Monday, February 15, 2010

(Not) Training for the holidays

Last year I did a lot of bike commuting in October and November leading up to the holidays. I gained my usual 10 pounds during those holidays, but I'd lost more than 5 of those pounds beforehand, and the holiday pounds came off by the time baseball season got into its full swing.

This past year hasn't worked out nearly so well. I didn't lose weight going into the holidays, and instead of gaining 10 pounds between Halloween and the day after New Years, I gained 15. I hit the heaviest I've even been, 10 pounds more than I've ever weighed before. And even though I'm bike-commuting more now that the weather has gotten drier this past month (about 100 miles on the bike so far this calendar year), I've really only put in a single long day on the bike since New Years.

Yes, I have to bike more even though biking is too mechanically efficient to make a good weight-loss sport unless you put a lot of effort into it -- the bike/bus commutes I usually do aren't really strenuous enough unless I do it more than my usual twice per week. It would also help if I cut back on the calories, heh.

So, my project for the solstice is to lose those 10 extra holiday pounds plus 10 more, which should get me back into somewhat better trim, though if the truth were fully told I could stand to lose 50 pounds more than that to get back to the kind of shape I was in when my lovely wife married me.

So far I've lost three of those pounds. My wife thinks I look like a sausage in my day-glo vest, though she puts it more kindly than that.

Wish me luck!

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