Quote Originally Posted by GLC1968 View Post
I agree 100%. 'Deserve' is a word I am trying to eliminate from my nutritional vocabularly! As an example... When I started riding, I was already in very good shape. I wanted to lose about 8-10 lbs to get lean (down to 17% BF), but I was still quite fit. I have been riding for 2 years now and instead of losing weight, I've gained it. I'm now 15 lbs over where I started and 99% of it is because of this mental game I started playing with myself. "I just burned 2000 calories today...I deserve to eat what I want". Wrong. Whether or not my calorie burn is accurate is irrelevant when I am eating 3 times what I am burning because I've told myself I deserve it. It's a vicious cycle that I need to break.
I can relate to this. Last year was my first year cycling and I was hoping it would help me drop some weight, even though I was already in pretty good shape. I gained 7 pounds. After a 4 hour ride I felt I could justify eating a huge plate of greasy mexican food. I remember the day I first rode 50 miles and "rewarded" myself with a plate of fettuccine alfredo, one of my most favorite things to eat, which I hadn't had in years because of the guilt factor. I was eating way too much to compensate for what I was burning.

On the other hand I agree with RR that if you say "I will never eat x", then you crave and obsess about it. At least I do. (Mmmm, cake). So I managed to avoid the fettuccine alfredo for about 6 years, which is surprising. It just would have been a good thing if I didn't eat the entire plate when I let myself have it.

I'll be purchasing a heart rate monitor within the next couple of months to get a better idea of how many calories I'm actually burning. Calorie/food tracking helped me get a handle on how many calories I'm consuming. And at 1500 - 1700 calories a day with all the excerise I get, I must have the world's lowest base metabolic rate. I like to say I defy the laws of thermodynamics.