Math, Diet, and huh isn't that interesting?

Have y'all read the new Runner's World out now? It has an article in it about diet and exercise just like every month. Usually they don't mean that much to me, but this one I found particularly interesting especially with what I've been finding out in my spinning classes. First it said to maintain your body weight you should take your current weight and multiply by 13 and this was the number of calories I needed in a day. For me that was slightly under 1500 calories. Then it said if you wanted to lose a pound a week (not a high priority for me, but I would like to get down a little for better racing) that you should cut 500 calories a day with reduction in food intake and exercise. It also said that running a mile equaled 100 calories.

So, I experimented to see where I was. On Tuesday I ate what I usually eat and then some and had about 1900 calories. I did 3 miles of running and 45 minutes of spinning on Tuesday. Our spinning instructor said we would burn about 800 calories during the spinning class. So 3 miles equals 300 calories plus 800 calories from spinning is a total of 1100 calories burned. Let's do a little math. 1900 calories eaten minus 1100 calories burned leaves me with 800 calories to keep my body functioning.

Here's what I learned. I am not getting enough calories everyday to keep my body functioning properly for what I am putting it through. I probably crave sweets and chocolate all the time because I don't have enough calories to burn fat during my workouts and instead burn glycogen, sugar. If I want to lose any weight, I need to consume more calories so that I can burn fat during my workouts. Explains why the only time in the last several months that I lost any weight was at Thanksgiving and Easter.

Isn't that interesting?