainable change. I'm going to bean count during the weekday for now with the hope that I can scrap it entirely by the end of the year.

ChrisG

"Excellent stuff, Norm. Thich Nhat Hanh has written quite a bit about the idea of "eating mindfully." I totally buy into it. Shinto Bug Ingestion, I'll have to look into after dinner.. -ChrisG (Google is being a pain in my ass and not accepting my password)"

Awesome, I'll need to check it out. A quick search reveals 2628 books written which reference Thich Nhat Hanh. Any chance you could pinpoint which book you're referring to?

The funny thing is that I'm able to integrate my eating now into my life. For instance I can take an hour to eat a bowl of pasta and still be a dad (feed child, clean kitchen, shave head, etc). Sometimes I get to sit down and just relax but other times it doesn't work that way. So the trap most people fall into (gorging while sucked into the rat race of life) is totally the opposite with me. I used to stop the rat race to gorge, then go back to the rat race, then gorge later.

Two things I note in the last week that are of interest. First, food tastes differently. Some things taste better, some worse. I now see that a bagel with cream cheese really doesn't taste that great. It's the sensation of being full that I liked most in regard to eating bagels. Toast it and put butter on it and then you're talking! I also find chocolate about 12 times more satisfying than before. Just letting a piece of chocolate melt in your mouth is fantastic.

The second has entirely escaped my mind already. The train is pulling into Hoboken now so hopefully it comes to me before I publish this post.

Oh I remember. This slow, steady, and mindful approach seems to be spilling over into my daily life. Things seem less tragically important and I seem to be slowing down in all aspects of life. Paradoxically, this does not spill over to my bike riding, where I seem to be letting it go and riding like a madman more than ever. It's a really good combination, fast and slow, yin and yang, spaghetti and meatballs.

Maybe I've found my "thing", the magic bullet which gets me from shrinking fat guy to bona fide medium build. I'd like to see the mid-170s and right now I think that's a reality. As of yesterday I had dropped 8 pounds in 6 days which we all know is bullshit waste and water. Regardless, I look and feel better already, plus I have 8 fewer pounds to lug up those hills. Even at my weight that's over a 4% loss in body weight in 1 week. I have an orange Nautica shirt which is a test of how large or small I am. In the past it's been a slightly snug shirt that fits fairly in the slimmest of times. Yesterday I put it on and it fit better than ever. So even though my weight is 4 pounds above my lowest ever, I've probably put on some muscle weight through the year and I'm as small as I've ever been right now.

That's pretty exciting for this fat guy.

I'm a Photographer!

In the ever present struggle to be less fat I have adopted the (presumably) Buddhist approach of chewing my food slowly and taking time to eat all my meals. I admit I choose to call this a Buddhist approach because it sounds cooler than just saying that I'm taking my time eating. But in some ways it is actually more than that.

I started this week on a tip I read on the board in a thread about weight loss. After I did, it immediately struck me that both Nat and I eat far too fast. Our excuse would be that we have a kid, but the reality is that we probably ate like this before Julia. Now that I'm slowing down I watch Nat (and my mother on Wednesday) more or less slaughter their food. It's amazing what slowing down will do.

They say it's better for your digestion and it raises your metabolism but for me the results need to be more tangible, and they are. First of all I enjoy my food significantly more when I take time to taste it. It's amazing how we associate food with how full it makes us as much as how it tastes. The second effect is that I'm just as full, or more full, with less food.

Another side effect is that it changes meals from an all-encompassing experience to a more integrated experience. Without realizing it, I believe many of us totally focus on finishing the food and block out our surroundings. Putting down your fork and slowly chewing, and tasting, your food makes the whole experience more enjoyable, more integrated with life.

My peanut butter and jelly sandwich took almost an hour to eat yesterday at lunch. That sounds excessive and maybe it is, but I just took a bite and slowly ate it instead of consuming it as fast as I could. The inordinate amount of time was due to the fact I was doing my normal thing at work and eating a sandwich on the side as opposed to stopping my life to eradicate a sandwich. My experience does not jive entirely with the article linked above. When I focus on my food entirely, it has a much shorter shelf life.

Now, I know many people do something once and proclaim themselves that entity through and through, men in particular. We buy a camera and say we're photographers. A lot of us have been groomed by the fast pace of the Internet, where ADD rules the roost. The irony (or paradox?) isn't lost on me. After less than a week I've jumped on some new (to me) fad and all of the sudden I'm a Buddhist Eater, a notion diametrically opposed to the whole ADD nation? But then did that ADD Nation Syndrome lead to my doing that?

I know, I know, next week I'll be into Shinto Bug Ingestion but for now this is my newest approach in an effort to drop pounds. So far so good, though the weekend isn't here yet. This morning I was 190 which is good, since I've dropped the excessive weight from last week's foray.
Aside from slow eating I do plan on riding my bike this weekend. Plans are for a 3 day tour of the Labor Day weekend, all off-road if that's possible, or desirable. It's looking like Sunday will be a loop of Chimney Rock with Chris and then possibly a second loop after that. I'm considering some high-end stuff tomorrow on the road bike or a hard 2 hours at LM. Monday will be dictated by the other 2 days. That could end up being my big mileage day instead.

Next week I'm going to offset the days a bit. I'm going to ride Wed/Thu then something light Saturday and the Chain Stretcher on Sunday. I'm going to try and be a bit more fresh for this one. The course is supposed to be more rugged so I'm looking forward to it.

Beer is a Poison

No biking today. Enjoying a well earned rest day and saving up for the weekend. Feeling good today though a hair tired and my legs are happy to be off. Tomorrow I'm leaning towards an early Allamuchy ride of 3 hours, no stopping if possible. I put the Blue Grooves back on this morning so I may be pre-loading an obstacle there. Sunday is up in the air. I'm supposed to ride with Woody but I don't know if that's going to happen. He's pretty AWOL these days and I want to get another brisk 3 hours in if possible. Maybe Ringwood? Round Valley? Road? Don't know right now.

I said I wasn't going to link these anymore but it's a good weekly recap. Here are my 3 ride links for the week:

Tuesday (22.08 miles, 2128 vertical, 15.9 average)
Wednesday (22.07 miles, 2124 vertical, 16.1 average)
Thursday (19.64 miles, 1139 vertical, 16.4 average)

I'm interested in coming up with a ride metric where I use vertical/mile and my average speed to calculate a score to compare the rides. But I don't think it's accurate enough to bother pursuing. Something like (feet/mile)*average would yield totally faulty numbers I think. There must be something like this "out there" already. I just need to look for it. I'm sure I need some sort of normalization of the vertical/mile number. Maybe divide that by 100 since that's a sort of gold standard. But then if I'm just dividing every 'score' by 100 the ratio stays the same. Useless rambling.

Something else of interest is the ride map from the race last week. This is what mine looked like:



This is what it should have looked like:




Click the image for a link to the motionbased ride for each. The second is one of the MASS series guys named Rick Bullotta. Note he averaged 1 mph faster than me which is a pretty big difference. Is it me or is that full race loop one convoluted course?

Someone recently asked me if I would change anything about the past year of training and I said not really. I changed my mind and the one thing would be to do one very long mountain bike ride per month. That's probably an important element that's been missing in my training, enough 30-40-50 mile mountain bike rides, or for that matter any at all. My longest non-LM ride was 21 miles at Allamuchy a few months ago. It's hard to show up for these events not having ridden substantial miles very often and I don't really count the road though it works in a pinch. Starting now I'm going to add that to my training. In the next 3 months I have at least 3 events which fill this gap with the Darkhorse 40, the 24HOA, and the 50k (yes it's still 50 at this point). After October I need to keep that going through the winter, a task which could be a chilly proposition come February.

Third Party, obviously itching from the lack of drama recently, dropped me a line yesterday saying that the new MTBNJ colored titles make the member list resemble a gay pride flag. I actually LOLed at that. Good work, Third.

FatCat

"Eat less - yes, that's really all it. It's all mathematics and ball bearings these days and eating less calories is, of course the answer. For me it's always bee true weight I keep off too. I graduated RU 235. Now I'm 205. I'm a sloth tho. I just eat less and hardly touch booze now. Such is life. Now if I wasn't such a sloth then who knows. Anyway, you were right about Avatars. I know it has nothing to do with your blog but it's my dime."

Beer is evil in this equation. I stopped cold for the first 3 months of the year and drink maybe 1-2 a week at this point. Other than the 7 last weekend and the Vinny weekend I haven't had more than 3 in any one sitting. That's probably what has kept me from blowing up into the 200s again. That and not drinking a cup of hot fat and eating the head of Alfredo Garcia every meal.

Avatars - yeah, it was worse than I thought actually.

Walter

"Yes, I agree, food is an enemy of mine as well. Guess that explains the 10 pounds in a little over a month. Isnt this riding stuff and working outside in 90 degree heat supposed to counter that. I dont know where I go wrong, maybe the pint of ice cream at 10 pm isnt as ggod as I think. Again, great read, thanks."

Glad you enjoy. I guess it's a myth that you can eat what you want when you ride so much. Even in the weeks when I ride 10-12 hours a week it doesn't work that way. When I'm going that hard, I tend to need a lot more "bike energy" such as pre-ride drink, calories on the bike, and post-ride drink. You're often adding 900 calories right there. At that point it becomes the difference in weight loss versus performance gain.

Oh and the ice cream doesn't help either. And polishing off your daughter's leftovers? Bad news man.

Steve

"a lot of my comments on your blog have been through mtbnj pms, but feel free to post them over here if they are relevant, which most are not."

I delete my PMs so I don't have anything on hand. But I'll keep that in mind. Does that include when we trash people behind the scenes like making fun of Terren's big ass and Jake's ballerina lessons?

Jake

"dear norm: i too suffer from the 'fat guy on a skinny bike' syndrome. it is not entirely my fault. 'tis genetics at is finest. see, us mid-european block types are built like barrels...kegs, if you will. low to the ground for the purpose of not bending down so far and stout for carrying heavy objects over long distances. unfortunately, these traits were fantastic for my grandfather who farmed in slovakia but not so good for the modern-day bonefish who needs to be lean to climb, fit into the new "european" sized clothing and escape hungy barracuda. so as you can see, i also fight the uphill battle since i'm like a XXXXXXXL in this new european garb and end up looking like a circa 1988 materail girl.."

Good show man! I always appreciate a good ramble of words. Yeah some people battle genetics for sure but you can get lower than you think. It's just going to take a long time. I think 10 pounds a year is about the most you can expect in a maintainable sense. I remember everyone used to tell me I "shouldn't" be under 200 pounds, that it was too light. Silly.

In the American version of clothing sizes I'm a medium. How does that work? I'm not a small guy yet I'm a medium? That seems crazy. What do the 150 and 160 guys wear? Petite? When I stumble across European sized stuff medium is like a handkerchief.

ChrisG

"Oh, I wish it was as easy as it might appear. I am hungry ALL THE TIME and my diet, particularly during the week, is befitting some sort of monk. I was actually 10 pounds heavier when I was in my late teens and twenties, playing soccer and drinking way too much. I love food no less than anyone else, I suspect, but I also dig trying to go fast on my bike, so I'm willing to make the sacrifices. As simple as that equation is, it's really the core of it all. On a side note, I've had excellent results using generic hydrocortisone ointment on saddle sores. And is it just me, or is "ointment" a funny word?"

I'll check out the hydrocortisone. Ointment does sound a bit silly. Kinda like a snigglet.

I'll take your word for the food thing but man you're thin. Seems like you have some genetic advantage going on but I will admit your eating habits do seem pretty healthy. I went back to the MTBNJ discussions on meals and looked at your posts. I do remember being impressed at the time. As a recap for the readers it was stuff like turkey on whole grain, whole grain crackers, yogurt, whole wheat pasta, veggie burgers, cous cous, pierogies, baked beans, and red meat only 1-2 times a month. Breakfast was more of the same. And you don't contribute to the beer thread very often which means you follow one of the basic rules of training which is: Beer is a poison.

My suggestion on oatmeal. Mix it dry with yogurt and maybe some raisins and sliced almonds the night before and let it soak. I feel that cooked oatmeal gives me digestion issues where the uncooked seems to work better for me.

I've basically cut out cereal at this point, except for a half cup before my early morning rides. It turns out to be too much simple sugar added to the diet.

Great comments everyone! I suppose it helps when I'm more interesting and throwing out expressions like "fat cunt". Notice how Terren remains silent on the matter? He feels the pressure, especially after he sees todays FGI. Come on, I'm not really going to parade around your house naked. Well not much at least.

Friday's FGI: 188
The weekly FGI average: 190.43

Good numbers to end the week. My friday weight is -6 from last Friday and the average is -2.57. This seems to verify that your body stores waste products and water for some unknown reason. I'm not starving myself by any stretch. Just eating sensibly again as well as not eating everything in sight.

Looks to be a hot and muggy weekend. Get out and ride early, drink lots of water, and remember to enjoy it all.

Banana Taco

I love food. I really do. There's no other way for me to represent it than to profess my love for calories in all sorts of shapes and sizes. If it has calories, chances are I like it. If it has a lot of calories, chances are I like it a lot. Of course that explains how I was able to get up into the 280s in another life.

Thus I battle, something I've been doing on and off for probably 8 years now. And really I've pretty much won. I'm just about 5'11" and weigh 190 as of this morning. I have a reasonable muscle base, more like a linebacker than a cornerback. So I'm in decent shape, especially compared to the average American though admittedly that's like comparing your 40 time to a 2 legged groundhog's.

Then enter biking, where power-to-weight ratio means oh, oh so much. So 190 is no longer acceptable. I want to be lower, lighter, and stronger. I want to climb better. When it comes down to it there's no good reason to lug all that excess lard up the hill. And the battle continues.

One of the coolest tricks I have to lose weight is pretty ingenious really. I'm going to share it with you because my loyal readers, all 5 of you, deserve nothing but the best. I want to help all of you get where you want to be, weight wise, as easy as you can. So in the interest of being a benevolent blogger I'm going to share. My magic secret is this. Eat less.

OK maybe not that ingenious but unfortunately for the loads among us that's the straight reality of how we need to lose weight. For guys like ChrisG and Woody, they know nothing about these battles. For the rest of us it really comes down to eating less and getting used to being hungry from time to time.

The problem is, food tastes so damn good. Cooking, chewing, swallowing, and being a fat lard - all of these things just feel good. Few things feel as good as chowing down on a big fat block of cheese, at least short of going with a full wallet to a place like Chopsticks in Philly. But that's another post entirely.

Let me get to the real point. When I eat less I feel better. Sure there are times when I get hungry and my stomach wants food even though I know it doesn't really need it. But most of the day I just feel better. I sleep better. I ride better. I have more energy. Overall everything just feels better.

Speaking in a highly scientific manner, I feel like I get "gummed up" when I eat too much. Often times the calories I cut are useless carbs which seem to have an adverse effect on how I feel overall. No matter how good that bagel tastes, it's going to end up eating you in the end, like Pizza the Hut.

I've been using fitday.com for a while and here is my weight chart for the last year:



Interesting that I seem to go in 6 month cycles where I bottom out then bounce back a bit. Actually this graph resembles an old carriage road running down a steep hill. Have you ever ridden a steep hill that has a bunch of tiny little flat areas? Those are from the horse-drawn carriage days, when the horses would need a flat area to stop and rest. So any road with those is an old road. Or you really live in the boonies.

I think this is fine and doesn't represent the typical rebound many people experience where they end up heavier in the end. Hopefully this particular rebound is over and I can make a solid push to the 170s now. I really want to see 179 on the scale this year. Of all the goals I have that would be the most impressive to attain.

Terren

"What's up fat guy. Daily measurements of my weight are pretty useless. I swear to you that one day last week I weighed 168.5, after a run, but also after a quart of water and a sandwich. The next day I weighed 176. I did however smoke over 4 pounds of crack in between, but you would think that you exhale most of that out."

Oh you fat lying cunt you're not 168.5. I crapped an alligator the other day and it sang the Star Spangled Banner in Farsi. True story!

I like weighing myself every day. It helps me see a pattern and prevents me from slipping too much. My Friday weight is often what I go by to see how I'm doing overall and my 7 day average on Friday is sort of my "official" weight.

176 eh? I guess I could threaten that. It might be really hard but I'll see what I can do. If I get close expect me to call you up and demand you get on the scale immediately. I'm pretty far away now but you just never know how it's going to work out. Nothing would be sweeter than to weigh less than you for one day. Well, ignoring the Chopsticks stuff again. If that happens I might be forced to parade around your house naked for the day with pompoms and shit.

Jake

"i spit water on my keyboard when i read the "this morning i was 212 comment" while thinking "no wonder norm wants me to bring hotdogs to the 24 HOA!! :)""

Oh I see you get pleasure from my being a big fat pig? I see how this goes. Man let me tell you that you really have no idea what screwed up things you want to eat during a 24 hour race. The later the race goes on the more the solo contestants are like a bunch of pregnant women. Hot dogs are the least strange thing on the menu.

"I said banana taco you shit! Where's my fucking banana taco?"

Steve and Jake, it could be a real fun night. Of course smart money is on most of us being in camp most of the night and just hanging out and so on. But you just never know how it's going to turn out. More than likely we'll have fun with it all.

So food. I like it. One of these days I'll have to scan a picture of myself from 8 years ago. You'll be appalled and disgusted to say the least.

Today's post is focused on food and weight but there is bike stuff to talk about. My Kentucky saddle sore didn't get a break today because I'm going with the "hammer it home" weekly routine so I can take next week off with good conscious. Actually it got a little better yesterday so I'm optimistic it won't engulf my ass in the coming days.

I put on my diaper shorts with the extra thick padding and set out for a more tame loop around the swamp. I didn't have the same power as yesterday but the route was flatter so I kept a faster pace. It struck me on today's ride that this 'tweener' pace probably doesn't do me any good at all. By Thursday I'm sufficiently spent that I can't go hard and I don't have enough time to lay out 3-4 hours of steady tempo to help my endurance. But as weight loss aid it works great so it's not a total wash.

Today is also more validation that less food means more energy. Usually I'm really dragging by Thursday but I woke up at 4:49 and was on the bike by 5:11. I have to imagine that since I sleep better I don't crash as hard when I skimp on sleep during the week. Hopefully tonight I can get a solid 8. Right now at work I feel really fantastic. So in this case, less is more.

Thursday's FGI: 190.