A new Lesson Learned

Ok so I have been having the odd issue with being tired. I am working out 6 days a week and trying to stay active all 7. But truely training 6 days a week. I suffered from a large crash again or so I think this is what it is. I am not a Dr. By any means. but I am an Engineer and I love data and use it to figure out everything. I went out this past sunday for a 60 km bike ride with my friend/mentor. I had a hard ride average 25.6km/hr and fought a cross/head wind on the ride out. On the way back this same wind switched and was pushing against us a bit too. I got home after just over 2 hours of riding and I was in pain, from lactate I think. The first hour was horrible but after that it was all good.

My evaluation of this ride showed several things I think I did wrong. I am so focused on Weight loss as well that I believe I am not fuelling myself properly for endurance days. May as well lay it out. I ate light all day, including a supper that had 3 oz of steak, tons of grilled veggies which I love and half a sweet potato. At this point I only had about 1500 calories in me for the day. Now where did I go wrong I have been averaging 1800-1900 calories a day for a negative intake and weightloss. I went wrong in several places or so I think.

1. Rides, swimming, running are all starting to become longer
2. I am still eating on this negative 500 calorie a day thought process for weight loss.
3. I am eating a lower carb diet maximum 0.75g carbs per pound of body weight (diabetic reasons and thought process)
4. Rest days. I have only had 1 true rest day in 20 days.


These are the main reasons I suffered from what I am going to call a bonking issue the Monday after the big ride. Lets look at this last week leading up to this from an engineering geek stand point. To maintain my body weight I need 17,500 calories, I took in about 14,068 calories for a week. Thus generating a 3432 calorie differance. This should be 0.95 of pound of weight loss based on the Mayo Clinic stating it takes 3600 calories to burn a pound of fat. So I am already eating for weight loss of 1 lb a week at a min. This also assumes basil rate and no exercise at all. This is just to live based on my body weight. Now the week leading up to this I also burned 1500 calories from running, 1726 calories from swimming and 4500 calories from riding. For a total of 7726 calories burned from working out.

so it looks like this

Need 17,500

Consumed 14,068
Work outs 7,726
whats left 6,342

total difference = Need - whats left

equals 11,158 negative calories for the week.

So this is a great thought process for weight loss and should have added up to 3.18 lbs of weight loss this last week. Well I had 1.5 lbs of weight loss.

What do I get from this geeky math and data that I love. I get Data. I have also worked on educating myself and in the beginning this math worked. However I lacked and still lack physiology information. But Have come to understand that for weight loss fat burning is good. However for working out and endurance the Body can not synthisize fat fast enough for fuel on longer work outs and endurance work outs. During these work outs you can not fuel on fat alone. So this led to a HUGE crash out for me this last monday. I was tired at work all day, miserable moody didn't get much sleep. I tried to run on monday night, was happy I did my first 10 min interval on a run. I was 2.5 km into my run when I was off my walking portion and started to run again and I felt I just couldn't do it. I didn't feel like I had the mental capacity or the physical, I could not stop sweating even while walking. I gave up and walked home pissed right off, having been able to do 4km runs last week with no pushing or struggling.

So lower Carb has also depleted my leptin and glycogen storage as far as I can tell and It has finally caught up to me. this is sort of the second time it happened now. I have also only taken a break or a true off day once in the last 20 days. On Tuesday I was still tired as heck but also hungery as heck and craving carbs for the first time in months. I thought it was depression of bad workouts and I mentally needed to recover. I also gave in to the carbs and bumped up my carb intake yesterday and calories. I felt so much better as the day progressed. I even went to swimming last night and swam 1500 meters (I think, I lost count).

As for the rest. I am going to give myself tonight off to rest and try and recover a bit more. As a suggestion from a few people I may look at backing off my training every 4th week and work at like 75% of my work out pace/distance etc. So that I am still active. However this week I am taking off Wed and I think I am taking off friday as well. Saturday is my first Mini Triathlon, my very first one so I am excited and nervous and excited and I need th rest to be ready for it.

Well I hope that explains some stuff and I can use it to look back on. One think I am learning more and more about nutrition and weight loss and training is the math all looks good on paper but this is not a pure science for anyone. We are all different and it takes different things and different ways to achieve goals. The best thing to do is build baseline data, gather information, work with knowledgable people and learn to try things, document them and see how it really effects us. Also know that as you become more fit and do more that your diet and workouts will have to change as well along the way...

Now if I would only listen to my own advice I would do well.......