What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

20 September 2008

This is # 301

Yep, my last post was my 300th and I just now noticed.

So, we've been playing around with calories/nutrients/workouts/etc. For a while now. These last couple of weeks, I've been trying to get serious with balancing my caloric intake with... output, I guess? Whatever.

All those neat calculators you find all over the internet (and in your doctor's office, if you ask) are absolutely useless for me. According to all reliable sources, I should be taking in 1600-1800 calories per day, and about 2000 on my high-intensity running days. I'm afraid to even try the low end of that range, because with that many calories, I would gain weight so quickly it would be scary. I get all the women I know 5-10 years older than me telling me how their metabolism slowed down after 30. That doesn't help me, because I never had a fast metabolism. If it slows down much more, I won't be eating at all. :)

The best weight-loss results I have gotten have been on weeks when I've kept my caloric intake around 1200 per day, but since we're training for a half marathon, I'm a bit worried about taking it that low, too.

So, all that to say, last week I kept it around 1500 per day, except for the day I did a tempo run. I'll be stepping on the scale on Monday, so see how well it worked. I'm thinking right now that I'm going to plan my meals this week to be 1400-1450 per day (subject to adjustment if it turns out I lost more than two pounds last week-- ha ha!).

We'll see what happens next. It doesn't help that Chad needs almost twice as many calories as I do per day-- so I have to watch him eat. Grrr.

2 comments:

Timbra said...

i'm sure you've found it by now, but fitday.com is good for the calorie counting, cuz you can look up all the stuff that doesn't have a label on it, like meats, fruits/veg etc. mike sticks around 1500 and does well. good luck, weight stuff is frustrating but it's good to find the right balance for you. all your running is so inspiring, but not inspiring enough for me to want to be a runner too :)

Su said...

I'm already on sparkpeople, which has the same sort of thing. Although there are too many buttons to push.