Counting Calories Counter-productive?

It's been about 7 months since my last post. I was cruising along, weight relatively stable between 185-190. But I should have been dropping the pounds... I was riding about 550 to 600 miles per month in September, October and November. On top of that, I was running and swimming, as I thought I might enter a sprint distance triathlon in the fall. I was counting calories about as closely as I could. I should have been dropping pounds, but instead, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I put on about 10 pounds!

Most of us gain weight through the holiday season, but I had to figure out what happened. In November particularly, I shouldn't have gained any weight, considering that I was counting calories throughout the month. What I discovered is that with all the food available over the holidays, I would go for a ride or run and figure out that I burned, say 1,500 calories. And instead of sticking to my normal eating routine, which was virtually impossible during Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would say to myself, "I burned 1500 plus the allocation of 1500 for the day, that gives me 3000 to munch on" and armed with that dubious rationale, I wasn't so careful about the dinners, parties, etc. I figured I had lots of calories to spare.

It's hard to quantify the number of calories in a home-made meal or a meal in a restaurant that isn't a national chain. Calorie counters like Livestrong or My Fitness Pal, just can't have every possible combination of dishes in their database. So I had to guess. And it seems like I guessed wrong every time, because before I knew it, I was up 10 pounds by first week of the new year. It was even worse, because my latest physical, which I did in early January gave me a clean bill of health and it somewhat vindicated my habits.

In a sense, counting calories was actually counter-productive as it made me complacent about calorie intake. I'm now out of that mindset where I "reward" myself with food after a big calorie burn. I no longer think, "I just burned 800 calories, I can go have a Smash Burger." Instead, I'm trying to have the same volume of food, no matter what my workout calories are. If I feel hunger because of the workout, then I grab a little snack instead. I have to be more careful during a workout that I don't under-nourish.

My goal is to be back at 180-185 pounds by the end of April, and the beginning of "serious bike riding season" aka the climbing season.

Counting calorie burns

I've figured out how to more or less accurately track calorie intake with the help of livestrong.com. Just as important is accurately (again, more or less) tracking calorie burn. I think this is the key to any weight loss program. Without knowing where you stand on a daily basis with respect to how many net calories you take in, it's impossible to quantify your progress. Before I did this, I couldn't figure out why I got stuck at 240 pounds for so long.

There are various ways to do this. There are devices that you wear all day and night to track calorie burns. The problem is wearing the device 24 hours a day is a bit tedious. Not to mention that I'd probably obsess about every single calorie and spend way too much time checking calories during the day. I think for some people this may be a good way to go, particularly if the person doesn't really have a workout/exercise program to go with a weight loss program.

What I really wanted to do was to try and calculate how many calories I burned on a bike ride or run, and get reasonably accurate figures. I checked out many calculators available on the web. Most are based on your weight, the time you spend on a particular activity and sometimes even your average heart rate during that activity. Because of the general nature of these calculations, they are really only a guess as to what you might have burned during that activity. Most of the time, I discovered that the web based calorie burn calculators would overstate calorie burns. For example, when I did the Tour of Palm Springs Century, these calculators figured that I burned off well over 10,000 calories (It should have been closer to 3,500 for me)! If I had based my caloric limits on this, I'd be gaining weight instead of losing it.

Some of the burn calculators take into account your VO2 max (see below or click on the link) if you know it. A calorie burn is then calculated based on your average heart rate. These calculators are much more accurate than the general calculators that only calculate on weight, age and time of activity. Oftentimes, the calculated calorie burns with a known VO2 max calculator will come in at half of the ones using more general criteria.

To get decent accuracy in calculating calorie burns, you need at least a heart rate monitor (HRM) during a workout activity. Even more accurate would be a power meter, but they're expensive and probably not worth it if all you're doing is figuring out calorie burns. Over the last couple of years, I've used various Garmin GPS units, more particularly the Edge 500 and Forerunner 210, Polar units (FT-4 and RS300) and the new Motorola MotoActv. These units have the ability to constantly calculate calories during a workout based on your heart rate, instead of relying on an average heart rate. The HRM is key though; these units will generally indicate burns 2x higher without than with a HRM.

The first thing you'll notice when you set up one of these units is that you don't burn as many calories as you think. For an average person, any of these units are fairly accurate, and my research indicates accuracy to 10% to 20% is common, as long as you use a heart rate monitor. Comparing calorie burns with a web calculator that takes known VO2 max into account, on the average, these units can return a calorie burn about 60% less.

VO2 max is a measure of your body's ability to transport and use oxygen during a workout. In other words, it's a measure of how physically fit you are. Calorie calculations in the aforementioned units are usually based, among other things, on VO2 max, your age, Body Mass Index (BMI) and your heart rate during exercise. All of the HRMs I tried would calculate and "estimated" VO2 max based on age, weight and heart rate parameters in order to arrive at a calorie calculation.

You can stop reading here, if you are more or less average. If you're more like me and your heart rates tend to be slow, read on...

The problem for me was that because my heart rate tends to be slow, these units would calculate really low calorie burns. (Relying on low calorie burns can be dangerous... You'll end up taking in far fewer calories than you require for a healthy weight loss)

The HRMs I tried determine your calorie burns by estimating your VO2 max and calculating a calorie burn based on that VO2 max, your heart rate, Body Mass Index (BMI), age and gender among other things. The Garmin units in particular use an algorithm developed by a Finnish company called Firstbeat that also uses Activity Class into account (particular only to Garmin HRM units). The Firstbeat algorithm predicts your VO2 max according to a formula (Jackson, et. al.). For someone like me, 57 years old with a relatively low heart rate the calorie calculation comes in way too low:

VO2max = 56.363 + 1.921xActivity_Class - 0.381xAge - 0.754xBMI + 10.987xG

Activity class: 1-10 (although 7, 8, 9 & 10 are supposed to be equivalent; however it does seem to change the results)
BMI=weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters.
G=1 for males and 0 for females.

In my case, my predicted VO2 max was coming in at around 29, using my correct age (57), BMI, etc. My VO2 max is supposed to be around 47.3. To "reverse engineer" the formula so that it calculates your correct VO2 max (and therefore calories) you can fiddle with activity class (raise it), weight (increase it, but not recommended because the weight is used in other calculations), BMI (decrease it by increasing your height). Over the last year or so, I've had to keep increasing my height (now at 7'6") in order to keep up as my fitness level increased.

So how do you figure out your VO2 max? The simplest and most accurate way is to get tested at a sports clinic that specializes in fitness testing. These tests cost about $150 to $350 on the average, and you'll need to get re-tested as your fitness level changes. You can also estimate your VO2 max using various methods by timing runs, rides, swims, etc. A search on the web for "estimate VO2 max" will provide a lot of options without spending the $$ for a fitness test. Not as accurate as a true fitness test, but close enough for my purposes.

My Garmin units still calculate calories on the low side, but within what I feel are acceptable limits. I didn't have do to much "reverse engineering" with my Polar units, although the FT-4 read a bit high and the RS300x was close to the Garmin reading after fudging the Garmins. The MotoActv seems to be the most accurate on runs and other activities, but the calorie burns in the cycling mode are ridiculously high, up to 4x higher than the Garmins. On a particular bike route that I use often, the MotoActv will say I burned 2,700+ calories in the cycling mode; in the "other outdoor" mode, on the same route, I'll only burn about 800+, which is about the same as the Garmins. I still haven't figured it out the MotoActv. I've sent data to Motorola and haven't yet received a solution from them. My riding buddies don't seem to have the same problem with the cycling mode on their MotoActvs.

Update: I discovered quite by accident that the Garmin Speed and Cadence sensor on my bike accounted for the crazy calorie numbers reported by my MotoActv. During a recent ride, the little magnet slid away from the sensor and stopped recording cadence and wheel speed. Suddenly the crazy high calorie burn numbers on the MotoActv dropped dramatically and my Garmin Edge 500's seemed to come up just a bit (although I have no empirical evidence to support the Garmin's increased calorie burn reporting). The bottom line is that the MotoActv and the Garmin, when used side-by-side during the same activity now report virtually the same calorie burns.

Was it worth all the effort to get calorie calculations that are at best only 80% to 90% accurate? Close enough... The proof is in the weight loss.

(Again, calories calculations only relate to weight loss. You still need to pay attention to the food you eat, e.g. sodium, carbs, proteins, etc. for a healthy diet)

Duathlon? Are you nuts Manny?

Mira Mesa Cycling Club, 2012 Devil Dog Duathlon

My goal weight has come and gone. I'm hovering around 185-190 and I've decided to try and maintain my weight by watching my calories and keeping up the riding and running.

A couple of months ago, my buddy Manny, the same one that talked me into a triathlon, sent out an email to our riding club suggesting that we enter the Devil Dog Duathlon to be held at Camp Pendleton in April. The duathlon is a 5K run, followed by a 21 mile bike ride and then followed by another 5K run. For the second time in a year, I asked him if he was nuts.

So along with about a dozen of our riding buddies, we signed up for another round of dumb-ass self inflicted pain. However, this didn't seem to be too bad; no swim leg which is good, and although my running still sucks (the other day I thought I was running and a lady passed me pushing her baby stroller), I felt it was quite doable. I began to train harder for the run portion where I knew I'd have the most difficulty. About a week before race day, I could regularly do a 5 mile run without stopping. Slow, but possible.

About a week and a half before race day, Manny's brother sadly passed away in the Philippines and he had to travel there from San Diego for the funeral. He was back after a few days, and as a group we decided to dedicate our Devil Dog to his brother's memory. When Manny got back, he got sick with cold and flu symptoms. It looked like he'd have to abandon the race before he even got started. However, he began to feel better a few days before the race and he sent us all an email indicating his resolve to do the race. He didn't tell his wife, who is a nurse. Manny had a heart bypass operation a few years ago, and his wife is understandably concerned about his health, particularly when he exerts himself after being sick.

In good spirits for the time being, setting up transition zone

On race day, as luck would have it, his wife had a late night shift at the hospital, so he was able to scoot away before she could get home to stop him. It was a bit wet and chilly that morning as we headed north into Camp Pendleton for the race. Nine of us represented Mira Mesa Cycling Club. The run course was a bit hilly with a combination of pavement and dirt track, basically an out and back up and down. Not unexpectedly, I lost a lot of time on the run. The bike ride was relatively flat also, with some shallow rollers and only one short climb of any consequence. However the wind was howling that day and it made the course feel like it was uphill all the way. We're not allowed to draft in a triathlon or duathlon and it made it all the more difficult. The last run was the same course as the first.

Tony and his medal!

I started cramping up on the bike ride, but for some reason, the cramping went away after a few miles and didn't return until I got off my bike. I've decided that the transition from running to biking is not an easy one. I find it easier to transition into running from biking. In the end, of the guys in our group, I came in second to last. Manny, who had been sick, brought up the rear. We lined up at the finish to cheer him on, impressed that he finished, considering that he wasn't well enough to race (and probably still wasn't) just a few days ago. Had Manny not been sick, I would most certainly have been last. One of our guys, Tony, came in second in his age group. That's him with the medal in the picture. We had a lot of fun that day. Unlike the Tinsel Tri (my last race) I actually think I might do another one of these. There is nothing like doing a race with 8 of your friends for support, crossing the finish line and hearing them yell encouragement. It's like a drug.

A few days later, Manny shared with us a hilarious text message thread that he had with his wife. She had come home that morning and discovered he was gone, and she texted him to find out his whereabouts. He responded by saying he was designated driver for the race and just wanted to pick up his T-Shirt. She responded by asking why he had to bring his bike! Busted!

189!

Before and after. Took about 2 years

For the last couple of weeks my size 34 pants are beginning to feel loose around the waist. So I decided to weigh myself again this morning. 189 pounds! Another milestone. I celebrated by going out and buying a couple of pairs of size 32 jeans. The last time I wore a size 32 was sometime in the 9th or 10th grade. It's been a long grind... Only 4 more pounds to goal weight!

Triathlon! Are you nuts?

Swami's State Beach with my son

I was on a ride early last summer with my buddies from Mira Mesa Cycling Club. After about 20 miles, we stopped at Swami's State Beach, which is a local favorite for cyclists taking a break during long rides. It's a beautiful stop along the Pacific Coast Highway, named because of the ashram that Swami Paramahansa Yogananda built there overlooking the Pacific Ocean back in 1937. It's also one of the world's most famous surfing beaches.


My buddy Manny said, "You know, I'm thinking of doing a sprint triathlon later this year." And I told him "great! I'll come out and cheer you on."


He said, "I was thinking you'd go in it with me"


I said, "Triathlon, are you nuts?"


It's a funny thing about peer pressure. When Manny first mentioned it, any type of triathlon was just about the most outrageously unattainable goal I could come up with. Over the next few months, as he worked on me, it seemed less and less silly. I started running, just in case... I started swimming, just in case...


Swimming to me was jumping into a pool with one of those swim-up bars and sipping a margarita. In the summer, my wife, who was a competitive swimmer back in the day, began to give me "real" swimming lessons for competition. I couldn't believe how complicated swimming turned out to be! The first lesson was eye-opening. I had to re-learn how to kick, how to stroke, how to hold my head down, how to breathe. The first few tries, I just sank like a rock. Kicking wasn't as easy as I thought; I went backwards. Then I had to put it all together. I was like one of those HDTV broadcasts where the video and audio are way out of sync. Over the course of the next few months, I bought swimming DVDs, even got a swim coach for a day and I made some progress. I was doing about 200m without stopping, then 300m and finally reached 1100m in one go. I was dreadfully slow, but I thought I was almost ready.


On my birthday in October, my wife invited some friends over to celebrate the start of the hockey season. One of our friends, Diane, is a serious triathlete, having competed in various ironman competitions. She recently completed a bike ride from San Francisco to San Diego. She suggested I try the Tinsel Triathlon in Hemet, California in early December. She was all excited about it, and she even said she would do it again with me if I went in it. It was her first triathlon and she said it was easy and a lot of fun. I turned to Manny and I said, I'll do it if you do it... And he agreed. So the crazy idea of a triathlon at 57 years old became a done deal. After the sangrias wore off, I thought I'd done just about the dumbest thing, agreeing to do a triathlon.


So I had to start training in earnest. It was only two months away! I ran 3x a week, swam 3x a week and rode 3x a week. Confident about the biking part, I was still a painfully slow runner and an even worse swimmer. A couple of weeks before the Tinsel Tri, I traveled to New Orleans. You know what happens there. You can't resist the food. Running there was really only to keep up with the calorie intake and minimize the damage. I didn't swim either because of the cold weather. Then I got sick. I'd recovered enough a few days before the Tri and I resolved to do it. However, Manny learned he had to have shoulder surgery and was advised by his doctor not to swim, so he had to pull out.

Feeling the pain!

The Tinsel Tri is a short reverse sprint distance triathlon. That means you run first, bike second and swim last. The run is a flat 3 mile course, followed by a mostly flat 12 mile bike ride and then a short 150m swim in a pool. On the morning of the tri, the temperature in Hemet was 28 degrees... Fahrenheit. By the time we got to the start line, it as a balmy 38. Our friend Diane was giving me all sorts of tips on how to set up my transition zone while I was still wondering what the hell I was doing there. At the start line, she went to the front of the pack and I reluctantly followed. I wanted to be in the back. When the gun went off, everyone shot out of there like they were desperate to go to the bathroom. The pace was about a 7-1/2 minute mile. And I stupidly kept up, but only at first. I knew there was no way I could sustain that pace. As the 3 miles wore on, I got slower and slower, finally wearing out the toes of my running shoes while I toe-dragged myself into the transition zone at a 13 minute per mile pace. I took my time at the transition... Didn't really matter anyway, right? 

Start of the bike stint

When I got on the bike, I realized I felt pretty good, and I decided to try and make up the time I lost on the run. I hammered the 12 miles. It was pretty windy but I was making headway; I recognized the people I passed because they all passed me on the run. When I got back into the transition zone, I saw Diane sitting there and asked her what happened. She had already finished! To encourage me she said she'd do the swim again with me. Jeez, how does someone have that speed and stamina?


My second transition was about a minute quicker than my first. I had a couple of false starts because I forgot to take my socks off, then I forgot to take my helmet off. I was pretty delirious. I jumped into the pool, determined to use all my new swimming skills. Those all went out the window as I plowed head-first into someone's ass while my head was perfectly down in what I thought was pretty good freestyle form. Not wanting to stick my head in another person's butt again, my head came up, my legs dropped down and my swimming form went to hell. I could hear my wife on the sidelines yelling "What happened to your form? Head down! Arch your back!" and so on. Needless to say, that was the most exhausting 150m, having used more energy flailing away in the pool than propelling me forward. All the while thinking that about 900 sweaty people had jumped into the pool. I imagined that the pool had more sweat than water. After the swim, I spent more time showering off than I did in the pool.


In the end, I finished midway in the field. Apparently, although about 1,500 people signed up, only about 900 showed up and I finished solidly mid-pack in the mid 400s. My transition times were comical: My first transition was 3-1/2 minutes and my second was about 2-1/2 minutes. Compare that to the winner's times of 30 seconds and 17 seconds! It turned out to be a lot of fun though. Later on, Diane's husband Michael said to my wife, "You're now officially a triathlon widow." I don't know about that though. It was fun, but I'm not sure I want to beat myself up like that again. And this was supposed to be a super easy triathlon!

Below 200 and a size 34 waist.

One of two piles of discards

For the first time in more than 20 years, I weigh less than 200 pounds. The milestone actually passed a few days ago, but I didn't wanna celebrate until I knew it stuck.

I marked the occasion by going out and buying new pants and shirts and tossing out all my old fat clothes and donating them to charity. I got rid of nearly 200 shirts, about 50 pairs of pants and shorts, assorted sweaters, jackets, coats and sweatshirts. I discarded every bit of clothing I owned, even underwear! I have never seen my closet so empty. I can fit everything now in my closet into a small carry-on bag.

The best part was buying size 34 pants (down from a size 40) and size medium and some large shirts, down from 2XL and 3XL. At this point, the size 34s are a bit loose, but 32s are still a bit tight. Didn't think losing weight would be so expensive.

Fifteen more pounds to go...

Shedding the pounds, part 2

As mentioned in the previous post, I had to search for a more efficient way to track my caloric intake. I scoured the web for calorie counters and calorie trackers. I searched for smartphone apps that might work. Some websites or apps would track calories, but you had to figure out for yourself how many calories you were taking in. Others had very complicated ways of tracking your calories. Yet others had food databases where you could enter a meal or a portion and it would figure out your calories and track them. Most of these had limited food databases, of only one, ten or even twenty thousand food items. Trust me, that’s not enough.

Then I found My Plate on www.livestrong.com. It’s part of Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation and it has all sorts of tools that will help you live a healthier lifestyle. “My Plate” is essentially a calorie and nutrition tracker. The amazing thing is the scope of foods in the food database! I searched for sorts of weird Asian and Spanish foods and not only did the foods come up in the database, it even listed different brands! I didn't know there were so many varieties of Filipino lumpia. There have been very few foods that I couldn’t find in the database. It's really easy to track calories. What’s more, there is a companion app for a smartphone that ties in with the website so that you can track your calories even when your computer isn’t available. The iPhone app is not very reliable, though, it crashes a lot and sometimes will duplicate food entries willy-nilly. Sometimes it will also record a huge amount of calories for meals that you’ve created on the web site. 300 calories for a cup of coffee? An update of the mobile app is supposed to be on the way.


On the website, you can create meals and accurately track the calories in your recipe. For example, as you build a meal or create a recipe it will track how many calories each component in your recipe has and total up all those calories. Then it divides the total calories by the number of servings your recipe contains. You can even make up those little nutritional data summaries that they put on food containers for your recipes. There are also recipes available from the thousands, maybe millions of other My Plate users. What's fantastic are the results. I've just cracked below 215 pounds and feeling for the first time that I might actually get below 200 pounds again.

Along the way, as you track you daily caloric intake and burn, you can also track your weight loss. The web site gives you these encouraging messages from time to time. I've been religious in recording my food intake and workout calorie burns since I started tracking last March. I haven't missed a day yet. They say that statistically, if you can keep tracking for 90 days, you'll have a much better chance of achieving your weight goals. By the way, Livestrong My Plate isn't just for weight loss, you can track calories for when you need to put on weight too. I haven't tried that part out.. Yet.


The Livestrong websites are full of invaluable information, particularly for cancer victims, and also provides support and information for people suffering from diabetes, etc. They're the most useful, no bull websites you can visit. Thank you Lance Armstrong, for creating the Livestrong Foundation.

Finally! I'm shedding the pounds, part 1

Under 215 pounds!

When my wife suggested I write a book about my weight loss odyssey, I laughed and told her it would be the world's shortest book (besides, I'm not the only guy ever to lose weight). Because it turned out to be so easy. It’s one of those epiphanies that you get and think, “why the heck didn’t I think of this before?”


Here it is in a nutshell: It’s all about calories, stupid! I quickly discovered that although I was riding my bike a lot, I was also eating a whole ton of calories during and after my rides, in the misguided belief that because I was riding hard, I could pretty much eat what I wanted. I’ll tell you right now, if you read some of the road biking magazines, they’ll sometimes have these little side bars where they give you a ride distance and speed and tell you what the equivalent you can consume in beer or Snickers bars. Don’t even look at that, if you’re serious about shedding the pounds. ‘Cause you’ll end up eating those Snickers bars and wonder why you gained weight!

I went to see a nutritionist in March and she gave me all sorts of information about the types of foods that I needed to eat, the proportions of carbohydrates, proteins, etc. There were simple sugars and complex sugars. Some turned into glycogen, others didn't. It seemed way too complicated. So of course, that all went in one ear and out the other. The only thing that rattled around in my brain was when she said, for your weight, you need to eat a net 1,900 calories every day to lose two pounds a week. She gave me a whole list of foods on about six or seven pages with the calorie counts for different servings so that I could figure out how many calories I was taking in.

That's all well and good, but how accurate was it really? The foods listed were pretty general (is it a big apple or a medium apple?) and I wondered how accurate the list was. Also, what about my workouts? How could I factor those burned calories in? How did I even know how many calories I burned during a workout? There had to be a better way to quantify all those calories so that they made sense to me.


Using the lists from my nutritionist, I felt I could easily be as much as 500 calories off in my calculations. I felt I needed to accurately measure and quantify what I took in and burned every day with a relatively small margin of error. As it turns out, it very possible with today’s technology. The key is to first be able to accurately measure the calories going in, second, accurately measure the calories going out. As I mentioned, it’s very easy to do with today’s technology. 

I’ll digress here a little bit because I don’t want to give the impression that I totally ignored my doctor’s advice on the type of foods I was to eat and the proportions of carbs to proteins, etc. She was concerned about the possibility of diabetes setting in and aside from the weight loss aspect, she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going eat a lot of “crap”. I really wasn’t too worried about the type of food I was eating, because as the appointment with the doctor progressed, it turned out that my diet wasn’t so bad. I was more or less eating the correct foods, with some splurging here and there with foods I shouldn’t be eating. So I decided that I wasn’t going to worry too much about the type of foods I was taking in and worry only about my net calorie counts for the time being. I rarely eat white bread, for example, only whole grains. I rarely eat white rice. I eat a lot of nuts. I eat a lot of fruits and veggies. I never eat at fast food restaurants, and I don’t drink sodas. I always made sure that I had a lot of fiber in my diet. Believe me, when you’re in your 50s, fiber is all important! My main problem was that I simply ate too much for the level of activity in my life.

After muddling through a week after my appointment with the nutritionist, I realized that unless I knew with some degree of accuracy what was going in and out, it would never work. So I set out to find a way.

Another milestone: Vancouver to Whistler!

Epic Ride!

I spend a fair amount of time in Vancouver during the summer. It's a glorious city when the sun is shining. My folks live there and I grew up there. I decided at the beginning of this year that I was going to ride my bike from Vancouver to Whistler. My brother thought I'd lost my mind. I tipped the scales at 240+ pounds at the time.

It's been about 7 months since I added the Vancouver to Whistler ride to my bucket list, and in the intervening months, I've seen the nutritionist, got really serious about weight loss and have had great success in shedding the tonnage. That story to come soon.

I was planning to enter the Vancouver to Whistler Gran Fondo in September, but it turns out that the event is so popular it sells out within days of the previous year's Gran Fondo. It was a huge disappointment not to be able to enter, tempered a bit by the thought of not having to pony up the expensive entry fee. It was the great motivator for shedding the pounds. Since I couldn't do the Gran Fondo, I decided to ride the route yesterday. One of my uncles was in town visiting from Sydney, Australia and my wife drove him up to Whistler for a tour while I rode up on my wife's bike (mine was in San Diego).

Although I felt I really should shed a few more pounds before attempting this mostly uphill, 70 mile ride, I decided to go for it. I now weigh about 212 pounds and with my mom's cooking in Vancouver, I had to do something to offset the food intake.

Along the way, waterfalls!

After a climb!

I decided to start the ride on Vancouver's North Shore, in West Vancouver, so I wouldn't have to battle the weekend traffic through downtown and the Lions Gate Bridge. I started out in a little community called Horseshoe Bay. After a couple of miles of easy riding, the fun began! The route was rolling, mostly uphill 5% to 6% grades with a few 9% and 10% grades thrown in for good measure. But the climbs were usually followed by short downhill stretches and the scenery was amazing. Between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish, you ride the Sea to Sky Highway along the waterfront, with beautiful views of the inlet and islands on the left. On the right it's forests as far as the eye can see. It was chilly in the morning and I wasn't dressed for it, so when I got to Squamish, I found a bike shop and bought an undershirt for warmth. Turns out the owner spends a lot of time riding in San Diego during the winter and knew some of the riders I knew. A good omen, I thought.

That's kilometers; only
25 miles to go!

After leaving Squamish, the ride still seemed relatively easy... For just a couple miles as it turned out. Then the fun began. The highway turned uphill, and although the gradients weren't huge, mostly 6% to 9%, they were relentless! There were a ton of cyclists on the road, too. There was a mountain bike race going on at Whistler and many riders were on their way to catch the races. About an hour into the ride after Squamish, my cell phone rang and it was my wife. She had just driven up a long, steep grade and got worried about me. So she called to warn me about it! By that time, I'd already climbed it and I was only about 10 miles behind her. By the time I got within a few miles of the Whistler Village, I was going so slow, I think I might have been going backwards! When I got to Whistler, my trusty Garmin GPS told me I burned about 3,000 calories on the way so I headed to the nearest White Spot and had the first burger and fries I've had in a long time. Life is good!

The ride took me about 5 hours to ride; it wasn't the entire 70 miles because I started closer to Whistler than I'd originally planned. It ended up closer to 45 miles and about 5,000 feet of climbing. My average moving speed, counting the downhills and uphills was a little bit below 12.9 mph. I thought that was pretty respectable for an old, overweight guy like me. More than anything, that ride gave me the confidence to tackle just about any hill. I'm already planning for the next item on my bucket list: Climbing Mt. Palomar in northern San Diego county. I know I need to get well under 200 lbs for that one!

"You're just a fat guy on a bike!"

A couple of months ago, my wife, my son and my friend Charlie and I were riding through Torrey Pines State Beach on a warm Sunday afternoon. It was one of those days when people get kind of silly looking for parking, which is always in short supply. The area is chock full of joggers, people walking their dogs, cyclists, surfers and a lot of cars are hunting around for a place to park. The frenzy to find a parking spot can get so intense... And the cyclists tend to suffer from it.

We were riding downhill on Carmel Valley Road from the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) along the designated bike lane. Suddenly a woman driving a Volvo station wagon thought she found a parking spot. She zoomed past us, swerved into the bike lane, and slammed on her brakes to get into what turned out to be a non-existent parking spot. Charlie came within an inch or two of smashing into the back of the woman's car. The rest of us learned how to panic stop a bicycle. The thing is, she had absolutely no remorse. Some people in this part of San Diego tend to have a sense of entitlement. This woman definitely did. The inevitable yelling match ensued, and as she drove away, she yelled out to me, "you're just a fat guy on a bike."

Well, I'm a couple of months into my calorie tracking, and I've dropped down to 210 pounds. 60 pounds gone so far. I may have been be fat then, but lady, I won't be fat for long, and you'll always be stupid.

The Gran Fondos, Tours and losin' it!

With my son at the Gran
Fondo in 2011. About
232 pounds.

My son and I rode in the Gran Fondo Colnago San Diego this year. A Gran Fondo means great endurance or something like that in Italian. They're organized bike rides (runs and cross country skiing, too) of about 100 miles or so that are kind of like pretend races. They tell you it's not a race, but they give you these timing chips to wear so that you can measure how fast you went. Also, some Gran Fondos give away prizes for King and Queen of the Mountain which go to the fastest male and female riders on a climbing segment. It's not a race, remember? They're kind of fun though and usually well attended by serious cyclists. In San Diego, the Gran Fondo is sponsored by the bike maker Colnago and it's an Italian affair with Alitalia even sending out really beautiful model types to chat it up with the (male) riders. Gotta love the Italians. They even have the local Ferrari club lead out the cyclists at the start in Little Italy.

We had entered the Gran Fondo in 2010, but it took us a week to finish... It was raining heavily in San Diego on the morning of the 2010 Gran Fondo. There we were out in the pouring rain waiting for Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the national anthem to end so we could get started. That national anthem seems like it takes about 20 minutes to run through and we were soaked and cold by the time we got started. After crossing over the Coronado Bay Bridge, we were battling high winds, driving rain and cold (for San Diego) temperatures. My son and I decided to take the ferry back to San Diego, go home, shower and come back to collect our finisher's medals. And have lunch. Hey, it's a pretend race, so we have pretend medals. We rode the entire route the following Sunday except for crossing the bridge, and it was just about as nice a day as you get here in America's finest city.

Old Pros Independence Day ride. That's me on the right. Down to
about 220 pounds. That's my buddy Charlie on the left. He thinks
 wearing that jersey and shorts is the same as wearing a flag.

This year we entered the Medio Fondo, which is a metric century or 60 miles. It may well be one of my last organized rides. Or should I say disorganized rides. Somehow the ride organizers underestimated the number of people signed up, because they ran out of water at a couple of the rest stops. They inexplicably situated the rest stops at very odd intervals. For the Medio Fondo riders, it was almost 30 miles between two of the stops. The course was kind of hilly and the convenience stores along the route made out like bandits! Riders needed hydration and nutrition in between the stops. I thought it was bad last year when they ran out of jerseys before the ride even started!

After the sugar water debacle in Palm Springs, I was souring on these giant organized rides. So far, only the Tour de Poway and the Old Pros ride in Scripps Ranch have been well organized and not overly crowded. I did the Poway in October of 2010 and the Old Pros ride just a few days ago on July 4th.

All that riding and I'm finally making progress. I'm down below 220 pounds. That's the story for another post or two... Stay tuned.

The Epiphany

During the holidays of 2010-2011, we had gone up to Vancouver to visit my folks and do some skiing. My sister and her husband flew out from New York to join us. We spent three days at Whistler Mountain. I discovered that despite being able to ride my bike for hours at a time, skiing really took it out of me. On the third day I only managed two or three runs. My more or less skinny, polo playing brother-in-law had no trouble skiing hard all three days. I began to reminisce about my high school days and skiing. Back then, I skied six out of seven days every week. Five nights a week (after homework, of course!) at Grouse Mountain, one of the now four local ski areas scattered around Vancouver. On Fridays we would drive to Whistler and spend Saturday and Sunday skiing. Now, I couldn’t put together three days of consecutive skiing. Granted it was almost forty years earlier, but I felt that I should still be able to ski at least five or six days without feeling completely spent.

Whenever I take a road trip I tend to analyze the route for its suitability for road biking. The drive to Whistler seemed like a monstrous seventy mile uphill pain fest. I could never do it. Then, I decided that I would try the ride the following summer, in September of 2011. There is an organized ride from Vancouver to Whistler called, can you guess? The Vancouver to Whistler Gran Fondo. It’s about seventy two miles from start to finish and you get to do it with a few thousand other riders in a more or less controlled environment. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police even close off intersections on the highway so that cyclists can go through without having to stop. Gotta love those Canadians, they do these Gran Fondos the right way! And so my next milestone began to form in my mind.

However, even though I have finished my first century and I'm riding a lot, sometimes 200 miles in a week, I wasn’t losing any weight. Sure, sometimes I’d drop to about 235 but my weight was hovering at around 240. I knew that there was no possibility that I would be able to ride the Whistler Gran Fondo weighing 240 pounds and expect to finish before winter set in. I had been frustrated by my inability to get firmly below 240 pounds and I really didn’t know what to do about it. I knew I didn’t want to get into any fad or special diets, because I was certain that as soon as I got off the diet at whatever my goal weight was, I’d just put the pounds back on. My cousin Miguel, an opera singer, had done it and he kept the pounds off (today, he still keeps the pounds off). There had to be a reason why he was dropping pounds permanently and I wasn’t, even though we were both more or less doing the same thing: Regular and relatively intense workouts. He ran and I rode.

In early March, I was at Scripps Clinic for a routine blood test to check my PSA levels, and I noticed a little poster asking for volunteers for a weight loss study. I called and asked for information. They told me that they were testing a weight loss supplement and that half of the participants would take a placebo and the other half would take the supplement. They also said that I could not change my eating habits during the study, and most importantly, I couldn’t be under the guidance of a nutritionist with the aim of losing weight. Wait a minute... Nutritionists do that? Hmmm, I called my primary care doc, and asked his office to refer me to a nutritionist. At the end of March, 2011, I walked into the doctor’s office for my first “weight loss” appointment, and this is where it all began. The crazy notion of riding my bike from Vancouver to Whistler.

My first century! And I'm still stuck

The holidays of 2010 came around and I weighed 240 pounds. Then January of 2011 came around and I weighed 240 pounds. I suppose I should be glad I didn't gain any weight over the holidays. I signed up for the Tour of Palm Springs again in February and this time, my son talked me into riding the century. The century! Holy crap! “Do you really expect me to ride 100 miles plus in one shot?” He said “Yeah, you should be able to do it, no sweat.” So we went up to Palm Springs again and I did the century.

But not without incident. In 2011 I’m told nearly 9,000 riders had signed up for the Tour of Palm Springs in 2011. When my son and I reached the first rest stop, we loaded up on the energy drink being given away at each stop. We did the same at the second stop right around mile 35. By the time mile 55 rolled around, I started to cramp up. Interesting, I thought, because I’d already ridden a bunch of 60 milers with no incident. I had to stop nearly every couple of miles to stretch out because the cramps were quite painful. I finally rolled into the 70 mile rest stop and found my son stretched out on the grass, with stomach distress. He’d been there for about half an hour and could barely move, except to run to the porta-potties. Curious, because he had already done centuries with no problems.

That’s when I discovered that the free so-called energy drink was really just sugar and water in fancy packaging. No electrolytes. We dumped our water bottles and re-filled them with plain water and started drinking as much as we could and try and flush out bad stuff. After a couple of hours, my son and I felt well enough to continue. Within a quarter mile I started cramping up again. I told my son to go on, and I called my wife (who had done the 55 mile ride and was finished) to come an get me. As I pedaled back to the rest stop, I felt so disappointed! This was one of my milestones and I really wanted to finish it. So I called her back and told her to go back to the finish line. I was determined to complete my first century. I still had to stop every couple of miles to stretch out the cramps, but I finally made it. My son had been running over to the finish line wondering where I was. I guess he was a bit worried that it had gotten dark and I still was nowhere to be found. I finished ninth from last and in the dark, but the kids cheering the riders at the finish line were still there, and it was unbelievable. I had done it. And at the time I never wanted to do it again. As we were driving back to San Diego, trying to keeps stretched out to prevent the cramps from recurring, I told my wife exactly that. It was so difficult because of the constant cramping and I felt like I had been run over by all 8,999 of the other riders out on the course. The next day, after analyzing my ride, I realized that I did one very wrong thing: I should never have tried a new drink in the middle of a ride. Had I stuck to my normal hydration routine, the ride would not have been too difficult. By the end of the day, I was telling my wife I wanted to do another century.

When I weighed myself a few days later, I still weighed 240 pounds.

I'm stuck and I got a new bike

I'm riding about three to five times a week now. I'm climbing hills. I've turned into a cycling maniac. I just can't seem to get enough of it. I still weigh 240 pounds. Sometimes I drop to 235 and sometimes I’d bump up to 245. I don't seem to be losing any weight. Muscle mass! That's it, I'm gaining heavy muscle mass. As they say, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I began to suspect that my beloved Rocinante was probably not the right size for me. It is a 61cm frame and I was stretched out over it like I was on a medieval rack. I started dropping by bike shops and trying out different sizes of bikes. I took body measurements (my wife is beginning to think I'm nuts) and with the help of information I gleaned from the web, I discovered that I really should be on a 56 to 58cm frame. So I reluctantly put an ad on craigslist and sold my Klein to a young student who was about 6’6” tall. He was the right size for the Klein and it felt to me like he was gonna take good care of it. I replaced the Klein with a 56cm all carbon Masi 3VC Volumetrica frame and built it up myself with relatively high end components.

Masi was (emphasis on the past-tense) a legendary bike brand founded by Faliero Masi in the 50s. His bikes won a bunch of Giros d'Italia, Tours de France and Vueltas a España. Some of cycling's most legendary figures rode Masis to victory. The riders in the iconic movie Breaking Away rode Masi Gran Criteriums. Faliero Masi moved his frame building business from underneath the velodrome in Milan to Carlsbad in the early 70s and later moved back to Italy leaving his company behind. Masi is now owned by Haro bikes in Vista. Many Masi purists deride the new Masis as fakes. I don't know about that. I just liked the history behind the name and good quality vintage Masis are outrageously expensive.

I haven't given the Masi a name and I don't know if I will. It doesn't feel as significant as my first ride, even though the component mix is far better than Rocinante, it's much stiffer and much lighter, too. I'm becoming obsesses with making my bike lighter. The thing is though, that where I really needed to shave... No, hack off more weight is from my body. I still weigh 240 pounds.

Down to 240 and an anniversary

Start of Tour de Palm Springs

When I bought Rocinante just about a year ago, one of my goals was to ride in the Tour of Palm Springs. I figured it would be something of a homecoming for my bike and to celebrate that I made it so far. The Tour of Palm Springs is one of the largest organized ride in the west. I think they said there were about 6,000 riders, riding on courses varying from 25 miles to a full century (100 miles). I signed up for the 55 miler. This was my longest ever single bike ride.

Last Christmas, I bought my son a carbon road bike. He's got the perfect physique for riding, tall and lightweight. I told my wife and son that all I wanted from them for Christmas was for them to commit to riding two organized bike rides with me.

The first was kind of a warm up for the Palm Springs ride. We signed up for the Tour of Borrego Springs a couple of days before the new year. We got a bit mixed up at the start and started early with the guys riding 100 miles. When we turned off to follow our route, no one was ready for us at the rest stops. When we finished, we came in 1, 2 and 3. The rest of the 33 milers started arriving about 20 minutes later. We didn’t tell anyone we started 20 minutes ahead of everyone else in our group.

MMCC at the Tour of Palm Springs

The second ride was Tour of Palm Springs and rode 55 miles with my wife and son. It was an easy 55 miles, with just a bit of wind, lots of rest stops and lots of stops because of the huge crowds, particularly at the beginning and at the first rest stop. Once out past the first 10 or so miles, the riders thinned out and we had lots of room. The CHP was out in force doing a great job of protecting the cyclists. Overall, it was a really great event, and very well organized.

The Palm Springs ride was special to me because it marked the first anniversary of my getting back on a bike. I was feeling much better physically, my riding was strong and I'd made some progress in the weight loss department. I weigh 240 pounds; in a year I managed to lose 30 pounds. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to do anything else to shed the weight a bit faster.

Cleats, part 2

Look Keo

I soon discovered that my Speedplay Frogs, good as they are combined with my touring shoes didn't quite cut it for road biking. For road biking, aside from weight, stiffness is king; particularly for climbing, you want as much of your effort to be transformed into forward motion. If, among other things (and there are lots of other things!) your shoes aren't stiff enough, you end up using some of that precious power to flex your shoes. That's the excuse, anyway.

You also want your cleats to have a relatively wide platform, so you can distribute that force over a wider area, reducing the stress of hard pedaling on the cleat/pedal system. While mountain/touring bike shoes have two holes on the sole, road shoes will have three (most common, pioneered by Look) or four holes (Speedplay and some Time systems).

Time iCLIC

One of the best selling pedal systems is made by Look. Their Keo pedals are pretty ubiquitous and are ridden by just about every level of rider from beginner to Alberto Contador, the 2007 and 2009 winner of the Tour de France. Look claims to have invented the clipless pedal. I wonder if they were responsible for naming them clipless too. Time makes some pretty good pedals too, and they claim to have pioneered the whole idea of "float". Other manufacturers are Shimano and Speedplay.

For those of us with heavy frames (I mean body, not bike!) the issue of float is important. Float allows the cleat to move from side to side on the pedal, theoretically making it easier on the knees than a fixed cleat that doesn't move once it's on the pedal. Time's iClic cleats have about 5 degrees of float, Shimano offers fixed (0 degrees of float) or 6 degrees of float. Look's Keos can be outfitted with zero float, 4 degrees of float or 9 degrees. Speedplay Zeros can be adjusted by set-screws in the cleat to an infinite number of settings in between zero and 15 degrees. Other Speedplay models have fixed non-adjustable floats.

Speedplay Light Action

Most of the manufacturers have different levels of pedal performance. Material on the lower end are usually chromoly steel (I don't think I spelled that right). Then you usually have stainless steel in the middle with carbon and titanium pedals rounding out the top end. You can expect to pay more for lighter and stiffer pedals.

I still have my fear of getting stuck on the pedal and ignominiously falling over in front of a crowd. I also wanted a system where I could choose different float angles. I still don't know how much I'll need or even if I need any at all. I also wanted a system that had replacement cleats readily available. I ended up choosing the Look Keos. I tried the black cleats, no float: Wow, if you're even mildly claustrophobic, you're not gonna like no float. You may like them if you're into the kinky bondage scene though. I also tried the red cleats, which provide 9 degrees of float. The foot movement was disconcerting and I decided I didn't like so much float (which is strange, because my Speedplay Frogs had at least that much float!). I'm now using the gray cleats which provide 4 degrees of float.

Shimano Ultegra

The Look pedals are very easy to clip in and out of. Hardly any effort is required for either, yet unless you twist your foot in strange ways while pedaling, they'll keep your foot firmly clamped onto your pedals. My only complaint is that they're one-sided, so you have to fiddle with them a bit to get them facing the correct way to cleat in. I've been riding them for a few months now and so far, I'm happy with them. I paired the pedals with Sidi shoes and guess what? I still suck at climbing! On to the next excuse.

By the way I lifted the pedal photos from www.competitivecyclist.com. I don't mind recommending them because so far, they've treated me right and their prices can be very good, particularly for closeouts. (I'm not in any way affiliated with them, I just like them)

My first group ride

Bike the Bay 2009

I just did my first group ride. Bike the Bay in San Diego is a big annual event for all type of riders. It's unique in that the 25 mile course takes you from downtown San Diego, over the Coronado Bay Bridge, down the Silver Strand in to Imperial Beach and back up the East Bay along all the shipyards and navy facilities. I bought my wife a road bike for her birthday a few weeks ago, and she joined me on the ride.

Coronado Bay Bridge

The party atmosphere was great. There were all kinds of riders; some in costume, some serious looking types, many families. Going over the Coronado Bridge was a treat. It's a privilege that we seldom get here in San Diego. It was also the toughest part of the ride, climbing up in to the crest of the bridge. The rest of the course was flat and fast. Riding along the Silver Strand where the US Navy Seals train, I thought of how fit those guys are. Ah, to be young again.

Rocinante and Diane's new bike

At the end of the ride, we got food (yay!) and the bands started playing. They were handing out raffle prizes too. Didn't win.

Near the finish

I learned a few things about group rides. There are serious ones and there are fun ones. This one was a fun one. The pace is generally slower and it's really more of a social event on a bike. People are friendly 'cause most everyone is having fun. But by the time I got to the finish line, I was wondering if the fun ride was really my cup of tea. Don't get me wrong... I did enjoy it, and a lot of people really like them, but I started to get a bit bored at the end. I guess I'll have to see how I'm riding next year before I decide if I wanna do it again.

I'm down to about 245 pounds.

Join a bike club

I finally started riding back up the 56 bike path instead of going only one way. My rides are now routinely about 30 miles or so. I even joined a road bike club and started riding hard and some weeks I ride almost on daily.

Mira Mesa Cycling Club

I had the great luck of joining up with a local bike club, mostly Filipinos who are equally obsessed with riding as I am. If you ever want to ride with a group of guys that welcome anyone, even me, ride with the local Filipinos in your area. You’ll never meet a better bunch of encouraging guys to ride with. They seem to enjoy my improvements as much as I do.

I've lost about 20 pounds so far; I now weigh 250 pounds and am feeling pretty good. I'm riding about three to five times a week. I'm climbing hills. I've turned into a cycling maniac. I just can't get enough of it.

Cleats?

My Speedplay Frogs

So far I've been riding on regular pedals and wearing my running shoes. I'm still resisting that whole cyclist look. Mainly because I don't really look like one and so far, I don't even come close to riding like one.

I'm told (by real cyclists) I really should be using clipless pedals. I thought great, because my regular pedals definitely don't have cleats. Turns out that clipless pedals really mean that you have to clip in to them. Go figure. It's like pressing the "start" key to close Microsoft Windows.

My wife's cousin Eldon, who was a pro racer back in the day told me that I'm not getting the best experience riding my bike because I'm wan't using clipless pedals. With pedals that you can cleat into, you can pull as well as push on your pedals, with a goal of a smooth circular pedal stroke. The general idea is that you can generate twice the power as a push down only stroke. So I finally succumbed to the pressure and started looking for clipless pedals.

I have an unreasonable fear of getting my foot stuck on the things and falling over. Too embarrassing, never mind the possible injury. I really didn't think I wanted clipless pedals, but I respected Eldon's opinion and I started doing a bunch of research on clipless pedals.

There are a bunch of clipless pedal systems out there. There are specific ones for mountain biking, which are designed mostly so that you can walk on your shoes with some ease, and also not to collect at lot of dirt. Dirt prevents easy clip-in (see what I mean? clipless, but you need to clip-in). They're also used for general touring on a bike. For road biking, the requirement for easy walking and not picking up a lot of dirt doesn't seem to be as important. I guess I can understand not picking up a lot of dirt, but it would still be nice to be able to walk easily... I guess I'll understand better once I become a true cyclist.

I'm still in the "I'm kinda embarrassed to look like a road cyclist in spandex" mode, so I decided on mountain bike cleats. This of course meant mountain biking or touring shoes where the smaller mountain bike cleats are recessed into the shoe's sole for easy walking. So off I went... In the process, I learned about float. Float is the amount of side-to-side motion that the pedal system allows so your foot can swivel on the cleat. Float is desired by many riders because it can be easier on the knees. Cleat systems can have as little as no float, or 0 degrees, up to about 20 degrees of float. There is also free float versus centering float to worry about. How much you need is pretty much a personal choice. I decided I needed a lot of float. Don't really know why, but I figured my knees would thank me later.

Ease of clipping out was also a big concern. I think it is for most new riders. Who wants to ride up to a group ride, get stuck in your cleats and falling over in front of all those waiting athletes? Embarrassing. Also, they should be easy to clip into.

Shimano SPD cleats

The most common cleat system out there for mountain bikes and touring is the SPD system. It's also used in a lot of gyms on their stationary bikes for those new spinning classes. You can get SPD pedal systems with as much as 4 to 6 degrees of float. Prices range from as little as $40 to $50 for the system and up. As the cleat system gets pricier, they generally get lighter and have a few more little bells and whistles. I should mention that the SPD system was developed by Shimano and they also call their road pedal systems SPD.

There are other systems out there, such as Crank Brothers, Time, Look etc. I didn't really check those out because they're not as readily available here in San Diego. You kinda have to hunt for them. But it would pay to check them out if you're looking for mountain biking or touring cleats.

Speedplay Frog - Stainless

After trying out the SPD cleats, which were pretty good I thought, I ended up buying Speedplay Frogs. They're super easy to get in and out of, as the pedal is two sided. They've got a ton (20 degrees) of free float, which I'm sure I need and they're relatively easy to clip out of. So far I love them and I don't really care about some of the "why is he wearing mountain bike/touring bike shoes on his road bike" looks. Being able to pull as well as push was a revelation. I now have twice as much power to drag my big body around.

The one thing I found out about the Frogs, as much as I like them is that the little nib on the cleat (the part attached to you shoe) breaks off easily when you weigh 270 pounds. Replacement cleats are about $20-$30. The pedals themselves seem pretty indestructible. The systems run from about $100 for the chrome-moly steel version to $250 for the titanium ones. I got the middle of the road stainless steel version.

There's a good buyer's guide to clipless pedals on wheelworld.com with lots of useful information that can give you a good idea of what you need for the type of cycling you do. There's also a good section on clipless vs. clip-in and float.

The weight problem

When you’re trying to lose weight, it seems almost impossible. I need to lose about 80 pounds in order to get my Body Mass Index (BMI) into normal range. At 270 pounds, my BMI is 35.6; 5.6 points above obese. To get to normal, I’d have to bring my BMI down to under 25. The task is daunting.

I love food. When anyone asks her about our relationship with food, my wife replies “I eat to live and he lives to eat.” That just about sums it up. When I was twelve years old, I was as skinny as a rake and must have had a high metabolism, because I could eat anything in any quantity and my weight barely changed. I remember coming home for lunch when I was in high school (we lived five blocks from school). I’d eat two tins of tuna, put it over rice and then smother it with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. It would gross everyone out, except me. I loved it (I still love it!). By high school, I had grown to about 6'2" and 160 pounds and never seemed to gain any weight. My BMI had always hovered between underweight and normal.

Food was always a central theme in my family. I was born in the Philippines from Spanish parents. As with any Latin family, our lives revolved around food. We ate to celebrate, we ate to mourn, we ate when we were depressed, we ate when we were happy. Any occasion was a good excuse for a feast. My mother spends most her time in the kitchen to this day. She’s 80. What makes it even worse is that I belong to a couple of cultures that loved to eat! I remember as a boy living in the Philippines, I was always told never to leave any food on my plate... Think about all the starving kids in whatever part of the Philippines it was. When we moved to Spain when I was twelve, it was starving children in Biafra, or Ethiopia, etc. To this day in my late 50s, I still think my mom is gonna give me a bad time if I don’t eat every last morsel on my plate.

When I was fifteen we moved to Vancouver from Madrid, and I was into full blown puberty. My metabolism must have changed because I started putting on the weight. Still I managed to graduate from high school weighing just under 170 from all that tuna, mushroom soup and rice. Oh, and I ate bananas like there was no tomorrow. If you ever need proof that we humans are somehow genetically related to apes, all you had to do was monitor my banana consumption when I was a teenager.

During my college years, I quickly gained another 15 or so pounds and by the time I got out of there, I weighed about 185 pounds. However, I maintained that weight for a few years, even after I was married.

In the late 1980s, I began to put on serious weight. When I hit 195 pounds, I started trying out different diets, in desperate, yet mostly failing attempts at losing weight. I only wanted to lose about 10 to 15 pounds, but it seemed next to impossible. I tried the “rice” diet. I didn’t eat anything but rice for about a week. That was a total disaster. I gained weight! Then I tried the “soup” diet. All I had was brothy soups. After about three days, I nearly passed out from hunger. Naturally I had an eating binge after that. Then I tried the “popcorn” diet. That was another waste of time. When we moved to San Diego in 1990, I weighed 200 pounds and slowly but surely the pounds were creeping in. Having tried all the crazy diets, and realizing how futile they were, I pretty much ignored my ever-increasing girth. By the late 90s, I’d ballooned up to around 240 pounds. After a large lunch, I’d get really sleepy and was pretty much useless for the rest of the day. In 1999, I was driving home in the early afternoon and I fell asleep for a second or two at the wheel. I woke up a couple of lanes over, adrenalin pumping and wondering what the heck just happened. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about a week later and have been using a CPAP ever since.

I was still relatively active, played tennis, sometimes skied, etc. But those activities began to hurt a lot more than they did when I weighed 50 pounds less. As the years went by, I got less and less active, and by the early 2000s, I reached 270 pounds. My waist was at 40 inches and my belly was as big as a watermelon (and just about as heavy). I had back issues, I wheezed my way through the day, getting tired at just about every little activity. My wife, who worried about my deteriorating lifestyle was constantly on my case about losing weight and getting healthy. I naturally resented her constant reminders, the furtive looks at my dinner plates heaped with food, comments about second and third helpings at mealtimes. The thing is, I never considered myself obese. I saw myself at the same weight as I was during my college days. Talk about deluded!

Thing is, I don't really eat a lot of junk. I rarely, if ever go to fast food restaurants. I seldom eat white bread or white rice. I ate my veggies just like my mom told me to do. But I was eating a ton of it at a time. What I didn’t realize at the time was that without exercise, there was no way to burn off the thousands of calories that I was piling on. I knew I needed to add exercise to my regimen. But I had to find something I liked and that I could do by myself. Running bores the heck out of me, swimming to me means lounging around a pool with a margarita. Cycling seemed to be the logical choice.

So here I go...