Its the diet!

Current weight: 184 lbs.

This past week was much better than last in terms of consistency. 6 days of solid training. I made it our today for a 2.5 hour ride. February will still be for base building but I will be increasing my workload a bit and adding some climbing to my regimen.

I'm not losing the weight I'd like to however. I think I eat 90% of where I should be, but its that 10% that's keeping me 10 lbs from my goal.

I analyzed my diet with a good friend who also happens to be a Certified Personal Trainer. The diagnosis? Too much sugar. I had never really given this much thought as I avoid with great success things like candy, soda and Zingers. Junk food you commonly associate with sugar. But looking at my daily food consumption, I can see the excess still. For example, I need to eat unsweetened or honey sweetened oatmeal rather than brown sugar. Also, replacing some of the fruit I eat with vegetables, as I tend to consume quite a bit of fruit during the day. These are little things, yes, but as I said before, its the last 10% that's the hardest. I am also finishing replacing all the "white" in my diet with "brown", meaning rice and even flour will be of the brown and whole wheat variety.

In the book Racing Weight, Fitzgerald describes how most endurance athletes would be considered being in great shape when compared to the general population, However, the athletes standard is a bit different than the general population and further tuning is required to get to racing weight. Think of it as the difference between your Honda Accord running smoothly and the tuning required for an Indy Car.