Quote Originally Posted by CycleChic06 View Post
This is an idea that caught my eye. Everyone looks at dieting or eating right their own way, but I think looking at food like you "deserve" to eat it because you worked out today is the wrong way of looking at it. There have been lots of articles recently showing that people who excersize more tend to take in more calories than those who just eat healthy. As in, I ran an extra 2 miles today, I'm allowed to eat that cookie. There have also been discussions here about how many cyclists (or bike riders...whatever) tend to overestimate the number of calories they burn during a ride.

We need to move away from thinking of food as something we deserve and, as many women do, as a way to comfort ourselves, and more in the direction of what we need to sustain a healthy living style. Does this make sense? I'm not sure I'm explaining myself well.

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.

Anyway, just my 0.02.

I do whole heartedly agree that you should tailor your intake to your activity levels. On days you burn more, eat more. On days you rest, eat less. By being smart about where in your training that you consume your calories, you can avoid severe hunger pains, killer cravings and most importantly, bonking. (Now I just need to take my own advice! )