It's cuz you need to eat!

A tablespoon of peanut butter on toast is not enough to stoke up the fire. Then you're burning up all those calories on the ride.

I wore my heart rate monitor on a 3 hour ride and it said I burned up 1400 calories. Okay, so that means I burned up almost my whole allotment of calories that I'm supposed to eat that day! Say my breakfast was 350 calories, that banana on the ride was 110, the granola bar was 160--that's 620 calories of the 1500 I'm allotted for weight loss.

That leaves me 880 calories for the rest of the day PLUS the 1400 calories I burned on the ride. My protocol for weight loss is to have a calorie deficit of at least 100 calories a day, but it is most often 500 +/- calories with exercise.

1400 + 880 = 2280 calorie deficit after the ride
2280 - 500 = 1780 calories left consume with just half the day left

I think I'm entitled to that danged post-ride cheeseburger!

Karen